Gil Mellé: Blue Note Years

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 th…