Gil Mellé was a fascinating saxophonist and composer. Not widely known today, Mellé [pronounced MILL-ay] was a renaissance man. He played tenor and baritone saxophone, he was a painter, an inventor, he wrote film scores and he led groups. Jazz was a passion in the late 1940s and early '50s, and he worked hard to develop a sound—not an overarching one that identified him as a player but a sound that suited his compositions. [Photo above of Gil Mellé by Francis Wolff]
All of Mellé's Blue Note recordings are available on a fabulous two-CD set: Gil Mellé: The Blue Note Years, 1952 to 1956 (Fresh Sound). The set also includes a previously unreleased live performance by a Mellé-led quartet at New York's Cafe Bohemia in 1957 featuring Eddie Bert on trombone, Mellé on baritone saxophone, Tommy Potter on bass and Paul Motian on drums.
When you hear Mellé's early music, you realize instantly that he was ahead of his time. His music wasn't bop, cool or hard bop at a time when all three jazz styles were popular but a measured, debonair style. His taut, busy arrangements always made his small groups seem much larger. He also was on the cutting edge. Mellé's first release, New Faces—New Sounds, in 1952 was Blue Note's first 10-inch album. He was the one who introduced Blue Note producer Alfred Lion to engineer Rudy Van Gelder. At the time, Blue Note was in the 78rpm business.
As Gil's wife, Denny, told me back in 2010:
Gil often liked to tell a story about Blue Note's Alfred Lion and Gil's early association with engineer Rudy Van Gelder at the start of the 1950s. Gil said that when he first told Alfred about Rudy and how blown away he was by the new form of recording Rudy was using called 'tape,' he wanted Alfred to come over right away to Rudy's studio [at his parents' house in Hackensack, N.J.] to take a listen. Alfred, with that thick German accent of his, said, 'Vas ist tape?' Of course, the rest is history.
Mellé's Blue Note studio recordings ran five years. They are West Coast jazz-y in their contrapuntal feel and cool in their dryness. But they also had a New York irony baked in. Mellé always had great taste in sidemen. On his earliest recording for the label, Mellé was on tenor saxophone along with Eddie Bert on trombone, Joe Manning on vibes, George Wallington on piano, Red Mitchell on bass, Max Roach on drums and Monica Dell on a psycho-abstract vocal.
Mellé's originals for Blue Note are uniformly pretty and eager. His ballads have a somnambulist, film-noir feel while his upbeat numbers are highly melodic, peppy and well assembled, with a futurist, cinematic flavor. Cyclotron features Mellé on tenor, Eddie Bert on trombone, Tal Farlow on guitar, Clyde Lombardi on bass and Joe Morello on drums. Think about that group for a second. How impossibly smart to bring those guys together. Mellé's tenor had traces of Lester Young while his baritone had flecks of Gerry Mulligan. But overall, both of Mellé's horns had a different cosmopolitan sound that moved through solos seamlessly and precisely, like a dancer. Stan Getz and Jimmy Giuffre, who played dry in the upper register of the tenor saxophone, would be the closest examples. Mellé was always interesting and polished.
Gingersnap is another swinging beauty. It features Mellé on tenor, Urbie Green on trombone, Farlow on guitar, Lombardi on bass and Morello on drums. Even standards such as Lullaby of Birdland and Moonlight in Vermont get the Mellé treatment, turning the songs on their side without losing the original compositions' mood or juice.
For Mellé, records were a canvas and musicians were tubes of paint. In 1956 he wanted his original color suite—Spectrum Violet, Sea Green, Royal Blue, Ebony and Specturm Red—to have a bigger bottom sound. He added Don Butterfield on tuba to his quartet.
What's most interesting about these Blue Note groups is how perfectly matched and engaging Eddie Bert was with Mellé and the joyful dominance of his bass players. The instrument that was missing from most of Mellé's early recordings was the piano. Like Mulligan, Mellé came to the conclusion that the keyboard was too busy and just got in the way. I love these Mellé recordings. They are daring and a delight. [Photo of Gil Mellé above]
Gil Mellé died in 2004.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Gil Mellé: The Blue Note Years, 1952 to 1956 (Fresh Sound) here. The set features six Blue Note albums on two CDs.
You'll also find the album at Spotify.
JazzWax clips: Here's Gingersnap in 1953, with trombonist Urbie Green and guitarist Tal Farlow, bassist Clyde Lombardi and drummer Joe Morello. A dry leverage of Give Me the Simple Life. Dig the prominence of Lombardi's bass, a conscious decision by Mellé and Rudy's engineering mastery...
Here's Cyclotron in 1953...
And here's Long Ago and Far Away in 1956, with Mellé on baritone, Oscar Pettiford on bass, Eddie Bert on trombone, Joe Cinderella on guitar and Ed Thigpen on drums...
Bonus: By the late 1960s, Mellé was writing for the movies. He composed over 100 TV and feature films, including music for The Andromeda Strain and The Organization. Here's a promo clip for a pre-synth percussion instrument Mellé invented...
