"One Of The Great Livers of Our Time" - Two of a Mind by Paul Desmond & Gerry Mulligan

“Pristine, perfect. One of the great livers of our time. Awash in Dewar’s and full of health.” -Paul Desmond

Two of a Mind - Paul Desmond & Gerry Mulligan

The 1989 LP reprint cover, complete with incorrect hand location on the saxophones

Sometimes, we all just need to relax.

It’s hard to do for most people, and I've got an anxiety disorder so I find it nearly impossible in the best of times.

Add the holiday season, travel, hosting, buying, the politics of everything, the rush to the end of the work year, meeting targets, racing against the clock and vacation schedules, and a WASP-y guilt complex...who has time to relax?

In retrospect, I think grandpa had the same problem. He would randomly drift off in thought or suddenly change direction in a conversation. Nervous toe and finger tapping, a constant whistle accentuated by a slight tremor. He could find relief through music, though.

He gifted me this album when I was in high school and teaching myself saxophone as a second instrument. My peers were all ska and swing revival: brassy, honking, and loud. I wanted to stand out somehow; grandpa suggested to try to be soft and thoughtful instead. So I adjourned to his basement to learn about Paul Desmond and Stan Getz. I tried to emulate their sound, a light and airy timbre heavy on throaty vibrato.

I was bursting with pride when my band director asked me if I was trying to sound like Paul Desmond or Stan Getz in my first audition. Right up until the point where he said "Maybe you should stop." 

It brought me back to reality on my own abilities but my love of the music was solidified, and this is the album that I can always count on to clear my mind and focus my energies nearly 30 years later.

Paul Desmond: "The Sound of a Dry Martini"

In 1962 alto saxophonist Paul Desmond teamed up with baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan for the third time. They were both regarded among the best on their instruments and pioneers in their own way. Today, Mulligan is better known and there will be time to write about him later. Today belongs to Paul Desmond.

Born Paul Emil Breitenfeld in 1924 in San Francisco, he was 4 years older than my grandpa. Stories vary about why he changed his last name; in one account he said Desmond was “…so smooth and yet it’s uncommon…”, which also applies to his playing style. In the 1940s and 1950s as bebop was ascendant, Desmond charted his own course and focused on complex but melodic styles, heavily influenced by his time with pianist Dave Brubeck.

He had met pianist Dave Brubeck in 1944 while in the Army. Brubeck’s creative harmonization was an inspiration, and they joined together to form The Dave Brubeck Quartet which lasted from 1951 to 1967. They were prolific performers and recording artists, producing a steady stream of live and studio albums through the 1950s including 1959’s Time Out, which remains one of the best known jazz albums.

Despite their button down, bespectacled appearance, Desmond and Brubeck were very different and their relationship could be tense. Brubeck was a fastidious, disciplined family man while Desmond was a heavy drinking bachelor who struggled to form steady relationships. He dabbled in LSD and amphetamines but his greatest loves were Dewar’s scotch and Pall Mall cigarettes, leading to early death at age 53 due to lung cancer.

The Album

The album is purely a vehicle for Desmond and Mulligan; the rhythm section is limited to understated bass and drums. It begins with a piece from a mostly forgotten musical called “All the Things You Are”. Desmond and Mulligan trade descending bell tones to establish the piece and then trade extended solos for approximately 5 minutes. In a pattern repeated through the album, Desmond’s solos are sometimes backed by Mulligan’s undertones, whereas Mulligan receives his own. The piece ends abruptly, on a unison mid-octave note.

The highlight of the album is the second track, "Stardust". I get lost in this song; I can listen endlessly and never tire of it. There is always something new to be found and things to forget.

Written in 1927, “Stardust” is among the most recorded jazz standards and still finds its way into the popular lexicon. Artists as varied as Louis Armstrong, Pat Boone, Nat King Cole, Willie Nelson, Rod Stewart, and Bob Dylan have recorded notable versions. It features in Orson Welles’s 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast and the movies Goodfellas, Casino, Sleepless in Seattle, The Aviator, and A Star Is Born.

As someone who improvised mostly by ear rather than reading chords, grandpa’s advice to me was that you always need to learn the lyrics of a song. They inform your phrasing and if you ever get lost, you find the melody again. This is common advice which has served many musicians well, and it is particularly evident in this recording. You don’t have to know the lyrics to recognize that Desmond and Mulligan rarely stray far from the melody without being bound by it. 

The opening chorus is taken by Desmond with a Mulligan hiding in the background. While the lyrics usually start with half or whole notes ascending in half-steps, Desmond descends instead before gradually climbing a half-step ladder of eighth notes. Despite meandering all over the scale and exploring the lesser-used portions of the chords, they adhere strictly to the 32 bar verse structure. Like the previous song, the recording ends abruptly, with a short 4 bar coda after 8 minutes of ephemeral improvisation around the main theme.

Desmond’s alto comes from the right speaker, Mulligan’s bari from the left such that it feels like you are in the room with them if you have good speakers. I have the album on LP (a 1989 repress) and a 1996 CD reissue and have found the fidelity on the LP to be superior, such that I can hear the pads of Mulligan’s bari sax unstick from the tone holes and inhales as he struggles to keep airflow through the instrument without overpowering the microphone, incredibly difficult with that instrument. 

Cover of the 1996 CD reissue

I find that when this recording ends and I open my eyes, my mind is clear and whatever I was thinking of or worried about before is gone. It's like a meditation; the extended verses contain just enough creation to engage the mind, but the strict rhythm resembles a mantra. It threatens to become a shuffle but never crosses the line, maintaining a relaxed tension that combines to bring quiet to the troubled mind.

“Two of a Mind”, the title track closes Side 1 of the LP edition. This is an original Desmond composition that lacks lyrics which is evident in the different phraseology followed by the players and greater freedom with which they approach the subject.

Interior photo of the artists from the CD reissue

“Blight of the Fumble Bee” opens Side 2 of the LP. An original Mulligan composition it opens with Mulligan playing at the top of the bari sax register. Mulligan moves into an extended solo that contains the only serious hints of bebop on the album. The tempo is sufficiently laid back to suggest the bee in question landed in Desmond’s glass of Dewar’s.

“The Way You Look Tonight” was originally recorded by Fred Astaire for the 1936 musical Swing Time. Another jazz standard, Desmond and Mulligan’s version features soft credenzas around the central melodic line and again one can infer the lyrics. Unlike most versions of the song which lay back in a 4/4 groove, they take it in cut time at a brisk 128 beats per minute, placing their own unique stamp on the standard. Paul Desmond appears twice in the final chorus through the then-new technology of multi-tracking. This adds a nice touch to the piece, increasing the urgency and intensity without increasing the volume or interfering

The album closes with a final standard, “Out of Nowhere”. In line with the theme of the title, the recording is wandering and evokes a second of hazy clouds in the dessert, in the style of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” complete with a minor that that resolved to major and returns to minor at the end. The piece closes the album as though the whole thing might have been a dream.

The 1962 recording seems to consciously emulate the original cover recorded by Johnny Green, with some supporting evidence from the CD reissue.

Two of a Mind was an apt title for the album. Desmond and Mulligan shared bizarre senses of humor, enjoyed pranks, and were influenced by counterculture and substance abuse. Yet in the album, none of this comes through; they manage to innovate while remaining restrained; they set parameters for the recording and stay within them but in doing so create a sort of liminal, dreamlike space that allows you to detach. A study in contrasts, a separation of the artist from the art.

We opened with a quote from Paul Desmond and will close with another, commenting on his style so in evidence here: “I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness.”

Where to Find It

As noted before, I have this album on a 1989 LP repress and a 1996 CD reissue. The fidelity and detail of the sound is superior on the LP, which can be found for $4-8 on Discogs; originals are not much more at $2-12 though a version with a misprinted cover fetches a hefty $34. The 1996 CD version maxes out at $3.

The album is also available in its entirety on Spotify and YouTube.

The Krueger Score

Grandpa had a system for scoring his records, recorded with ballpoint pen on the record sleaves. While there is some variation over the years, in general he assigned a check for strong performances and a star for something he particularly liked. In extraordinary circumstances he would add additional notes. The Krueger Score are his recorded comments on a particular album.

My assessment of the album turns out to be similar to grandpa's; only the title track failed to rank, and like me he found the first two songs the best.

“All the Things You Are” ✔★

“Stardust” ✔★

“Blight of the Fumble Bee” ✔

“The Way You Look Tonight” ✔

“Out of Nowhere” ✔