Stan Getz: A Life in Jazz [Audio Cassette]

Donald L. Maggin (Author), Fred Williams (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2000

Stan Getz's life in jazz was amazingly long and prodigiously prolific: Over the course of forty-nine years as a professional, he performed in every major jazz idiom - from Dixieland to swing to bebop to free jazz. Though he is most famous for "The Girl From Ipanema, " Stan Getz was already by then firmly ensconced in the pantheon of jazz greats. As a teenager just off the mean streets of the Bronx, Getz received the equivalent of a Ph.D. in jazz when he performed with the big bands of Jack Teagarden, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, and Woody Herman. Stan Getz contains rich portraits of these seminal bandleaders, as well as other jazz giants who influenced Getz's art: Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and his fellow bop pioneers, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman. Getz's recording of "Early Autumn" with the Woody Herman band catapulted him to stardom at age twenty-two in 1949. During the next forty-two years, Getz produced an astounding body of beautiful music, recording over three hundred records, including the great big band work, culminating with "Apasianado" in 1990; the 1961 jazz/classical masterpiece "Focus"; the wildly popular partnerships with Jobim, the Gilbertos, and Charlie Byrd, which brought Brazilian bossa nova to a world audience; the brilliant collaborations with Jimmy Raney, Bob Brookmeyer, Gary Burton, Chick Corea, Jimmy Rowles, and Albert Dailey; and the magnificent, poignant quartet and duet recordings with Kenny Barron during his last years. Getz's legendary career is all the more impressive given the excesses of his personal life: He was a heroin addict until age twenty-seven, then a violent alcoholic until he achieved sobriety five years before his death. Hisaddictions severely marred his relationships with his family and friends, brought him into trouble with the law, led to two suicide attempts, and constantly threatened to obliterate his livelihood and his artistry. Yet, despite being so furiously self-destructive that few bet he

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When he was 16, Stan Getz was touring with Jack Teagarden. He won his first Down Beat reader's poll when he was 23. In the early 1960s, he helped inaugurate the bossa nova craze with his recordings of "Desafinado" and "The Girl from Ipanema." But there were times when he was nearly as well known for his messy personal life as his beautiful musicianship. A long-time abuser of drugs and alcohol, he was a notorious philanderer who beat his wife. Somehow, he managed to age gracefully. "The thing I will always be proud of is this," he told the New York Times not long before he died of cancer in 1991, "toward the end of my life, I became what I always should have been--a decent gentleman." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Maggin (Bankers, Builders, Knaves, and Thieves) chronicles the life and career of the great jazz saxophonist Getz (1927-1991), who was known especially for his sensuous tone and brilliant improvisations. Getz put his prodigious musical gifts to work early, joining Jack Teagarden's band at age 16 and moving on to Stan Kenton's group the following year. From then on, his musical fortunes never ceased to flourish. Nevertheless, his personal life was a disaster. Drugs. alcohol, depression, episodes of violence, a suicide attempt and lengthy divorce proceedings against his second wife provide a painful backdrop to the story of a consistently triumphant professional career. Maggin discusses Getz's performances and recordings (often delving into the backgrounds of many of the musicians with whom he worked) and analyzes his style and technique. While he presents the painful details of Getz's personal life, Maggin doesn't make much of an attempt to explain how Getz could have functioned so well on one level and failed so miserably on another. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks (May 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786117745
• ISBN-13: 978-0786117741
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,422,847 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars read it for getz's life, not his art., August 15, 2001

By 

joel fass (bronx,, n.y. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stan Getz: A Life in Jazz (Hardcover)

I read this a few years back, and it was brutal to get through, black clouds of depression lurking on every page. This is actually by way of saying that Maggin did his job well, although it couldn't have been much fun. There is account after account of a phenonenomally gifted yet self-absorbed monster who lived in a world of rationalization and evidently felt his talent justified doing unspeakable things to people (which, of course only means doing the same to oneself). You find yourself, as reader, torn: On one hand, one feels sympathy for one of the great musicians of our time who literally grew up on the road with no parental discipline (he started out, for example, at 15 with Jack Teagarden, a great player and undoubtedly a father figure to Getz, but also a notorious lush)who had to grow up fast and couldn't quite handle it. On the other, there's the aforementioned devil that the substances either created or, more likely, merely brought out. By the time Getz sincerely tried to mend his ways (a terminal illness will do it every time)the train had long left the station leaving much emotional wreckage in its wake.

But as with Charlie Parker, also widely reported to be a less-than-admirable person, we care about the art, and want to remember that. Sadly, this is where Maggin fails. He really means well, but his musical insights and prose style on the subject are, frankly, clumsy and less than helpful. He gropes for, but does not find Getz the musician or why he is so beloved. It's really simple: Getz was a fountain of melodic beauty, even as he swung his tail off. Improvising melodically sounds easy, but is one of the hardest things to do. Plus, his sound was a miracle--a force of nature. This is what puts Getz in the rarified category of accessible musical genius that includes very few others, Parker, Armstrong, Baker, Farmer and Davis among them. Maggin also even gets musicians' names wrong, a definite no-no.

Fortunately, Getz's music speaks for itself loud and clear. Perhaps someone will write the critical work Getz's enormous corpus of work deserves. Hopefully it will be a musician (we have a bad rap for being inarticulate and illiterate for some weird reason) However, Maggin deserves credit for his unflinching portrait of a complicated, at times loathsome man who nonetheless was chosen to be a conduit for some of the most rapturous and beautiful music this world has known.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lester gave him the banner and he ran with it, February 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Stan Getz: A Life in Jazz (Hardcover)

As far back as I can recall, Stan Getz had always been my personal favorite jazz musician of all time. Blessed with an incredible musical memory - you just have to listen to the amount of quotes he would use during the course of a solo - he was able to render some of the most obscure lines from popular music to jazz lines to Jewish anthems. His personal sound was readily identifiable, pure,wholesome and wondrously beautiful and never filtered with sentimentality. When you heard a Getz solo there was never any mistake who was playing. Lester Young flowed through him and initially set the mold to this master jazz musician. Stan Getz carried the banner from Lester and ran with it.This book covers much of Stan Getz and his musical as well as personal life. Behind his playing was a torturous life hampered by drugs, alcohol, severe depression and anger. You would never have known this about the man after spending years of following and listening to the progressions of his performing art. Unlike the Chet Baker book this book chronologically follows his music as well as the events in his personal life. I found it inspiring to read about various recording sessions and all that was happening in his life at the time. All this while following it, by listening to the particular recording mentioned. He was a perfectionist and achieved it most of the time. If he felt his playing not to be at par this depressed him and would sadly result in dissonance for him and his family. He thought he needed to be stoned to play better. The irony is that he was throughout much of his life. Maggin mentions the many times when Stan would be inspired, either by another musician or a piece of music, that his playing would suddenly ignite and reach incredible levels of Art. I, for one, have on many occasions,witnessed such performances by him.This again brings up the question that has bothered me as a very devoted jazz follower: In order for the music to become a pure art, must it have flowed through the artist through suffering and artificially altering his senses with drugs and alcohol? Further, are the jazz musicians of today too antiseptic to ever achieve pure estheticism? These are troubling thoughts and often lends me to think that it may be impossible to truly create in a totally sober environment. True, the music can be technically brilliant, intricate and interesting, but would it be Getz,Parker, Monk, Baker, Davis or Coltrane?The book is very well written by Maggin and covers the career of Stan Getz thoroughly. Maggin has struck a delicate balance between the music, life and times of Getz. The nurturing, friendships and relationships of the musicians who began playing, developing and expanding with his various musical groups are clarified throughout the book. This book is an indispensable guide for anyone that has followed any of the aspects of Stan Getz the musician and the man.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stan Getz:'THE Sound',the life-what contrasts!, December 28, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Stan Getz: A Life in Jazz (Hardcover)

Okay, I'm a fairly knowledgeable jazz buff, got lots of Stan Getz CDs. Thought I'd try a book about the man behind the incredible sounds of deep emotions. But whoa! This guy was as much a mess off the stage as Chet Baker, Charlie Parker, Art Pepper,et. al. I had NO idea!! Donald Maggin does a fine job of reporting the events as they occurred & lets us formulate our opinions about this incredible "Life In Jazz". The book badly needs a discography although to follow along w/ the story. Maybe next edition?! Otherwise a book hard to put down for jazzbos AND paparazzi/soap opera lovers! Dr.Mike Baughan Richmond,Va