This Is This

Gerry Mulligan’s baritone sax sounds like nothing else in music. He has made it his own, like Larry Adler on harmonica, or Earl Scruggs on banjo, or Milt Jackson on vibraphone.

He always sounds like an old friend, which in ways this song is, since it always makes me smile. It’s his tune and a collaborative rendition with Johnny Hodges, but the way the baritone creeps in for the solo makes me smile in this song, which is about as cool as anything can sound.

It’s a corny kind of cool. It’s Eric Morecambe. It’s dark sunglasses. It’s half-time optimism. It’s long weekends in the summer whether nothing much happens but it could. It’s a sober silliness.

Listen: Bunny

—
Related pages
Weekend Song archive

Also on This Is This
I need a big slice of humble pie. With loads of ice cream. More ice cream than anyone else has on their pie. See how it much bigger than yours. Actually, it’s a tarte a humilite…
Read this post...

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 7:00 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.