20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection

Performer: Stan Getz
Producer: Harry Weinger (Compilation)
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: The Stan Getz entry in Universal Music's discount-priced best-of series 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection is a pop fan's look at a jazz artist. Drawing upon the Verve Records catalog, the selection leans heavily on Getz's popular bossa nova records of the early '60s, particularly the number one Jazz Samba LP and the number two Getz/Gilberto, including the hit singles "The Girl from Ipanema" and "Desafinado," which are placed up front in the sequencing. "Manha de Carnaval" (known to pop fans as "A Day in the Life of a Fool" for Carl Sigman's English-language lyric) and the 1967 version of "O Grande Amor" also come from albums that made the pop charts, Big Band Bossa Nova and Sweet Rain, respectively. That covers the first half of the disc, and on the second half, the songs are mostly familiar standards. "Early Autumn" is a remake from the 1960 album Cool Velvet, not the version Getz played with Woody Herman. Getz appears unaware of the downcast lyrics to Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "A House Is Not a Home," giving the tune a jaunty arrangement. That's in contrast to his treatment of Jimmy Webb's "Didn't We," which brings out all the melancholy Webb put in his words. It seems safe to say that a Getz fan, given the assignment of picking an hour's worth of the saxophonist's music, would not choose all of these tracks, but some of them definitely would make the cut, and the music offers variety, offering Getz Brazilian, big band, and even string backings, over which he plays with his usual assurance.~William Ruhlmann

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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