CHRIS INGHAM QUARTET WITH MARK CROOKs AT THE CUC WINE BAR
Stan Getz was a jazz giant so successful he sold millions of records every time he turned his golden sax towards a microphone. Just a couple of notes identified his unique sound. Chris Ingham and his talented quartet recreate the super seductive world of this brilliant player. And Mark Crook on sublime saxophone IS Stan Getz in liquid lyrical form. The soft minimal commentary came from Chris Ingham with a languid delivery
‘Stan was good. He could have played in any capital city in the world at any time. And after all he might have chosen to tour with ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ until the lights went out. But he didn’t. He always turned to something new.”
In their homage to Stan Getz, this gorgeous - sounding quartet showed a rapt audience what they meant by elegant passionate playing, with a lyrical session of superb skill. Chris Ingham on piano had a honeyed liquidity to take you somewhere warmer, better lovelier – without knowing why or how . A glorious drummer in George Double played with a bouncy verve - two drum solos were so loud and manic they nearly shattered the elegant glasses on the wine bar shelves. Celebrated bassist Arnie Somogyl did that double bass thing of appearing to do nothing much beyond some warm rhythmic sonority but in fact pinned the entire artistry together. The star of course was ‘Stan Getz’ done by Mark Crooks on the world-famous tenor sax. He was superb.
I seldom find myself inclined to dash off and buy a CD in the interval, there is usually so much else to do – but waving away another drink I made sure I was first in line for a copy of ‘Stan’ a mellow moody accomplished recording of the evening’s numbers already rave-reviewed by Getz’ biographer the award-winning Guardian critic Dave Gelly.
Stan Getz began his career at the age of 15, he played alongside the Dixieland bandsman Jack Teegarden. ‘By 16 he had learned a lot of music. He had also become an alcoholic.’ murmured Chris Ingham just before a lustrous number from Stan’s troubled career. It seems that however rackety his personal habits – he added heroin to his addictions for most of his life – there was no recording with a fault in it and no performance was ever less than perfect.
Right from his dreamy “Early Autumn’” Stan Getz went from one group to another (none of them lasted long ) and spread ‘his unmatched facility for elegance, passion and lyricism’ as Chris Ingham described it. But for tunes he turned to others. A partnership with a young session player Getz discovered in the suburbs - Horace Silver - gave him one of his greatest hits, but Stan got all the limelight and the modest Horace no real recognition at all.
It would not be the first time he took a composition from a colleague and made it into a hit. Stan Getz’s discography is epic. There is hardly a famous jazz musician he hasn’t played with and his collaborations with so many of them, Chet Baker, Chick Corea (who wrote ‘Sweet Rain’) and Gerry Mulligan were musical triumphs – even if they ultimately failed as relationships. His wild life got more chaotic. A search for a drug cure took him to Sweden with a new wife. After dreadful suffering there, he got clean and settled down. That was until he heard that none other than John Coltrane had usurped his number one position in American jazz. He packed his bags and headed back to New York to found the Cool School, a version of jazz different from the fashionable modal style of Coltrane and Miles David, but still contemporary enough to make him famous again.
His stellar career goes on. He hits a wave of new style jazz with The Bossa Nova. A collaboration with Astrid Gilberto brings them both to the top of the charts only replaced narrowly by the Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night album. Songs from this short era, the mid sixties, make Getz a cleberity all over again.
The Chris Ingram quartet gives every corner of Stan Getz’s career a chance. Their playing must be close to the confident lyricism that made him a major star at the end of his career he confided in his bandleader “I realize I have offended many people in my life. I think I should make some phone calls”
“Don’t use a payphone” replied his fellow musician.
Flawed, addicted quarrelsome as he was, Getz remains a titan among jazz musicians
“I love to talk off the top of my head. And that's what jazz music is all about”.
