THE MAN THEY CALLED THE SOUND: Stan Getz (Chapter II) Leaving Goodman and moving to California, Getz found like-minded souls in saxophonists Herb Steward, Zoot Sims and Jimmy Giuffre, who also worshipped Young. They were also friendly with Woody Herman’s spotter and were invited to join his Second Herd in 1947. Getz, Sims, Steward and Serge Chaloff together formed a sub-unit called ‘The Four Brothers’, while Giuffre was taken on as arranger bringing the band great success with his tune ‘Four Brothers’, tailored to highlight each of the four soloists and then combine them in a typical Herman’s Herd’s hard-hitting crescendo. The arrangement was so popular that the band became known by the same name, and understandably Getz shot to stardom from a string of popular tracks, especially for his solo on 1948′s mellow ‘Early Autumn’. Getz’s individual popularity gave him the impetus to leave Herman at the end of the decade and form his own groups: a quartet with guitarist Jimmy Raney, trombonist Bob Brookmeyer and Al Haig on piano, then Horace Silver also on piano, who he ‘discovered’ in 1950. Significantly, Getz made the first of his many visits to Scandinavia in 1951. After some studio work in New York, he began leading mostly quintets; notably one with Al Haig, Jimmy Raney, Teddy Kotick and Tiny Kahn who appeared with Billie Holiday at the Storyville Club in Boston. Despite drug problems, ironically made worse by his attempts to give up heroin, Getz had a successful decade in the 1950s. Norman Granz signed him to Clef records in late 1952 and almost immediately he was in the studio to record two weeks before Christmas with Duke Jordan (piano), Jimmy Raney (guitar), Bill Crow (bass) and Frank Isola (drums), and when the album came out early the following year as Stan Getz Plays, it was prescient of what he did over the next decade for Clef, Norgran and Verve. He made a huge number of records under his own name as well as participating in Granz jam sessions with the likes of Count Basie and Buddy DeFranco, and he also recorded with Dizzy Gillespie in 1953. In 1955, he did an album with Granz called The Modern Jazz Society, on which he appeared with the MJQ’s rhythm section and trombonist J. J. Johnson among others, and later in the year with Lionel Hampton. His first record for Verve was in 1956 as Diz & Getz, and in 1957 he appeared on Buddy Bregman’s excellent Swinging Kicks album of big-band jazz. By 1957, he hardly ever seemed to be out of a studio recording for Verve, including recording with Ella on numbers such as a beauty called ‘Midnight Sun’; 1957 was also the year he first appeared with JATP. He won a string of Down Beat polls in this period, but had previously been arrested for attempting to steal morphine from a pharmacist in 1954. He spent several months recuperating after collapsing in Stockholm a year later and then lived in self-imposed exile in Copenhagen in 1958 when he toured Europe to beat his addiction. This did not stop him recording for Verve however; Granz just used a studio in Stockholm. youtube/watch?v=PJRclNAg9us
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 08:48:49 +0000
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