Search - Stan Getz :: Stan Getz Finest Hour

Gems taken from gems

rash67 | USA | 07/07/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

""The Sound", or "Stanley the Steamer" as Stan Getz was known, had a pleasing technique and perfect control of his sax. He was much more popular, that is, sold much more albums than his contemporaries with the possible exception of Miles Davis. He was so popular that many critics of the time, and jealous musicians, dismissed his works as too pop. But behind that apparent ease of play and beautiful, buttered, golden tone is perhaps the greatest sax player of all time, who focused his attention not on innovation or writing but expressive playing. John Coltrane once said, "We'd all play like Getz.. if we could". Beauty, sweetness, tinged with melancholy and sadness, perhaps looking back to better times.



Getz played like he was not playing an instrument but rather as if the sax was an direct extention of his soul. After the drugs, which dogged him much of his life, in his later years he would consciously relax every muscle in his body for a half hour or so and enter a super relaxed yet intensly focused meditative state before he played. So the music would come out smooth and sweet. Infinite control so hard it sounds effortless. And it relaxes us just to listen.



This is a Verve best of taken from some twenty years of albums I love "Early Autumn" a re-do of the song that catapulted a younger Getz to public attention age 20 with Woody Herman's Second Herd. "Symptomes" is the mysterious ballad cut of a otherwise spikey experimental big band album. "Desafinado" and "The Girl form Ipanema" are crossover hits that ignited the Bossa Nova period.



While this is a good introduction to Stan, a survey for the Jazz novice, they are bleeding chunks ripped from other albums, like all best ofs. I can only hope that the listener who hears this marvellous music for the first time will seek out the original albums and hear these pieces where they belong. Most everything by Miles Davis is in print, but everyday more and more spectacular Getz original albums disappear from the market as we descend further into the Musical Dark Ages.



Hear this and if you like it, buy the originals while you still can!



I give this only four stars because many of the original albums these are taken from are better!



"

This is definitely the "One" if you want to hear Getz at his

Samuel Chell | Kenosha,, WI United States | 04/13/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Inexplicably, this single-disc Getz collection is currently trailing in sales another one, entitled "The Essential Stan Getz: The Getz Songbook." If you're looking for a disc that comes reasonably close to representing Getz the complete saxophone player, a musician nearly as dominant during his era as Coltrane was, this is the one. The other anthologies tend to dwell excessively on commercially successful tracks from Getz' "cool" period and "bossa nova" successes; this one demonstrates the man's mastery of the horn--not just his Prez-derived yet unique "sound," but his pyrotechnical command of melody, rhythm and articulation. After rediscovering Getz' incredible ten-chorus solo on "Shine" (from "West Coast Jazz"), that's become the first track I go to when demonstrating Getz' incredibly fertile imagination and equally dazzling technique. He employs numerous rhythmic patterns, an inexhaustible arsenal of articulations (from flutter tonguing to double and triple tonguing), all the while sounding utterly relaxed while constructing an ever-building solo at breakneck speed (somehow maintaining throughout the illusion of an ascending, spiraling hummingbird). Conte Candoli bravely follows him, and just as the trumpeter seems to be failing, Getz comes back in, playing a variation on a motif from his own solo as a means of bringing Conte back to life for the end of the trumpet solo. It's a tour de force, perhaps ranking among the several best improvised saxophone solos ever recorded, and the listener should be prepared to listen to it repeatedly before moving on to the next track.



Getz is underrated, even by his fans, whose frequent praise of, and fixation on, his "pretty tone" unwittingly adds fuel to the fire of those who dismiss him as a one-trick pony. Far from it--he was a gallant and formidable stallion if not an entire cavalcade of them. This collection even has one of the songs from Getz' most complex album, "Focus" (arrangements by Eddie Sauter), a work that stands alongside impressionist art such as the music of Debussy, Ravel and Satie. If you want the Getz recordings that made the juke box circuit and produced affected fans wearing shades and berets, maybe one of the other collections is a better bet. Nonetheless, this one is currently the best."