The baritone saxophone was once the furniture of the horn section, a heavy anchor in the back row. Gerry Mulligan gave it a light, airy voice and changed the trajectory of jazz. This episode follows him from a nomadic childhood as an engineer's son, through a nanny's house in Marion, Ohio filled with Fats Waller player-piano rolls, a confiscated arrangement of Lover at a Kalamazoo Catholic school, and dropping out of high school in Philadelphia to write charts for Tommy Tucker.

The conversation traces his move to New York in 1946, arranging for Gene Krupa and Claude Thornhill, living in Gil Evans' basement apartment on West 55th Street, and helping architect the Miles Davis nonet that became Birth of the Cool. It then moves to Los Angeles, Stan Kenton's band, and the tiny Hollywood club where a missing piano led to the pianoless quartet wit ...