Electroterica Dept. -Thoroughly Modern Mellé

Pushing your buttons, yesterday

Standing [screeds Sitarswami - Ed.] waist deep in my Blue Note obsession, I browsed idly through the “Just In” used bin at Swingville Records. Keeping a sharp eye out for my prey I flipped disconsolately through the Sauter-Finnegans, Chuck Mangiones and Ahmad Jamals. Shaking my head at finding yet another Don Sebesky box [tsk - Ed.], I sensed the approach of the store’s resident guru and salesclerk. By way of greeting, he slipped a worn cassette tape into my hand. “You’ll like this,” he whispered knowingly, “it’s Gil Mellé.” Later, listening with ears wide open, little did I realize the cool jazz captured on tape was an early manifestation of the man behind two long-treasured teenage memories. Sounds I’d first heard on television fifteen years before and only once or twice since. At that point, I had no idea they were all connected. All I knew was my future happiness depended on owning that record.

Gil Mellé, a self-described jazz chemist, whose primitive/modern writing and arranging sounded, as one critic noted, like Birth of the Cool played backwards. Mellé (pronounced mell-AY) [like Kreemé - Ed.] was born in, or near, New York City on new year’s eve 1931. Abandoned as a two-year-old and raised by a family friend, Gil showed youthful promise as a painter winning several national competitions for preteens. In school he picked up the saxophone switching from alto to tenor to baritone. By age sixteen, he was playing in Greenwich Village jazz clubs, and at nineteen signed with Blue Note records becoming their first white artist. A classmate (and soon-to-be manager) arranged for Gil to record his first date on March 2, 1952. The studio was run by a 27-year-old optometrist moonlighting as an engineer and was built in his parents’ living room. Mellé often retold the story about speaking to Blue Note founder Alfred Lion about the session. Gil had been impressed by a new recording process called magnetic tape. Alfred, with his thick German accent, reportedly asked "Vas ist tape?" After hearing the tape Lion decided to hire the engineer, one Rudy Van Gelder, and another important piece of the Blue Note sound snapped into place.

Not only did Gil record one 12-inch and four 10-inch albums for Blue Note, but he also designed several of the label’s 10” record jackets – two of his own titles as well as those by Kenny Dorham, Wynton Kelly, Clifford Brown, and a few others. In 1956, Mellé left for Prestige records. He recorded three albums and designed covers for Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, and famously, one for Thelonious Monk [left - Ed.]. Concurrent with his jazz career, Mellé’s paintings and sculptures were displayed in New York galleries. Unlike most of his contemporaries who led sessions for Blue Note and Prestige, Gil never appeared as a sideman on other artists’ dates.

Gil’s interest in electronic music began in 1959. He dropped off the NY jazz scene and resurfaced in Los Angeles. He now played soprano sax fitted with a gadget of his own design, the Transistorized Oscillator/Modulator/Envelope [left - Ed.]. The resulting album, Tome IV (on Verve), is acknowledged as one of the earliest electronic jazz records. The impetus for Gil’s westward migration was to write for film & television. For Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, he composed the first synthesizer-based television theme, followed by the first all-electronic movie soundtrack, The Andromeda Strain. Mellé continued to focus on film & television scoring over 125 shows. The list includes several episodes of Columbo, The Six Million Dollar Man, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Organization, and The Sentinel. He released just two more albums, Waterbirds (1970, on Nocturne, a tiny west coast label which also issued Arthur Lee Harper’s Love is the Revolution) and 1988’s Mindscape (Blue Note).

Today’s menu features a three-course special:

Gil’s 1956 Blue Note 12-inch, Patterns in Jazz, is one of my two favorites on the label (the other being John Patton’s That Certain Feeling) and was the cassette I acquired earlier. It’s an unusual quintet comprised of baritone sax, trombone, bass, drums, and the guitar of Joe Cinderella. Cinderella also figures prominently on Mellé’s Prestige releases. Throughout the 1950’s, excepting the 3/2/52 session, Gil preferred to use guitar in place of piano. In fact, Tal Farlow’s first recordings were accompanying Mellé. Leading into the album proper are selected cuts from Gil’s 10-inch sessions. Duke Ellington was an early inspiration and several of Mellé’s Blue Note and Prestige tunes are reminiscent of Duke and 1950’s Chicago-era Sun Ra, another artist indebted to Ellington at the time.

For 1971’s “The Andromeda Strain,” [right - Ed. Just kidding! Left, really] director Robert Wise -- who knew the importance of a soundtrack (Bernard Hermann’s score for “The Day the Earth Stood Still” featured a theremin to great effect, “Odds Against Tomorrow” was scored by the MJQ’s John Lewis, and “West Side Story” and “The Sound of Music,” for better or worse, speak for themselves) -- hired Mellé with the understanding that he did not want a traditional score for his film. Wise asked Gil to write music that had no themes, no chords, no harmonic structure, and with totally new sonorities. Wise remembered getting Mellé to change parts of the score by telling him, “That little passage in there sounds almost like music.” Using Bebe and Louis Barron’s non-acoustic, electronic film score for “Forbidden Planet” as a signpost Mellé designed and built the electronic instruments (including the percussive synthesizer known as the Percussotron III) used to create the alien tones. For his musique concrète catalog he transformed acoustic instrumental sounds into electronic forms and captured dozens of organic sounds such as the wind, bowling alleys, chain saws, railways and an array of noises emanating from NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory. The album’s original packaging was as unusual as the music. Made of silver foil (see also the Monkees’ Head), the album jacket had a foldout camera-lens front which contained the hexagonal-shaped vinyl. The playing time was limited to eight pieces (26 minutes) due its physical shape. The album’s inner sleeve warned the turntable operator to use manual controls to avoid damage. This post includes an additional 14 minutes (nine pieces) of the score found on a rare bootleg cd issued a few years ago. The soundtrack is bookended by Gil’s two unnerving “Night Gallery” intro themes. The OST & NG theme(s) were my proper introductions to Mellé’s music.

Lastly, highlights from Mellé’s Prestige albums (Primitive Modern, Gil’s Guests, Quadrama), Tome IV, Waterbirds, and a sampling of his film/tv work. 

The Blue Note and Prestige recordings have been readily available, in one form or another, for the past twenty years. Both the eight-track version of The Andromeda Strain and The Sentinel can be found on popular streaming services. Tome IV, Waterbirds and The Organization and Starship Invasions ost’s require a bit more effort to locate.

Farq adds: In addition to screedage above and beyond the call of duty, Sitarswami includes a wealth of pitchers in the loaddown to make the whole deal a multimedia event. Youse bums ain't worthy.