Gil Mellé
John Gilbert " Gil " Mellé ( born December 31, 1931 in New York City; † 28 October 2004 in Malibu, California ) was a visual artist, jazz musician (baritone saxophone, tenor saxophone and keyboards) and film composer. He also created the cover art for early albums by Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins.
Life and work
Mellé collected as a teenager plates of Duke Ellington, before he turned to the music of Thelonious Monk. In addition he painted. After his military service he worked as a visual artist. In the 1950s, Melles paintings and sculptures were exhibited in New York galleries. In addition, he played in the jazz clubs. Between 1952 and 1957 he took under his own name on a number of albums, first for Blue Note Records (he was the first white jazz musician who was under contract with them ). At Blue Note, he was one of the three designers who designed album covers for the label. He also presented the contact of the label with the outstanding sound engineer Rudy Van Gelder ago. After four EPs he joined Prestige Records, for which he recorded albums such as Modern Primitive, Quadrama and Gil's Guests. He has performed with his own band at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, where his band was identified as the most promising of the year. In addition to his own groups, which often belonged to Eddie Bert, he played with George Wallington, Max Roach, Tal Farlow, Oscar Pettiford, Ed Thigpen, Kenny Dorham and Zoot Sims.
In his Third Stream experiments Mellé integrated elements of European classical modernism of Edgar Varèse and Bela Bartok with the Modern Jazz by Herbie Nichols to create " something more than hard bop " by the advanced parameters of the standard jazz form. His playing on the baritone saxophone reminiscent of Lars Gullin.
In the 1960s he moved to Los Angeles. As a composer for film and television Mellé was one of the first electronic instruments used, which he constructed himself. He composed the first one exclusively electronically generated cover story for a television series (Rod Serling's Night Gallery ). At the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1967, he joined with the first exclusively electronic jazz group, The Electronauts to publish first all - electronic jazz album, Tome VI by Verve Records the following year. In all, he created the music for 125 movies, so for My Sweet Charlie, Andromeda - Deadly dust from space ( nominated for a Golden Globe Award / Best Film Score ), The Judge and Jake Wyler, various consequences of the TV series Columbo, Frankenstein: The True Story and The Six Million dollar Man.
Auswahldiskographie
- The Complete Blue Note Fifties Sessions ( Blue Note, 1952-56 )
- Patterns In Jazz ( Blue Note, 1956) with Eddie Bert, Joe Cinderella, Oscar Pettiford, Ed Thigpen
- Primitive Modern / Quadrama ( Prestige / OJC, 1956) with Joe Cinderella, Bill Phillips, Ed Thigpen, Shadow Wilson
- Gil's Guests ( Prestige / OJC, 1956) with Art Farmer, Kenny Dorham, Hal McKusick, Julius Watkins, Don Butterfield, Joe Cinderella, Vinnie Burke