Stan Getz: Stan Getz '57

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Bob Brookmeyer (vtb)
Stan Getz (ts)
John Williams (p)
Teddy Kotick (b)
Frank Isola (d)

Label:

Matchball

June/2019

Media Format:

CD/LP

Catalogue Number:

48012

RecordDate:

27 July-22 August 1953

Historic misrepresentation exposed by the reissue company Matchball – Stan Getz '57 (also released as Stan Getz '56) was the 32-minute LP that begins this release, which Matchball remind us was actually recorded with his regular quintet of 1953. With typical Andorran thoroughness, the running-time is increased to more than 75 minutes by including all the remaining tracks from these three sessions. The rhythm-section sounds fairly boppish, with Williams following on from Horace Silver who'd been employed by Getz in 1950-51, while this early work of Brookmeyer is interesting but not as outgoing as he became later. Sadly, too, I find Getz at this point less compelling, tonally or melodically than he would have been in 1957, let alone in the following decades. By the way, Matchball are not above their own misrepresentation since, despite their claim, this John Williams (1929-2018) is not the same as John Towner Williams (b.1932), who did make a few jazz records before becoming the all-conquering soundtrack supremo. A final historic curio: this version of Johnny Mandel's ‘Pot Luck’ is one of the two tracks used as background for the famous ‘Shorty Petterstein Interview’ by Henry Jacobs and Woody Leafer on the 1955 Interviews Of Our Time.

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