Records: Quiet Revolutionary

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30826, 11 August 1965, Page 8

Records: Quiet Revolutionary

A jazz revolution of minor, but interesting, significance, has been quietly continuing for the last three years. It has slipped by almost unnoticed, for it involves only one man and most of its outer workings have taken place in that mysterious area where jazzmen seldom tread, between numbers one and 100 on the trade magazines’ sales charts. The man is Stan Getz, and the revolution concerns the externals of his music.

Ten years ago he was something of a culture hero among the “cool school” of jazz, and his records were counted among the jazz classics. His style, descended from Lester Young of the Count Basie band, was cool, remote, intensely poetic, with long melodic lines and great planes of slightly offcentre rhythm. But he got involved in trouble over narcotics and retired to Europe to settle his problems. After his return to America he recorded, in 1962, a South American tune named “Desafinado,” which used a new rhythm from Brazil, the bossa nova. To everyone’s surprise, it shot immediately to the top of the sales charts

and later won a Grammy award. Since then the bossai nova has been a Getz trademark. It has kept his records on the best-seller charts, but it has also hidden the more radical changes in his music, which have less to do with rhythm than with beauty. The melodic lines are still long, but they are pitched with greater assurance; the tone is richer, the rhythms less taut.

On his latest LP., Getz Au Go Go (Verve mono V-8600, 12in, 39s 6d) he produces some of the most beautiful jazz he, or anyone else, has ever recorded. His rhythms pulse evenly, his tone is firm and full in every register (on his early records he confined himself to making breathy sounds in the upper reaches of his tenor saxophone) and his dynamics ebb and swell with inexorable lyricism. Behind the singer, Astrud Gilberto, his obbligatos weave a sumptuous sound tapestry, and on the instrumental tracks, especially “Summertime” and “Here’s That Rainly Day,” the two longest, his lengthy solos are distilled poetry. But the heart of his music remains as remote as ever; it

is as if there is a lacuna there, which he conceals by surrounding it with beauty. MONOCHROME

Miss Gilberto, the girl with the monochrome voice, is a perfect foil for Getz. Her all-on-one-level delivery is unsuited to American tunes like “It Might As Well Be Spring” but on the bossa nova items it has a certain hypnotic charm. Impressive among Getz’s supporting cast are the bassist, Chuck Israels, and the young vi'braphonist, Gary Burton. It may be no coincidence that the three tracks on which Israels makes an appearance are the best. SOUL PLUS

Whether Oscar Peterson really has a jazz soul is a theological question beyond the scope of this review. Fortunately, there is nothing spiritual about the music contained in the album of that title (The Jazz Soul Of Oscar Peterson; Verve mono V-8351, 12in, 39s 6d); it is vigorous, stimulating and in the very best jazz tradition. Peterson lacks the lyricism of Bill Evans and the enterprise of the late Art Tatum; but what he does have in quantities unmatched by any contemporary jazz pianist are technical virtuosity and swing. The six longish tracks on this record give him an opportunity to stretch out freely; the results are sometimes awe-inspiring, sometimes beautiful and occasionally dull. The awe-inspiring moments come when Peterson is flouncing superbly about the keyboard at breakneck tempi, as on Gershwin’s “Liza” or Dizzy Gillespie’s “Woody’n You”; the beautiful ones on the slower numbers, “Con Alma” and “Maidens of Cadiz.” On these two Peterson shows a sensitivity to form and contour not often encountered in his music. It is superb playing, and a few moments of inertia on “Close Your Eyes” are a small price to pay for it. The trio is, as usual, completed by the dependable Ray Brown (bass) and Ed Thigpen (drums).

QUIET NIGHTS Clare Fischer, the pianist and composer whose free-form album, “First Time Out,” created quite a stir last year, has turned to the bossa nova for his latest LP, “So Dance Samba” (Fontano mono ZL688016, 12in, 39s 6d). This time, instead of restricting his repertoire to his own compositions, he has included

seven pieces by the composer of “Desafinado,” Antonio Carlos Jobim, as well as three of his own. In contrast with the tartly intellectual proceedings on Fischer’s first record the performances here are relaxed, low-key and extremely pretty. The bossa nova standards “Desafinado” and “Girl From Ipanema” are included, along with “One Note Samba” and “Quiet Nights.” The latter two are a plesant supplement to the Getz-Gilberto versions, excellent listening for those quiet nights.