Larry Lang:  

MONK, MULLIGAN AND MILES Certainly Thelonius Monk, Gerry Mulligan and Miles Davis are just three of many jazz musicians whose contributions to modern music have left a mark in history. To an adolescent picking up a horn for the first time it¿s a good thing to know that he¿s walking in plowed fields instead of leaving the communal campfire for the first time alone. This was how it was for me. I knew I would someday make music. After a short and terminal experience with the piano at the age of eight the music still ¿wanted out¿ but I had no clue about how the sound might occur, that is until I discovered that I could sustain a long and even tone pursing my lips and blowing through a vacuum cleaner attachment. I must have had some notion that blowing a bugle or other brass instrument was done in a similar, albeit more refined way. And so it began. At the age of thirteen I began to study the trumpet. Why I chose the trumpet is not so clear after all these years. Certainly there were plenty of great trumpet players out there in the early 1950¿s to listen to and copy their ¿licks¿. It could just as easily have been the fact that at thirteen I was not a large boy and the trumpet was the only brass instrument that was clearly smaller than a vacuum cleaner. I studied trumpet for three years under Charles Decker in Seattle. He was an accomplished teacher and player who could be seen as often playing with the Seattle Symphony as with the local dance bands of the time. I was so proud to have been his student when I pointed him out to friends as he played in a Summer concert Lincoln park. I wanted to stay and hear every note, but my friends had spotted some girls they wanted to get to know. It was about that time when I recognized that I was beginning to have ¿heroes¿. Before this time I would kid my friends about their baseball cards and the girls with their movie magazines. I saw little value in this form of worship. Even the trumpet players, like Louis Armstrong, Harry James and Ray Anthony received little of my adoration. Oh sure, they were great players and they¿d made scads of records. Still they weren¿t where I wanted to be. One of the great things about traveling to town on the bus and taking lessons in a large music store was the easy access to recorded music. 12 inch LP¿s or simply albums (we didn¿t call them vinyl in those days) were just becoming available. The store had several listening rooms and if they got to know you and trust you AND you bought one once in a while you could hear anything in the house. I actually considered moving my lesson to a later time so I would have more time to listen before my lesson. It was here that I first heard the music of Monk, Mulligan and Miles. Though Monk mentored Miles in the 1940¿s, Miles first recording success was as leader of a nine piece musical workshop group which recorded an album in 1950 ent...Expand for more