Album Reviews

Few jazz musicians attain pop star status while retaining credibility with their "base." Louis Armstrong managed and of course so did Miles Davis. Stan Getz was another.

Few jazz musicians attain pop star status while retaining credibility with their "base." Louis Armstrong managed and of course so did Miles Davis. Stan Getz was another.

Before there was such a term as "world music," Getz went to Brazil and returned with the samba. His album Jazz Samba on the Verve label created a sensation within the jazz community. His follow-up, Getz-Gilberto made him a pop-star of sorts. The album broke jazz sales records, was awarded a Grammy for "Best Album" and produced the hit single "The Girl From Ipanema." 

Yet despite the record's commercial appeal, Stan Getz's credibility suffered not because the album was also artistically successful. Getz/Gilberto remains a "must have album" musically and sonically. It's been a perennial audiophile favorite almost since its original release in 1964, thanks to the great Phil Ramone's engineering.

Would it be insulting to suggest that many audio buffs who love Getz/Gilberto have never dug backwards into Getz's long recording career?  I don't know. Just asking!

Mosaic has returned to vinyl by asking the same question with the release of this 4 LP set. It's daring actually since there's nothing "audiophile" about these 1953/1954 monophonic recordings—at least in the traditional sense of the word, except that they were produced simply, direct to tape and free of studio processing and gimmickry that didn't exist at that time. 

The Hollywood sessions (the bulk of the material) were recorded at famed Radio Recorders, while the New York sessions are divided between Fulton Studios, about which I know little, other than that Charlie Parker once recorded there,  and Fine Sound (as in Mercury's Robert Fine). 

Despite the age of these recordings, and the somewhat boxy overall sound, the recordings do capture very well Getz's, smooth,  lyrical tone and light touch. He played fast, as was the style in the Parker and post Parker era, but he was unerringly melodic, even when he drifted far from the tune. It was the coolest of be-bop that drew its breathy, laid back tone from Lester Young.

But Getz had a drug problem and despite some success on the radio and despite being white (and Jewish) during a time of racial segregation, no major label would touch him. In his early to mid-twenties, he moved from being a soloist with Benny Goodman and Woody Herman to being a leader in his own right, recording for, but not being signed to Savoy, Roost and Prestige.

So the job was left to Norman Granz, a film editor and jazz fanatic, who was at the right place at the right time (the beginning of the recording tape and long playing record era) to turn a personal obsession into a series of record labels and a lasting legacy.

Granz started the Norgran and Clef labels and eventually merged them into the Verve label (which he sold to MGM in 1960) that exists to this day as part of the UMG Group.   These sessions document a quintet Getz led featuring valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer who epitomized cool. The first was originally issued on a 10" Clef LP, later on a 12" Norgran LP and finally these sessions all ended up on Verve but not as the sessions were recorded.

This set assembles the sessions as recorded, and with the excellent annotation by Ashley Kahn (author of the indespensible "Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, among other books about jazz), you can follow Getz's musical progress (and occasional personal lapses) as you listen. 

As Kahn surmises about Getz's, career under Granz's tutelage, culminating in his Getz/Gilberto success, "...none of which might have happened had Granz not held the door open in 1952." 

Or as jazz critic and historian Gary Giddens is quoted here: "How he (Getz) sustained his enormous following despite fifteen-round battles with drugs and alcohol, expatriation and a reputation for surliness and worse is a mystery, until you go back to his discography."

So, here's that opportunity, thanks to Mosaic, to go back to the Getz/Gilberto, Jazz Samba prequel and hear and read about the roots of those popular records. Getz's playing is no less souffled and no less bouyant, despite his personal issues. 

Once you start, you'll find it difficult to stop the side-turning until the last side ends.  A great set every vinyl-loving Getz fan should own.