Sander Huudma
April 20, 2015
Prof. Brian
Jazz Samba The 1960s were a rich creative period in jazz . “During this time Stan Getz a jewish saxophonist from the Bronx, imported a darkly romantic new style from Brasil.“(Textbook), „Getz appeared with strong lyrical and improvisational skills and therefore took part in many all-star recordings. After years of fading away from the all-star list, the beginning of 1960s’ made Stan Getz a name people would not forget” (Gioia). While playing a club in Washington, D.C. Stan met guitarist Charlie Byrd. Byrd was impressed with the sound of the jazz/samba hybrid that was called 'bossa nova' in Brazil but couldn’t find anyone interested in recording it, Getz saw the potential in bossa nova. (Twomey) Charlie Byrd is the person who introduced Bossa Nova to Stan Getz after Byrd returned from a trip to Brazil (Textbook). On April 20, 1962 Stan Getz with the collaboration of Charlie Byrd released an
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Getz had battled with strong drug and alcohol addiction over most of his career. In 1954, he was thrown in jail for an attempted drugstore robbery. At that point, Getz had been on a tour for eight days and tried to stay clean. In a story to DownBeat Magazine, he admitted he should not have stopped doing heroin on the tour - the addiction was just too strong. Official papers say the robbery was an attempt to get money to buy “some stuff.” Stan’s, like most other musicians, choice of drug at the time was heroin. With heroin, there was alcohol. Drugs were a “cool” thing to do when you were a young musician at the time. His robbery attempt failed and he was later tracked back to his hotel room where he was captured. Police on their way to the room, Getz swallowed a fistful of barbiturates, central-nervous system depressants. He ended up receiving emergency tracheotomy and spent the next three days in coma. After all that, he served 6 months of jail time and three years on probation