Stan Getz Music

Being a jazz and Getz fan, and having listened to Getz/Gilberto hundreds of times, never tiring of it, I was thrilled to find this album in a used record store. I listened to it 2 maybe 3 times and then threw it away. Can't even remember what made it so bad, it was just too awful to keep on the shelf and try to listen to once a year.

Getz other Bossa Nova album's are classics. Start with the delightful "Getz/Gilberto", the second best selling Jazz CD of all time, then "Jazz Samba", "Jazz Samba Encore". But by the time Norm Grantz at Verve pushed him into this, he was pretty tired of Samba.

"Chenga de Saudade" is definitely the best and "Niote Triste" is pleasant but this type of big band highly-scripted format wasn't his forte. It's Stan, so he's (almost) never bad, he puts on a brave face and does the best under the circumstances.

Inoffensive, but quite Pop and shallow.

Make sure you have the other albums above before you get this one.
Sorry they can't all be great. Tryin' to save you money.

Being a big fan off Gary McFarland I can only say this is a beautiful album with big band recordings. Highlight Manha de Carnaval.Pitty there are no (?) extra bonus tracks on this CD.
Highly recommended.

The delicate beauty of bossa nova and the brasher gestures of big band don't sound like an obvious heavenly match, and the relationship is sometimes awkward on this CD. A famous song like 'Bim Bom' doesn't gain a lot from the fusion, and loses much.

Tracks like 'Chega de Suadade' or 'Noite Triste' don't really sound like bossa nova at all, if we mean by that term a kind of music with a recognisable sound colour. If we mean by 'bossa nova' a certain way of playing jazz, a flexible, fluid yet tight rhythmic form, then they certainly are: both are terrific, cinematic in their expansiveness, soundtracks to a forgotten film noir, a menacing, anxious, probably French one. The elaborations conducted on 'One Note samba' are very exciting.

The high point, however, is Bonfa's 'Manha de Carnaval', which, along with Jobim's 'Insensatez', is the crowning glory of bossa nova. If it's a morning, it's one after the night before, opening with bleary quiet, before taking us on a steadily accumulating journey through Brazilian life just before the carnival explodes. Getz's playing is once again a marvel of expressive restraint.

Being a jazz and Getz fan, and having listened to Getz/Gilberto hundreds of times, never tiring of it, I was thrilled to find this album in a used record store. I listened to it 2 maybe 3 times and then threw it away. Can't even remember what made it so bad, it was just too awful to keep on the shelf and try to listen to once a year.

Getz other Bossa Nova album's are classics. Start with the delightful "Getz/Gilberto", the second best selling Jazz CD of all time, then "Jazz Samba", "Jazz Samba Encore". But by the time Norm Grantz at Verve pushed him into this, he was pretty tired of Samba.

"Chenga de Saudade" is definitely the best and "Niote Triste" is pleasant but this type of big band highly-scripted format wasn't his forte. It's Stan, so he's (almost) never bad, he puts on a brave face and does the best under the circumstances.

Inoffensive, but quite Pop and shallow.

Make sure you have the other albums above before you get this one.
Sorry they can't all be great. Tryin' to save you money.

Being a big fan off Gary McFarland I can only say this is a beautiful album with big band recordings. Highlight Manha de Carnaval.Pitty there are no (?) extra bonus tracks on this CD.
Highly recommended.

The delicate beauty of bossa nova and the brasher gestures of big band don't sound like an obvious heavenly match, and the relationship is sometimes awkward on this CD. A famous song like 'Bim Bom' doesn't gain a lot from the fusion, and loses much.

Tracks like 'Chega de Suadade' or 'Noite Triste' don't really sound like bossa nova at all, if we mean by that term a kind of music with a recognisable sound colour. If we mean by 'bossa nova' a certain way of playing jazz, a flexible, fluid yet tight rhythmic form, then they certainly are: both are terrific, cinematic in their expansiveness, soundtracks to a forgotten film noir, a menacing, anxious, probably French one. The elaborations conducted on 'One Note samba' are very exciting.

The high point, however, is Bonfa's 'Manha de Carnaval', which, along with Jobim's 'Insensatez', is the crowning glory of bossa nova. If it's a morning, it's one after the night before, opening with bleary quiet, before taking us on a steadily accumulating journey through Brazilian life just before the carnival explodes. Getz's playing is once again a marvel of expressive restraint.

Stan Getz European road manager was Bill Hoogstraten. One day Stan said, "Let's see, Hoogstraten, doesn't that mean 'High Street'"? Stan thought this was quite amusing, being often on High Street himself, so Stan collaborated on a Samba named for him. But 'Billy Highstreet Samba' is not really a samba, more nearly Rock Fusion.

Stan participated in a number of forgetable Fusion efforts in the 70's, to show he could play anything au courant, before his comeback in the 80's. Then, on his next Concord albums, he decided to change and play only what he was good at - his own straight-ahead mainstream style of Jazz, more involved versions of the same type of music he'd played in the '50's. Of all of his Fusion flounderings, this is the most listenable.

The better Getz pieces on this CD are, as usual, the slower, introspective ones like Chuck Loeb's "Be There Then", "Dirge" and the standard "Body and Soul". But, overall, there is also too much Fusion here; the sidemen meander, do their own thing, oblivious, while Stan tries to look for a place to make his statement in his idiom.

This will not replace Getz Cool, aloof work in the '40's thru '60's in anyone's heart. Nor will it replace his marvelous Cool (with emotions) comeback in the '80's, but it it the best album of the lost Fusion years.

This album was dedicated to Getz's personel manager, a fine fellow I'm sure-named Billy Highstreet. Sounds like an American Indian name! It was 1980 and soon Steve Getz, Stan's son became personel manager and remains even today as a guardian of Stan's venerable body of work. As even a Jazz Superstar like Getz was, artists must be exposed to the currents of newer trends. So, using a very talented pianist and a guitarist-Chuck Loeb, Getz plays his own vision of the "fusion" style so present in the early 80's. And he performs this music beautifully and with ease and of course more "prettiness" than most anyone else could. He even includes a lovely ballad-Body and Soul, and plays some soprano sax! A great artist like Getz could never lose his sweet "sound" no matter how times changed, we should be thrilled that we still can enjoy his work. If you are a fan, and you appreciate the first class treatment Verve always gives art you will be happy to own this recording.