Artist: Stan Getz

Stan Getz was an American jazz saxophonist. Playing primarily the tenor saxophone, Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, with his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of his idol, Lester Young. Influenced by João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim, he also helped popularize bossa nova in the United States with the hit 1964 single "The Girl from Ipanema". 

Coming to prominence in the late 1940s with Woody Herman's big band, Getz performed in bebop and cool jazz groups. In 1943, at the age of 16 he joined Jack Teagarden's band, and, because of his youth, he became Teagarden's ward. Getz also played along with Nat King Cole and Lionel Hampton. After performing with Jimmy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman, Getz was a soloist with Woody Herman from 1947 to 1949 in "The Second Herd", and he first gained wide attention as one of the band's saxophonists, who were known collectively as "The Four Brothers": the others being Serge Chaloff, Zoot Sims and Herbie Steward. With Herman, he had a hit with "Early Autumn" in 1948. 

After Getz left "The Second Herd", he launched his solo career. Horace Silver's trio was heard by Getz as the guest soloist at the Club Sundown in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1950, and he hired them for touring gigs, gaining Silver his earliest national exposure. A 1953 line-up of the Dizzy Gillespie/Stan Getz Sextet featured Gillespie, Getz, Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, and Max Roach. He moved to Copenhagen, Denmark in 1958, where he performed with pianist Jan Johansson and bassist Oscar Pettiford, among others, at the Club Montmartre. 

Returning to the U.S. from Europe in 1961, Getz recorded the album Focus with arrangements by Eddie Sauter, who created a string backing for the saxophonist. In a March 2021 article for the All About Jazz website, Chris May wrote of it as "one of the great masterpieces of mid-twentieth century jazz," and compared it to the work of Béla Bartók. 

Getz became involved in introducing bossa nova music to the American audience. Teaming with guitarist Charlie Byrd, who had just returned from a U.S. State Department tour of Brazil, Getz recorded Jazz Samba in 1962. Getz won the Grammy for Best Jazz Performance of 1963 for his cover of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Desafinado", from Jazz Samba. His second bossa nova album, also recorded in 1962, was Big Band Bossa Nova with composer and arranger Gary McFarland. As a follow-up, Getz recorded the album, Jazz Samba Encore!, with one of the originators of bossa nova, Brazilian guitarist Luiz Bonfá.