I'm not done with Stan yet! While I'm sure there were many more records originally in his collection, only two more made it to my inheritance. I must explain that Dad got into Napster as soon as it came out in 1999. There are hundreds of CD's he made using the file sharing network. Many of them were jazz, but he had an obsession with any song or artist that was nominated for a grammy. He was a list maker. He had lists of his movies on VCR tapes and later, DVDs, which included the actors names and any awards they may have been nominated for or won. The same with all of his music. There were also lists about sports, but that is for another blog.

     I tried to organize the vinyl last night and found the two more Stan Getz records. As I looked inside Stan Getz and J.J. Johnson at the Opera House, out popped this piece of paper.

     It looks like an outline, maybe for a class or a review he wrote. It could have been for his radio show. These notes were about J.J. Johnson and there is no mention of Stan Getz anywhere. He did write, "excellent style at Opera House. In mood . . . Puts aside fidgety exercises . . . . Lets fly in lusty, virile fashion." There are some books referenced; Alun Morgan and Raymond Horricks, Modern Jazz and John S. Wilson, The Collector's Jazz: Modern , I found these collector's items on Amazon. Looks like they were bibles of jazz in the 1960's, going back to 1939.  I'll need to ask Mom if these are laying around somewhere. The other side of the paper refers to Leonard Feather, Encyclopedia of Jazz. I'm going with, this was a paper for one of Dad's classes.

     Opera House is fun to listen to. I am still in awe of the improvisation of jazz, especially between Getz's tenor sax and Johnson's trumpet. They play off of each other like mind readers. This was recorded live, so there was no room for errors. Norman Granz says in the liner notes "It's also a problem of the artist being at his best, because they obviously play better at one sitting than another, depending on the circumstances surrounding their particular day." He also says this was the first time Getz and Johnson ever teamed up. How is that possible? I'm a creature of habit and as a musician, rehearsal is mandatory. How can these two guys, probably both on heroin, master a conversation on the first sit down. Maybe the heroin helped. Anyway, Dad drew five stars on the back of the cover.

    I have one more Getz record to listen to. But I am wondering, if I heard another jazzy tenor sax guy play next to Stan, would I be able to tell the difference? When I was going to College for music, the professor played classical songs and we had to guess what they were. That was easy because we knew the composer. I know jazz artists covered each others songs and remade songs to fit their style. I want to memorize their style. I need another tenor sax player, maybe one who played Samba music, to compare to Stan. John Coltrane and/or Wayne Shorter may do the trick.