Stan Getz Music

Anyone who doesn't like Stan Getz obviously has yet to hear this album. To bring this group together and play these very challenging pieces and nail all of them is amazing. The way Chick Corea dances around the rhodes is unbelievable. Tony Williams drives every one of these tunes with his energy. Most other drummers would be accused of playing too busy, but Tony Williams only adds to the sound with his work. Stanley Clarke is a beast on the upright, playing it with more agility than most can handle on the electric. He carries the band along with his melodic bass lines and fast runs up and down the neck. Airto is always just there, not overpowering the drums but still clearly audible. And of course Stan Getz has the sound. Together they make an unbelievable album that everyone should hear several times. If you haven't heard this album yet take the time to find it and get it and listen to it.

This is a great CD. Don't miss it. Buy it now.

by Marshall Bowden
By the time Stan Getz recorded Captain Marvel with Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Tony Williams, and Airto Moreira, he had been in the music business for nearly thirty years, and was widely revered as world-class jazz musician with a unique tenor sax voice. Getz began his career during the big band era, and cut his teeth with bandleaders as diverse as Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, and Woody Herman. A leader of swinging small groups throughout the '50s, Getz spent some time in Europe following a career disruption caused by long-standing drug problems. He returned to the U.S. in time to help sustain the Brazilian jazz-bossa craze, recording a series of albums with Joao Gilberto and wife Astrud Gilberto that remain among the most popular jazz recordings of all time. Getz continued to work and record at home and abroad throughout the 1960s, but by the end of the decade and the start of the next, things were changing rapidly. Traditional post-bop jazz was on the ropes, and there were a lot of new sounds in the air, many of them thanks to Miles Davis and his amazingly talented coterie of young sidemen. Getz was interested in putting together a new book of tunes for his return to New York following a European stay.

Chick Corea, a young pianist who had cut his teeth with Miles Davis's first electric bands, recorded a couple of amazing trio dates under his own name, and then moved on to form the avant-garde improvisational group Circle, was in the process of writing for and forming a new band that would be known as Return to Forever. The group would expand on Davis's moves toward electric music and musical forms that communicated more directly with the listener than the abstract jazz of the late 1960s. Corea and Getz crossed paths, and the idea of forming a quintet with Getz took hold. Corea brought along percussionist Airto Moreira and 20 year-old bass phenom Stanley Clarke. Rehearsals began, but according to the original liner notes by Albert Goldman, the project wasn't quite jelling until Getz brought in drummer Tony Williams. Corea's reminiscences in the new liner notes suggest that he brought the entire group to Getz, which makes sense since Corea and Williams had known each other for some time, even before they played together with Miles. In any event, the band worked out the arrangements and opened at New York City's Rainbow Room to wild acclaim and lines of potential listeners outside. Following the engagement, that group went into the studio and recorded Captain Marvel, long acknowledged as one of the best jazz recordings of the '70s and a return to form for Getz. Sony Legacy has now reissued the album, remastered and with three additional tracks that only add to the album's legendary status.

Corea composed five of the six tracks on the original album, and that fact says much about both Corea as a composer and Getz as a mature artist who knew talent when he heard it. There are many other artists who would not have felt comfortable recording the compositions of another, younger musician and allowing their young band so much room on something of a "comeback" album, but Getz was never an artist subsumed by ego, preferring instead to do whatever was necessary to provide the best musical experience possible. It also didn't hurt that the pieces themselves had a heavy Latin flavor, which lent itself well to Getz' propensity for rhythmic improvisation, nor that Corea's soaring melodic lines allowed Getz the opportunity to utilize his beautiful, romantic tenor tone in their service.

"La Fiesta" became a mainstay, not only in Return to Forever's book, but in the books of virtually every big band out there. Maynard Ferguson and Woody Herman had arrangements, as did every small working jazz ensemble at the time. Alternating between a paso doble and a bright, major-key melody that is as catchy as a Top-40 pop song, it's an irresistible piece that instantly creates goodwill between musicians and audience. Clarke roams at will across the lower range of the group's sound while Williams keeps the pace with an almost unbelievable energy, fusing the vigor of flamenco and the unexpected accents of bebop with the exciting drama of rock.

Corea's Fender Rhodes work is transcendent on the entire album. The only musician with as fully developed a conception of the electric piano was Herbie Hancock, but the way the two pianists approached the instrument was worlds apart. To Corea the instrument's very sound connoted magic, and the fullness and beauty of the tones he wrings from it could not have been done with an acoustic piano. He's the perfect foil for Getz, both supporting him and driving him forward without ever becoming intrusive. The first bonus track, a performance of the Corea ballad "Crystal Silence", shows how this new electric instrument could profoundly expand the language available to jazz keyboard players. In the wrong hands, of course, it could be cloying, but Corea is one of the best to ever play the instrument. The alternate versions of "Captain Marvel" and "Five Hundred Miles High" show that this band was creating at a high level, and that the improvisation undertaken by Getz and Corea, in particular, was everything that jazz music had ever been and should be. In short, the fact that Getz was recording with a group of musicians who were leading jazz in the direction of fusion did nothing to alter his distinctive style. Though he was updating his sound and using the music of the day as a springboard, he was in no way attempting to merely do something that seemed fashionable at the time. Captain Marvel was a Stan Getz album because Getz was the nominal "leader" and the only horn player here, but ultimately this was a collaborative album by a group of musicians who were highly attuned to each other, and that is why the album has endured, and still sounds fresh today, some thirty years since it was recorded.

For those of us who have heard Getz mostly in his bossa nova incarnations, this CD is closer at times to rock than jazz, mostly because of the explosive drumming of Tony Williams. The first two tracks are the best. "La Fiesta" and "Five Hundred Miles High" fuse Getz's love for Latin music with his virtuoso understanding of the saxophone. None of the tracks here are weak, however. Getz might not get the kind of praise that jazz fans give to Miles Davis or John Coltrane, but very often, Getz's music never sounds cold or calculated in the way more celebrated jazz sometimes does. The liner notes to Captain Marvel are by the late, great, and infamous Albert Goldman. Captain Marvel is a great album.

My Man Stan!!!....hey!!...who CAN'T listen to cuts "La Fiesta" and "Captain Marvel" and NOT start dancin'???...both cuts hit you like a BLOW TORCH!! Of course, it's the drums & bass that drive you but Stan's fiery sax charts the course!! Both tunes are meant to be played LOUD!

This is BOSSA NOVA times 10!!!....a very muscular SAMBA!...MACHO SAMBA!! This is the first Stan Getz CD that I heard him WAIL (La Fiesta)!!...(normally Stan's not a wailer...he burns at a melodic simmer..."sweet heat"). Although this was recorded in the early 70s...it's NOT dated...it still SWINGS...beyond belief!! I own many (22) Stan Getz CDs...but I don't think he ever burned as hot on these testosterone-induced Latin numbers. There's a couple of quiet numbers ("Crystal Silence") that are quite lovely...ballads, of course, define Mr. Getz.

Why Stan didn't grab Chick Corea, Tony Williams and Stanley Clarke and make a follow-up, I'll never know. He probably thought those young cats would give him cardiac arrest...but he need'nt worry...not only does he keep UP...he LEADS!!

I must admit though, after listening to this CD...I had to catch my breath...and take a shower...it's HOT!!! Buy it...and sweat with a smile!

The way people have been talking about this score, from the reviews to the liner notes, you'd think it was a stylistic counterpart to "Checkmate." In truth, there is minimal jazz or even pseudo-jazz content in this score. It is mostly orchestral with occasional jazzy touches, such as vibes or sax, but it's hardly a return to his days as Johnny Williams (as some have suggested). And the handful of tunes by the likes of Sinatra, Dusty, and Getz/Gilberto are readily available elsewhere in more appropriate settings. On its own terms, the score is certainly pleasant, but it's hardly a "jazz score" as defined by the likes of Mancini, Lalo Schifrin, Johnny Mandel, Kenyon Hopkins, and others.

John Williams does it again! This man is the best composer I have ever heard! The music fits the scenes in the movies so unblievably well that you will wonder how one man was creative enough to think of it!

The opening theme is the coolest ever. It has that jazzy, suspenseful, space-age groove that takes you back to the early 60's era portrayed in the movie.

Once I discovered it was done by John Williams, things started to click. The arrangement and themes actually go back way before he was famous. Back to an era he may not want you to remember. Back when he was known simply as "Johnny" Williams.

First, notice the melody and pace of the creeping marimbas and bubbling flutes. Next, catch a repeat of the old Sci-Fi, TV Fairy-Tale known as "LOST IN SPACE." Listen for the incidental, suspense-scene music throughout. Did you catch the composer's name in the credits?

Bingo!(and still very cool)!

This is brilliant. You will have this theme ringing in your ears for a month after listening. I have collected around 25 to 30 J. Williams scores. This is wonderful like the rest...

I loved the movie and now the music. I think it is one of the most original soundtracks that John Williams has ever done. The Jazz in this music is so peaceful and lighthearted. This soundtrack should be on any music lovers shelf. In my book, this music is a classic film score.

A marvelous compendium of very early Stan Getz at his very Coolest, and Beboping-est taken from at least a half dozen other albums.

Titles come from 1945-1950.

Some of this is on the Roost sessions.

There is a sparkling version of "Too Marvellous for Words" with Stan and Al Haig, Stans best pianist after Kenny Barron.

It ends with the swooningly beautiful title track, Stan with Woody Herman and the Four Brothers doing "Early Autumn", the song really started his career and catapulted him to international attention.

A great price, you'd have to spend $70 to find these songs on the original albums.

Recording quality is mediocre and some of the original albums sound better. But at this price...

Though not by any means one of Stan Getz's great albums, this is nonetheless very enjoyable. Quite a bit "hotter" than most of his records, it captures the feel of being at a club on a night when the musicians are all playing very hard and creating lots of positive energy.