Gerry Mulligan: The Marion Years

As one of the giants of jazz, Gerry Mulligan made his mark as a great player winning the DownBeat Readers’ Poll for baritone saxophone every year from 1953 to 1995.

A great musician, Mulligan made equally brilliant contributions as a composer, arranger, and bandleader. Mulligan collaborated with many jazz greats, including Count Basie, Miles Davis, and Billie Holiday.

"With Gerry Mulligan, you feel as if you're listening to the past, present, and future of jazz all at one time,” said Dave Brubeck. Mulligan and Brubeck had a musical partnership from 1968 to 1972.

Born in Queens Village, Long Island, in  New York on April 6, 1927, Gerry Mulligan was the youngest of four sons born to Louise and George Mulligan. Gerry was less than a year old when the Mulligans moved to Marion, Ohio.

Gerry and his mother, Louise, on the porch of the family’s Marion home. (Photo courtesy of the Gerry and Franca Mulligan Foundation)

“One to Ten in Ohio” "My father took a job as a vice-president . . . at Marion Steam Shovel. I guess they called it Marion Power Shovel Company by that time. And so my first memories are of Marion. That was all the town that I knew.” (from Jeru: In the Words of Gerry Mulligan)

A young Gerry Mulligan at Christmas (seated on the floor) with his older brothers Phil, Don, and George. (Photo courtesy of the Gerry and Franca Mulligan Foundation)

Memories of Marion  When Gerry Mulligan talked about Marion in his oral autobiography, Jeru, nearly 60 years had passed since he last set foot in the city. Yet events from his youthful days in Marion remained fixed in his memory. He remembers Marion as a vibrant city, both economically and culturally: 

"It was a city of about 30,000, but it was a very successful city industrially because it had a big power shovel plant and . . . publishing and all sorts of things went on there. . . . It had a big luxury hotel . . . and a big theater done in the kind of Moorish style they were doing the grand palaces in the twenties. . . . [My] earliest recollection of going to the big Palace Theater was the band in the pit, and that was where they had all the best movies." (from Jeru: In The Words of Gerry Mulligan)

 Gerry Mulligan lived in Marion for 10 years, from the age of 1 to 10. It was in Marion he studied his first lessons in music, heard his first jazz, and saw traveling jazz and blues musicians.

When the Mulligans moved to Marion, they took up residence at 326 East Church Street. Later on, this stately redbrick Victorian structure served as the office of Marion County Coroner Robert Gray and after that as the offices of the Howard Swink advertising agency.  More recently, this was the home of Diversified Insurance Services. (Photo by Nathan Photos)

Lillie Rowan  With four children and a big house to take care of, Louise Mulligan hired Lillie Rowan to help. Lillie's main task was taking care of Gerry. "She literally adopted me", Gerry said.

In Jeru, Gerry talks fondly about his nanny, Lillie. He spent a great deal of time at the North Greenwood Street home of Lillie and Paul Rowan. (Paul was the head waiter at the Harding Hotel). Mulligan recalls that 

"often there would be musicians staying at Lillie’s house. She’d let them use a couple of her bedrooms while they were there, and this is how the black bands traveled around. They would go into a town and the community kind of absorbed them.” (from Jeru: In The Words of Gerry Mulligan)

The Rowans’ player piano held a special fascination for Gerry: "I used to love that. She used to have all kinds of things, like Fats Waller rolls, so I used to lean against the piano bench with my nose at keyboard height pumping away, playing the stuff.” (from Jeru: In The Words of Gerry Mulligan)

Many years after he'd left Marion, Mulligan still had a ukulele Lillie had given him. He didn't keep the instrument for its sound but because it was from Lillie. On its body were carved the initials of Jazz musicians.

School Days  The Mulligan brothers attended St Mary School at 274 North Prospect Street in Marion. All were good students. Honor rolls published in The Marion Star showed that Gerry made the list in both first and second grades. 

Where Gerry fell short, surprisingly, was in music. Sister Vincent, the music teacher and choir director at St Mary School gave piano lessons to Gerry, his first lessons in music. They were short-lived, however. 

Gerry recalls that Sister Vincent stopped the lessons because he wouldn't take the trouble to learn scales. He recalls that Sister Vincent told his mother, "Just save your money. He will never play these things the way they were written." 

Gerry's three brothers were not musicians. Like their father, they were engineers. Gerry was the only one who, despite his father's wishes, did not follow in his father's footsteps.

Article in the Marion Star, July 23, 1927

On the Move  George Mulligan's job as an engineer meant the family was always on the move. During his first years in Marion, George is identified as vice president-treasurer of the Marion Steam Shovel Company.

Later, George became an executive with the Hercules Co. and the Power Mfg. Co., located on Cheney Avenue in Marion. 

George Mulligan's work meant the family moved often. When the family left Marion, he took a position with a Chicago engineering firm, working from their home office and, for one winter, in Puerto Rico. Other stops during Gerry's childhood included New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Most were durations of a year or so. None lasted more than 3 years, except for the 10-year stay in Marion.

Starting in Music  Gerry learned the basics of his first instrument, the clarinet, in 7th grade while attending school at Kalamazoo in southwest Michigan. "Fascinated by chromatic progression", Gerry worked out his first arrangement, which he called “Lover". Of course, Gerry's work never had a chance. The nun took one look at the title and said, “We can't play that."

What prompted Gerry to write an arrangement in the first place?

"I don't know the answer. I just wanted to do it. I figured I could do it. . . . There are things that you know how to do and don't know how you know. I knew the basics of orchestration without having to be told.” (from Jeru: In The Words of Gerry Mulligan)

Professional Career Begins  Johnny Warrington led a 30-piece orchestra that played on the Philadelphia radio station WCAU in the 1940s. Gerry Mulligan, 16 at the time, told Warrington, "I'd like to write for your band". Warrington assigned a tune for Mulligan to arrange. The band leader liked Mulligan's work, bought one arrangement, then another. Soon, Warrington was spreading the word that "the young guy's got talent".  

Musical Memories of Marion  On the album "The Age of Steam", recorded in 1971-72, there's a Mulligan composition called "One to Ten in Ohio,” which is a reference to his ages when he lived in Marion. 

In the album's liner notes, Michael Cuscuna writes that: "Although Gerry's childhood memories and the sounds of the old Midwest territory bands played a major role in the writing and playing of this new music, you will find no meaningless journeys into nostalgia. . . .”

'K-4 Pacific' was inspired by and named after a Pennsylvania R.R. locomotive that used to run by Gerry's house in Ohio. "I was fascinated by trains as a kid. The sound of that locomotive made a large impression on me. So I wrote this jazz chart with that sound and feeling in mind."

The Rowans Gerry Mulligan’s nanny, Lillie, must have been a fine vocalist herself. She was the featured vocalist at a May 5, 1932, Marion event in which Jefferson Coage, the U.S. recorder of deeds, was the speaker.

The event was promoted by the Council of Seven to start a campaign to improve opportunity and living conditions for African Americans of Marion and the surrounding area. Paul Rowan was a member of the Council of Seven. Also speaking at the event were the minister of the Washington, D.C., African Methodist Episcopal Church, Marion's mayor, William C. Phillians, and Dr. Carl Sawyer. 

About a year after the Mulligans moved away, Lillie Rowan passed away from complications following surgery. A notice in an April 1946 issue of The Marion Star reads:

Mrs. Lillie B. Rowan passed away eight years ago today, April 9, 1938. And while she lies in peaceful sleep, Her memory we shall always keep.

Paul Rowan passed away in 1955. Both Lillie and Paul are buried in Marion Cemetery.

Acknowledgments

I wish to express my deepest appreciation to Mrs. Franca R. Mulligan and the Gerry and Franca Mulligan Foundation for their permission to use excerpts from Gerry Mulligan’s 1995 oral autobiography with Ken Poston—Jeru: In the Words of Gerry Mulligan—as well as photographs from the Foundation’s image collection.