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Artists like to improve on nature. The great landscape painters took run of the mill scenes and turned them into works of art. By employing evocative language poets can make their readers yearn so much for the Elyesian fields of their imagination that it hurts.
In his sixth symphony, Beethoven took an ordinary country brook and turned it into a stream that could easily bubble through the Garden of Eden. On a less exalted level, great jazz musicians take ordinary tunes and turn them into great art.
Through the years there have been many, many examples of this, right from the days when King Oliver played West End Blues and Bix Beiderbecke turned I'm Coming Virginia into a small, perfectly formed tone poem.
One of the great transformers of the ordinary was Stan Getz (1927-1991). Getz first made his name in the forties with Woody Herman's Second Herd. One of the most famous numbers he recorded with the band was the Ralph Burns tune Early Autumn.
As well as being a beautiful song, the number demonstrates Getz's masterly way with a melody. First there is the immaculate saxophone tone; like an alto flute; pure and mellow. Getz treats the melody by adding subtle touches here and there; it is masterly. Like when a painter adds a touch of white to the corner of a painted eye.
Getz had an amazing technique, he could play anything on the saxophone. On the album Stan Getz Quartets Getz recorded a tune called 'Crazy Chords'. In the recording he Getz roars through some extreme key changes touching on key signatures no average sax player in his or her right mind would chose to play. Yet Getz makes it sound like he was taking a stroll by a brook.
On the same album as 'Crazy Chords' there's a fine example of the way Getz treats a slow ballad. 'What's New' is one of the great songs. Played straight it is beautiful, but Getz with a stroke of the brush here and there transforms the melody into a work of art. Like a Rembrant in sound.
Until 1958 Getz played some of the best jazz in the United States and with some of the best jazzmen in the country: Al Haig, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Chet Baker, Jimmy Raney and Horace Silver.
In 1958 he moved to Europe and worked mainly with European musicians like the wonderful Swedish baritone player Lars Gullin, pianist Martial Solal and Bengt Hallberg and with other US ex-patriots like Oscar Pettiford and Kenny Clarke.
In 1961 Getz returned to New York to record what is undoubtedly the best example of a partnership between a jazz musician and strings - the album Focus. Focus is a superb achievement. Getz sails above and around the composer Eddie Sauter's brilliant string arrangements. It's an example of a stunning musician at the height of his considerable powers.
The album Getz made after Focus was Jazz Samba. This contained his greatest hit the Samba, 'Desafinado'. Again 'Desafinado' is a simple tune that Getz turns into high art. After 'Desafinado' Getz's career took a giant step forward. Bossa Nova became a craze for a while and Getz was one of its chief exponents.
This flirtation with pop music made Getz a comparatively rich man. But it did not reduce his commitment to improve on nature.
Other great Getz albums include:
Apasionado
The Steamer
Best of the Roost Years
Best of the West Coast Sessions
and
People Time
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