Biography
A major figure in American jazz in the 1950s and 1960, jazz saxophonist Stan Getz was a key figure in both the cool jazz and bossa nova movements of the period, and recorded such enduring hits as "The Girl from Ipanema," among many other tunes, during the course of his four-decade career. Born Stanley Gayetzky to Ukrainian parents in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on February 2, 1927, he was raised in New York City, where he began playing saxophone in school orchestras. Getz became proficient enough to turn professional at the age of 16, when he toured with trombonist Jack Teagarden; stints with Stan Kenton and Benny Goodman preceded his first taste of stardom as one of the Four Brothers, which included Zoot Sims, Herbie Steward and Serge Charloff and served as the saxophone section for Woody Herman's Second Herd. When Getz scored a hit with Herman on the single "Early Autumn" (1949), he left the group for a solo career. As a bandleader in the 1950s, Getz played with an array of remarkable sidemen: he discovered the pianist Horace Silver, built quintets around Roy Haynes, Al Haig and Tommy Potter, who had backed Charlie Parker, and recorded and toured with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach and Ray Brown. In the midst of such creative success, Getz also struggled with personal issues, including an addiction to morphine that upended his marriage to singer Beverly Byrne and sent him to Europe for recovery. When he returned to the U.S. in the early '60s, Getz commenced on an exploration of Brazilian music that helped to launch a global interest in bossa nova; the period yielded some of the biggest hits of his career, including the Grammy-winning "Desafinado" and "The Girl from Ipanema" with Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joao Gilberto and vocalist Astrud Gilberto. When the bossa nova craze faded, Getz explored a variety of showcases, from collaborations with vibraphonist Gary Burton and Bill Evans to experiments in fusion with Chick Corea and Tony Williams. In the 1980s, Getz served as artist-in-residence at the Stanford Jazz Workshop and underwent a stringent diet to combat liver cancer. The disease went briefly into remission, spurring Getz to tour and record with artists like Herb Alpert, Kenny Barron and Abbey Lincoln. The revival proved short-lived: a renewed bout of cancer claimed his life on June 6, 1991, ending a remarkable and far-reaching career in jazz.
