Stan Getz Plays - Stan Getz

Stan Getz Plays is a collection of studio recordings made by tenor saxophonist Stan Getz for Verve Records, released in 1955. The album compiles sessions featuring different small-group configurations, with guitarists Jimmy Raney providing counterpoint on some tracks and pianists Duke Jordan and Jimmy Rowles accompanying on others. The fifteen-track program is drawn entirely from the standard repertoire, including "Body and Soul," "Stella by Starlight," "The Way You Look Tonight," "These Foolish Things," "Stars Fell on Alabama," and "How Deep Is the Ocean?" — ballads and medium-tempo pieces that showcase Getz's celebrated lyrical tone. By the mid-1950s, Getz had established himself as the leading voice of cool jazz tenor saxophone, building on the light, airy approach pioneered by Lester Young while developing a harmonic sophistication and melodic inventiveness that set him apart. His sound on these sessions is characteristically warm and understated, with long, flowing lines that seem to float over the rhythm section. The album captures Getz in the period between his early fame with Woody Herman's Second Herd and the bossa nova collaborations with João Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim that would bring him mainstream pop success in the 1960s.