Stan Getz
(1927 - 1991)
Stanley Gayetsky was born on February 2, 1927 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His music career began at the tender age of six, when he was drawn to musical instruments. By age twelve, he finally owned one, a harmonica. Soon after, his junior high school gym teacher (also the band director) chose him to play the bass in a band concert one day. After playing the bass for a while, he started to realize that he was much better at reading and remembering music than any of the other students were. He was also developing a keen sense of pitch and rhythm. When Getz was thirteen his father bought him an alto-saxophone, and Stan fell completely in love with music. He took lessons, tried out the different kinds of saxophones, and decided that his favorite was the tenor saxophone, because of its rich sound.
When he was sixteen (1943) the draft was taking away many of Jack Teagarden's band members, so Stan tried out for a job and was accepted. Stan never got any formal training from Big Tea, but he did receive a "PhD in improvised music" from him, and also Teagarden's "powerful lyricism" really affected Stan's playing. He joined Stan Kenton's big band in 1944; played with Jimmy Dorsey in 1945; and played with Benny Goodman in 1945 and 1946. He started becoming more popular when he was a part of Woody Herman's Second Herd from 1947 to 1949. He was one of the first members of "The Four Brothers" saxophone section, which included Zoot Simms, Serge Chaloff, and Herbie Steward. Getz's 1948 solo in a recording of "Early Autumn" with the Woody Herman Band earned him a lot of respect from prominent jazz solists of the time.
Both Getz's work with Herman and his early small group recordings on his own in the late 1940s made it clear that his style was deeply indebted to Lester "The Prez" Young, whose breathy tenor offered a subtle alternative to other tenor more aggressive style of play. Getz's tone was immediately identifiable -- yearning, delicate, vibratoless -- and his swing-to-bop momentum gave him broad appeal. Though possessed of a sophisticated, post-bop sense of harmony, Getz never let chord changes get in the way of a beautiful line, which distinguished him from the more slavishly harmonic hard boppers.
In the 1950s, Stan was associated with a kind of jazz known as "cool jazz", a style that also characterized Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan. "Cool jazz" is considered bebop, but played with much self control and subtlety. During the fifties, he was one of the most popular jazz musicians. During the decade he played with Mulligan, Jimmy Raney, Lionel Hampton, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Horace Silver, Jimmy Rowles, and Oscar Peterson.
Throughout the 1950's, Stan Gets fight with drug addiction affected much of his life. In 1954 he was incarcerated for using drugs, but he fighted the addiction for the next few years. Getz, though, needed an escape; he emmigrated from the United States and from 1958-'61 lived in semi-retirement in Denmark. Over the years, the saxophonist hired and recorded with a string of great young players who would later make their marks, including Chick Corea, Joanne Brackeen, Steve Swallow and Gary Burton.
Stan Getz returned to America in 1961. He soon recorded "Focus", an adventurous album (and his personal favorite) that matched his tenor with strings arranged by Eddie Sauter. Then, he got together with Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim and singers Joao and Astrud Gilberto. This is when he introduced "Desafinado" and helped make bossa nova, a mixture of jazz and samba, more popular. He recorded "The Girl from Ipanema" in 1963, which reached the top of the charts in 1964. His quartet played more straight ahead music beginning in 1964. Chic Corea joined the quartet in 1967. (That and the use of Gary Burton's vibes instead of a piano is why Getz can be seen as one of the Godfather's of Jazz). In 1969, after struggling with drugs and the law again, Stan left for Malaga, Spain and stopped performing for two years.
Returning to music in 1971, Stan played with an organ band in the seventies in Europe and then at the Rainbow Grill in the U.S. Getz first recorded for Concord Records in 1981, when he united with pianist Lou Levy, bassist Monty Budwig and drummer Victor Lewis for The Dolphin and Spring is Here. These albums found the tenor man in an entirely acoustic setting after a lot of electric experimentation in the 1970s. On Feb. 19, 1983, Stan Getz, his quartet (with pianist Jim McNeely, bassist George Mraz and drummer Victor Lewis) and Chet Baker collaborated for a performance in Baerum, Norway that was fortunately broadcast live by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and saved for posterity.
Getz recorded frequently in the 1980s, and he continued to record right up until three months before his death--when Verve recorded the sessions heard on People Time. Getz was 64 when he finally lost his battle with cancer on June 6, 1991.. He had made over 300 recordings. What had set him apart from other tenor saxophonists of his time was his rich, pure tone and smooth style of play. Stan Getz will forever be remembered as one of the greatest jazz saxophonists ever, and a great contributor to the development of jazz.
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