Gerry Mulligan Quartet – What Is There To Say? - Pure DSD
Title: What Is There To Say?
Artist(s): Baritone Saxophone, Arranged By – Gerry Mulligan
Bass – Bill Crow
Drums – Dave Bailey
Trumpet – Art Farmer
Recording Info: Transferred from a 2-track 15ips tape
Recorded by Columbia Records
Tracks 1-4 recorded January 15, 1959, New York City
tracks 5, 6, 8 recorded December 23, 1958, New York City
track 7 recorded December 17, 1958, New York City
Producer – Teo Macero
1 What Is There To Say? 4:03
2 Just In Time 4:11
3 News From Blueport 5:03
4 Festive Minor 6:14
5 As Catch Can 3:54
6 My Funny Valentine 4:06
7 Blueport 8:47
8 Utter Chaos 4:23
Total Time: 40:41
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What Is There To Say?
outstanding transfer, a joy to listen to.
An Overlooked Masterpiece
Why isn’t this marvelous album as well-known as “Kind of Blue” or “Mingus Ah Um” Even in Raymond Horricks’ 1986 biography of Gerry Mulligan, the December 1958-January 1959 Columbia Records sessions for “What is There to Say” are only mentioned in passing. When Columbia signed Gerry Mulligan in 1958, there might have been an expectation that his return to the quartet format (baritone sax, trumpet, bass and drums), which had brought him critical acclaim and popular success during his tenure with Chet Baker, would lead to series of marketable recordings by a stable grouping. But Mulligan was artistically restless, and this album was to be his final piano-less quartet recording, a framework that he could never fully recreate without Chet Baker’s collaboration. Yet Mulligan enjoyed a sympathetic dialogue with trumpeter Art Farmer, and the skillful playing of bassist Bill Crow and drummer Dave Bailey sets this version of the Mulligan Quartet at the highest level of musicianship. Mulligan’s admiration for Duke Ellington is evident in “Blueport”, a swinging tune that captures the Ellington sound with very reduced horn forces. The introspective title tune and “Festive Minor” tread similar ground to Charles Mingus’ work of the late ‘50s. The balance of up-tempo and “late-night” tunes keeps the set compelling from beginning to end. Jazz lovers and Mulligan fans in particular are fortunate that HDTT has obtained such a high-quality tape source for this outstanding DSD release.
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Another Wonderful HDTTransfer
If you would like more information about this recording date you can download the liner notes and go to Amazon to read some good reviews from purchasers. Between that and the audio samples you can get a pretty good sense of what the music will be like. Very tasty stuff IMO like pretty much every Mulligan recording I own. If you take into account the quality of this transfer the combination is pretty hard to beat. The texture of the horns is very lifelike and true to tone (using live performances as a reference). This climbs to the top of my Mulligan repertoire for listening as the album has a nice balance of tunes on it with the band in good form all the way through despite the different recording dates. I do not have this album in any other format so I cannot compare the sound directly but the "wetness" of Gerry's sax can be heard and sounds like Ben Webster in that regard. Tape hiss is extremely low for this era. I did not notice any from my listening chair. Super clean! Highly recommended.
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Excellent
I'm very satisfied with this download: excellent sound at a reasonable price.
Excellent
I'm very satisfied with this download: excellent sound at a reasonable price.
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