Gil Mellé: Blue Note Years

Gil Mellé was a fascinating saxophonist and composer. Not widely known today, Mellé [pronounced MELL-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, and he worked hard to develop a sound—not an overarching one that identified him but a sound that suited his compositions.

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 live performance by a Mellé-led quartet at the 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 his Mellé's music, you realize instantly that he was ahead of his time. His music wasn't bop, cool or hard bop but a measured, debonair style and his 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, was Blue Note's first 10-inch album. And he's the one who introduced Blue Note producer Alfred Lion to engineer Rudy Van Gelder.

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 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 have 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 drum and Monica Dell on a psycho-abstract vocal.

Mellé's originals 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 Bert, Mellé on tenor, Tal Farlow on guitar, Clyde Lombardi on bass and Joe Morello on drums. Think about that group. How impossibly smart to bring these guys together. Mellé's tenor had traces of Lester Young while his baritone had flecks of Gerry Mulligan. But overall, both horns had a different cosmopolitan sound that moved through solos seamlessly and precisely, like a dancer. 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' juice. 

He used musicians like tubes of paint. Mellé's felt that his original color suite—Spectrum Violet, Sea Green, Royal Blue, Ebony and Specturm Red—needed a bigger bottom sound, so he added Don Butterfield to a quartet.

What's most interesting about these groups is how engaging Eddie Bert was with Mellé and the dominance of the bass. The instrument that was missing from most of Mellé's recording was the piano. Like Mulligan, Mellé came to the conclusion that it just got in the way. I love these Mellé recordings. They are daring and a deight.

Gil Mellé died in 2004.

JazzWax clips: Here's Gingersnap in 1953...



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...