Gold

Performer: Stan Getz
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: Stan Getz spent much of his career on Verve, and recorded nearly all of his landmarks there, beginning in the early '50s and extending to 1967's Sweet Rain. Therefore, even a two-hour compilation of his best work on Verve will be incomplete and fragmentary at best. The two-disc Gold set, however, tries very hard indeed, and ends up providing a crude summation of what made Getz so special to cool jazz and, later, Brazilian forms. Much of the first disc includes highlights from his co-billed albums, including those with Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, J.J. Johnson, and Oscar Peterson, as well as the standouts from his early album projects The Steamer and Focus. The second disc is predominantly Brazilian, beginning with seven cuts from his early-'60s explosion of work that culminated with the pop album hit Getz/Gilberto and its Top Ten single, "The Girl from Ipanema." Later projects with Bill Evans (from 1964) and Herb Alpert (1989) end the compilation with some degree of closure. At best, Gold is a serviceable launching pad to the investigation of a great jazz career. ~ John Bush

Tenor saxophonist Stan Getz possessed a full, luxuriant tone and a highly melodic improvisational sense. Though he produced consistently rewarding music for the duration of his near 50-year career, he achieved the greatest success in the early '60s when he led the American part of the bossa nova explosion. Indeed, this brilliant fusion of jazz and Brazilian rhythms yielded the tune, "The Girl From Ipanema," which became one of the biggest selling jazz records in history.

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