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If you need someone to blame every time you hear “The Girl from Ipanema” in a hotel lobby or office elevator, you can take it out on Stan Getz. But how did a Jewish kid from the Bronx usher in a new global sound?
At a young age Getz took to the music of jazz. Having a photographic memory and a pitch-perfect ear, he could hum Benny Goodman solos after a couple of listens. By the time he was 18 he had already played for Jack Teagarden, Jimmy Dorsey and Stan Kenton. And in 1947 he relocated to California to play with Woody Herman.
But by 1950 Big Band Swing was on the wane and Getz moved onto the Cool Movement, which concentrated on clean lyrical phrasing and a more subdued sound. But even that movement would give way as musicians started to move further and further from any inherent structure and into modal and free jazz.
Getz couldn’t go that far into the water. To him the new music did not speak to him. So that’s maybe why he was so open to a new sound that guitarist, Charlie Byrd, brought back after a State Department tour of South America.
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Immediately, Getz fell in love with the Brazilian music of Bossa Nova and released Jazz Samba in 1962. The album was so well received Getz invited two of the founding fathers, Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim to fly up to New York and record Getz/Gilberto. From there “The Girl from Ipanema” would reach #5 on the pop charts in July of 1964 and the album would go on to win a Grammy, beating out the Beatle’s Hard Day’s Night.
What made the music so popular was at the time it felt like a breath of fresh air. Getz was the perfect ambassador to introduce this sophisticated rhythmic sound. His saxophone creates a calm and relaxed feeling, like a cool evening breeze coming off the ocean. Every time I listen to either of these albums I am transported to a sunnier, more happening place, especially when I listen to “Bahia” as Getz floats above the bass that propels the beat like a giant trampoline.
Dave
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