One of the most popular jazz albums of all time is the 1964 Getz/Gilberto studio album which supplanted the Beatles’s A Hard Day’s Night in the US Billboard charts number one spot. A live 1976 San Francisco recording has more Getz/Gilberto gold.
The original 1964 duet record won six Grammy awards and gave us the global hit, Girl from Ipanema. Getz/Gilberto 2 followed and a third studio album, The Best of Both Worlds, featuring Getz and Gilberto together for a third time, was released in May 1975 on the Columbia label.
“My father and Joao (Gilberto) had what one might call a very simple and sweet relationship, “ writes Steve Getz, son of the tenor sax legend Stan, in a liner note to this welcome reissue. “They adored each other, respected each other immensely. Yet, at the same time, my father often grew impatient with the father of bossa nova who came from another culture and who carried with him the aura of calmness and gentleness.”
“Joao is sort of like the Frank Sinatra of Brazil,and Stan was considered by many as the number one tenor saxophone player in the world at that time, “ declares drummer Billy Hart in an interview also included in the booklet.
Accompanying Getz and Gilberto (vocals, guitar) at San Francisco's Keystone Korner venue are Joanne Brackeen on piano, Clint Houston on double bass and drummer Billy Hart. The band – and indeed its leader Getz - are the soul of discretion, stepping back or joining in only after solo introductory verses from Gilberto are sung.
It is fascinating to think of Gilberto arriving in San Francisco with that characteristic reserve that may have been as much shyness as anything. Being collected from the airport, sitting into the limo or something humbler, bringing the songs he knew by rote to this live recording. Songs like the seductive E Preciso Perdoar, the opening track, a Luz/Coqueijo composition which is also the encore and final track on the recording. Gilberto plays a bittersweet, introductory chord to the song that is very like, if not in fact the actual opening chord to his version of the hit Italian pop ballad, Estate (not included here, incidentally.) Then he starts to sing E Preciso Perdoar, the band join in almost on tippy toes, with subtle piano before Getz strikes out boldly on sultry sax.
On Carlos Jobim’s Aguas de Marco or Waters of March, the guitar seems to run ahead of, or behind the voice, essence of that trademark bossa syncopation which Gilberto perfected. Another Jobim number written with Francisco Buarque de Hollanda is Retrato em Branco e Preto also features. On it goes on its gentle way, the quietly confident vocal of Joao, the sympathetic sax of Getz, two guys in the same musical head and heartspace.
Also on release from Resonance is Stan Getz’s Moments in Time, running to 64 minutes and featuring the self-same quartet as above, without the guest contributions of Gilberto. The session was recorded at Keystone Korner in San Francisco the same month of May 1976.
Proceedings slink off to a sensual start with a version of Harry Warren and Al Dubin’s Summer Night, slow and ominous at first. Then the band join in and it becomes this lively thing led by Stan’s liquid tenor. Then without hardly a moments’ ado, Getz ventures into the sultry folds of O Grande Amor, the Jobim/de Moraes standard. Wayne Shorter’s Infant Eyes gets a considered reading, it's a deep, enigmatic and elsuive piece that doesn’t reveal its secret easily. There is a sprightly, light-as-a-feather reading of the John Birks Gillespie tune Con Alma, Stan's sax gently riding along the crest of the wave created by the quartet.
Both of these albums on the Resonance label are strictly for jazz fans who don’t want any kind of hype, thank you, folks who are happy with the tried, tested and true. Recommended.
Paddy Kehoe
