Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com
Von "Bob" Whitlock, a West Coast jazz bassist and the last surviving original member of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet who joined the influential piano-less group in the summer of 1952, died on June 29 in Long Beach, Calif., of a stroke. He was 84. [Bob Whitlock picture above, bottom center, on cover of album rotated on its side]
Without a piano in the Mulligan quartet, Bob had to work doubly hard to create not only the metronome-like time-keeping tempo but also play piano-like treble runs when gaps in the music needed fills. In fact, Bob was not only responsible for introducing Chet Baker to Mulligan but also wooing him back to the quartet after Mulligan blasted Baker for his loud warm-up exercises and Baker walked out. [Pictured above, Bob Whitlock in Paris in the early 1960s as a Fulbright Scholar]
In 2012, thanks to numerous coaxing efforts by Bob's friend and writer Leslie Westbrook (above), who provided ideal times to call Bob, I was able to interview him at length by phone. At first, Bob struck me as withdrawn (an American Wikipedia page still does not exist for him), but once we began talking, he had plenty to say and didn't hold back on answers.
Here is my combined four-part interview with Bob originally posted in August 2012...
[Pictured above, clockwise from the top: Chet Baker, Bob Whitlock, Gerry Mulligan and Chico Hamilton in 1953; cover photo by Dave Pell]
JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
Bob Whitlock: I was born in Roosevelt, Utah, on January 21, 1931.
JW: Did you have a good time as a kid?
BW: Yeah, I guess so. I was an only child and felt like the Lone Ranger. I had a bunch of relatives but they were a bit clannish.
JW: What do you mean?
BW: If you weren’t immediate family—brothers—you didn’t rate. Cousins were too distant. It was kind of lonely and weird up in Utah. When I was 12 years old, we moved to Long Beach, Calif., just after Pearl Harbor. My grandmother on my mother’s side had died and left my granddad in a twist. My mother had just gotten her second divorce, so she felt like she was in prison in Utah.
JW: So your grandfather lived in Long Beach?
BW: Yes. When we moved down there, I didn’t like it at first. I wasn’t comfortable with the strangeness of it compared to the jerkwater town we had left. But we were near the beach, and I liked that. The sunsets were great. When we had lived in Roosevelt, Utah, the whole town was 1,400 people, including the surrounding farms. Roosevelt was in the middle of an Indian reservation.
JW: But you wanted to move, yes?
BW: I did. I had always had these wild dreams about what it would be like to live in a city. Salt Lake was about as big as it got out there. The dreams I had was that the city was a highly sexed place and that teens would bond and do all the things teens did. But when we moved to Long Beach, the kids weren’t like that at all. It wasn’t that different from Utah, just a lot more people.
JW: How were you first exposed to music?
BW: One of my older cousins was a very versatile guy. He played tenor sax, the baritone and the bass. He had had this little band back in Utah. My mother had played alto sax in the band, and played well for a gal in a hick town. Guy Lombardo was her favorite.
JW: Your cousin’s favorite, too?
BW: [Laughs] No. I remember getting into heated arguments with him. He had records by Basie and Ellington, but I wasn’t listening carefully yet and simply defended my mother’s taste. I had been playing the piano at this point. By the time we moved to California, I had gotten pretty fair on the keyboard. I was playing the organ in church.
JW: Did you continue on the keyboard in California?
BW: No. There was nothing to play. In Long Beach, I began a love affair with the trumpet. I idolized Harry James, Ziggy Elman and the other horn stars. Then I discovered Roy Eldridge. He was brilliant. He could play from the bottom of the horn clear up to the top.
JW: Did you imagine yourself a trumpet player?
BW: Oh yes. I kept hounding my mother to buy me one. But I hadn’t even played a trumpet yet, and times were tough then. My mother was a single parent. She worked at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach as a secretary. She was earning 60 cents an hour.
JW: Ever get that horn?
BW: I did. My mother was a wonderful gal and she bought me a cornet. I was into it and got into the orchestra at school. But I had no idea what I was doing. I’d just mash the mouthpiece into my upper lip until it was numb. By the time I got some useful help with a couple of teachers—one taught me a non-pressure method—I couldn’t do anything with the trumpet. I had blown out my lip.
Bob Whitlock: I was born in Roosevelt, Utah, on January 21, 1931.
JW: Did you have a good time as a kid?
BW: Yeah, I guess so. I was an only child and felt like the Lone Ranger. I had a bunch of relatives but they were a bit clannish.
JW: What do you mean?
BW: If you weren’t immediate family—brothers—you didn’t rate. Cousins were too distant. It was kind of lonely and weird up in Utah. When I was 12 years old, we moved to Long Beach, Calif., just after Pearl Harbor. My grandmother on my mother’s side had died and left my granddad in a twist. My mother had just gotten her second divorce, so she felt like she was in prison in Utah.
JW: So your grandfather lived in Long Beach?
BW: Yes. When we moved down there, I didn’t like it at first. I wasn’t comfortable with the strangeness of it compared to the jerkwater town we had left. But we were near the beach, and I liked that. The sunsets were great. When we had lived in Roosevelt, Utah, the whole town was 1,400 people, including the surrounding farms. Roosevelt was in the middle of an Indian reservation.
JW: But you wanted to move, yes?
BW: I did. I had always had these wild dreams about what it would be like to live in a city. Salt Lake was about as big as it got out there. The dreams I had was that the city was a highly sexed place and that teens would bond and do all the things teens did. But when we moved to Long Beach, the kids weren’t like that at all. It wasn’t that different from Utah, just a lot more people.
JW: How were you first exposed to music?
BW: One of my older cousins was a very versatile guy. He played tenor sax, the baritone and the bass. He had had this little band back in Utah. My mother had played alto sax in the band, and played well for a gal in a hick town. Guy Lombardo was her favorite.
JW: Your cousin’s favorite, too?
BW: [Laughs] No. I remember getting into heated arguments with him. He had records by Basie and Ellington, but I wasn’t listening carefully yet and simply defended my mother’s taste. I had been playing the piano at this point. By the time we moved to California, I had gotten pretty fair on the keyboard. I was playing the organ in church.
JW: Did you continue on the keyboard in California?
BW: No. There was nothing to play. In Long Beach, I began a love affair with the trumpet. I idolized Harry James, Ziggy Elman and the other horn stars. Then I discovered Roy Eldridge. He was brilliant. He could play from the bottom of the horn clear up to the top.
JW: Did you imagine yourself a trumpet player?
BW: Oh yes. I kept hounding my mother to buy me one. But I hadn’t even played a trumpet yet, and times were tough then. My mother was a single parent. She worked at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach as a secretary. She was earning 60 cents an hour.
JW: Ever get that horn?
BW: I did. My mother was a wonderful gal and she bought me a cornet. I was into it and got into the orchestra at school. But I had no idea what I was doing. I’d just mash the mouthpiece into my upper lip until it was numb. By the time I got some useful help with a couple of teachers—one taught me a non-pressure method—I couldn’t do anything with the trumpet. I had blown out my lip.
read complete interview on: http://www.jazzwax.com/2015/07/bob-whitlock-1931-2015.html
Used with permission by Marc Myers
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