Stan Getz
The Complete Columbia Albums Collection
Sony/Legacy
www.legacyrecordings.com
By George W. Harris

Sony/Legacy has really started mining their vaults for the mother
lodes. They’ve decided to put out the complete Columbia catalogues of
jazz stars like David Brubeck (18 discs!), Dexter Gordon, Woody Shaw,
Wayne Shorter and others for some deliciously delightful all you can
eat boxed sets. This 8 cd set covering Stan Getz’s 70s’s tenure with
Columbia seems like a good place to start.

The Stan Getz box set, complete with a booklet and the discs in
album-styled jackets cover the zenith of his ’71 Captain Marvel session
with Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke as well as his ’80 nadir with his
experiments with smooth jazz on Children of the World, and an extra
disc of hot material to boot.

No one expected something as stupendously suprising as Captain Marvel,
where Getz teams up with young bloods, Corea, Clarke and Airto for some
exciting music that has sparks flying from the get go. “La Fiesta” and
“500 Miles High” has Getz’s horn sounding rejuvinated and young, being
challenged by the jazz rock kids in a way that pushes both generations
to their creative best. An absolute classic. A close second is his
underrated return to bossa nova session with Gilberto, Oscar
Castro-Neves/g and a younger generation of artists on the ’77 disc
with Getz sounding better than ever on “Double Rainbow” and “Retrato En
Branco E Preto.” Gilberto and Miucha Buarque De Hollanda share some
delightful vocals throughout this overlooked beauty. Getz stretches out
in the studio with Billy Hart/dr, Clint Houston/b and Albert Dailey/p
on some lengthy takes of tunes like “Invitation” that shows that the
tenor player still had the mainstream chops. His 75 album with Jimmie
Rowles/p, Elvin Jones/dr and Buster Williams/b has him with a pretty
exciting collection of tunes, such as “Lester Left Town” and “The
Peacocks” which was the title track. Rowles almost steals the show, as
half of the material here has him either soloing, duetting with Getz,
and even singing a bit. With Getz he sounds like it’s the last set
while they’re putting up the chairs with them at their absolute best on
lyrical pieces like “My Buddy” and “I’ll Never Be The Same,” with his
tone simply drop dead gorgeous.

The ’77 album Another World, 78’s Children of the World, and ‘79’s
Forest Eyes have Getz trying unfamiliar territory. The first two have
him with Andy Lavern’e electric piano and electronics and Getz even
does the trendy Echoplex on the latater. The music has its moments,
but, like so much of the music of that period, it has not aged all that
well. The orchestra-laden Forest Eyes features Getz in fron of an
orchestra lead by Jurre Haanstra conducting his own compositions,
making Getz sound a bit fettered than anything else. The bonus disc is
mostly made up of an enjoyable 1976 reunion with Wood Herman’s
orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Herman’s band has some ringers like Flip
Phillips, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Giuffre, Joe Lovano, Chubby Jackson, the
Condoli Brothers (are you salivating yet?), and they COOK. Getz’s
return to his famous “Early Autumn” demonstrates why John Coltrane
admitted, “The fact is that every tenor player wants to sound like Stan
Getz.”

So, you have 4 essential discs, one excellent, and 3 iffy’s which for
the price of the boxed set, is a pretty good deal. He reached another
plateau at his next label, Concord Records, but his tenure here, during
the formidable and fusion oriented 70s, showed that Getz kept his
dignity through most of the decade.