Gerry Mulligan: The Baritone Buddha of Cool

Some jazz cats blast through the air like lightning bolts — fierce, fiery, untamed. But then there’s Gerry Mulligan, who’s more like a mischievous breeze whistling through the alleyways of sound. He didn’t just play the baritone sax; he romanced it, coiled his long limbs around it like a dance partner, and whispered secrets into its brass heart that still echo in smoky corners of old clubs and restless record grooves.

Gerry Mulligan looked like a lanky professor who’d wandered into a jazz club by mistake and decided to rearrange the entire structure of modern music just to keep himself entertained. He was a walking paradox: buttoned-up but playful, cerebral but groovy, a giant of a man who made one of the biggest horns in jazz sound like a sigh from a wise-cracking angel.

Let’s talk baritone sax for a moment. The bari sax is not exactly the glamour instrument of jazz. It’s the Sasquatch of the saxophone family — big, awkward, and often relegated to grunting in the background while the altos and tenors prance in the spotlight. But Mulligan grabbed that beast and made it dance. Dance, I say! And not just a clumsy polka, either. Think ballet meets beat poetry, with a little bebop backflip.

Born in 1927, Mulligan emerged from the same primordial bebop ooze as Bird and Diz, but he took a different route through the swamp. Where bebop was hot and fast and dense like espresso with a side of rocket fuel, Mulligan preferred his jazz cool — as in the “cool jazz” scene, yes, but also as in the “I just wrote this arrangement on a napkin during a dream about outer space, and now we’re playing it backwards while floating” kind of cool.

You know that iconic “Birth of the Cool” album with Miles Davis? Mulligan’s fingerprints are all over it. He was the sonic architect behind those nonet arrangements — lean, airy, counterpoint-rich like Bach had dropped acid and moved to Greenwich Village. He helped invent a new kind of jazz that breathed, that left space for the notes not played. That kind of thing takes guts and restraint. Most of us can barely restrain ourselves from hitting “send” on a regrettable email. Mulligan was restraining entire brass sections from overplaying.

Then came the pianoless quartet with Chet Baker. Pianoless! In jazz, that’s like showing up to a wedding without pants. And yet it worked. Chet’s trumpet floated over the top like cream, and Mulligan’s bari sax anchored it all with this sly, skipping logic. No piano? No problem. They left all that harmonic clutter behind and turned jazz into negative space. Like musical origami, or a soufflé with sunglasses.

And here’s the kicker: the guy was funny. Not stand-up comedian funny, but you could hear the wit in his solos. There was always a wink, a twist, a cheeky surprise — a phrase that sets you up for something familiar and then sidesteps into the bizarre. Mulligan solos feel like a conversation with an eccentric uncle who once hitchhiked with a circus and now lives in a library. There’s wisdom, yes, but also a taste for the ridiculous. The elegant kind of ridiculous.

He wasn’t afraid of beauty, either. In a genre that sometimes prizes complexity over feeling, Mulligan kept his heart in the melody. He could turn a standard into a slow-burning spell. Listen to him on “My Funny Valentine” and tell me you don’t feel like you’re floating in a dream narrated by a baritone sax with a penchant for romantic melancholy.

But here’s what gets me the most: Mulligan kept evolving. He didn’t fossilize into his “cool” persona. In the ’60s and ’70s, while other cool jazz figures vanished into nostalgia, Mulligan was writing symphonic works, jamming with modernists, and even embracing electronics in his own weird, dignified way. He collaborated with everyone from Thelonious Monk to Astor Piazzolla. He was curious — perpetually, relentlessly curious.

You gotta love that. In a world that loves labels, Mulligan scribbled outside the margins. He wasn’t just a jazz musician. He was a sound tinkerer, a sonic mischief-maker, a one-man counterpoint machine in a trench coat. He brought the baritone saxophone out of the basement and into the clouds.

So here’s to Gerry Mulligan, the Baritone Buddha of Cool. May we all find a way to turn our clumsiest tools into vehicles of grace. May we all leave a little more space in our solos. And may we never be afraid to ditch the piano if it means making something strange and beautiful.

Turn up the Mulligan, pour yourself something smoky, and let the low notes carry you home.