I guess Getz isn't hip enough in these parts for anybody to bother commenting. The man could play circles around anybody then--and now. I'm not sure that "interpersonal friction" ever affected Getz's work, though. Yes, he was a difficult person (OK, an asshole), but so was Miles, and that never affected his music. When Getz played, I think anything extraneous probably took a back seat, though I'd welcome an example that shows otherwise. Anyway, nice review Derek, and cool to have another great Getz record brought to the fore.

You're right, Paul, "interpersonal friction" between Getz and other players seldom seemed to be a problem, But I can think of two examples when it certainly was and another when it might have been. The two certain ones are with Chet Baker -- on their grim 1958 Verve album (where Baker was just out of it) and on their 1983 European tour, when Baker was in fine form and Getz's ego got so out of joint at the enthusiatic response Chet was getting from audiences that he tried to get Chet thrown off the tour (see Jeroen De Valk's "Chet Baker: His Life and Music" for details). The "might have been" is the Verve Mulligan-Getz album, which sounds to me like there's a lot of tension in the air. I know for sure that Mulligan, a difficult personality himself, tended to rub Getz the wrong way. One year at the Chicago Jazz Festival, Getz and Mulligan were both to appear separately, and Getz was to sit in with Mulligan and Mulligan's rhythm section to pay tribute to the recently deceased Zoot Sims. During the informal afternoon rehearsal for Mulligan's set, Mulligan refused to allot any time for Getz to play with Gerry's rhythm section, even though Getz had showed up for that purpose, as had been planned. Getz was furious as one might expect, and harsh words were exchanged, to the point where festival personnel were concerned that Getz and Mulligan might not play together that evening. Asked about that on the way back to his hotel, Getz said, "Don't worry -- I've played with the fageleh before, and I can play with him again." ("Fagaleh," Yiddish for "bird," is a slang term for effeminate homosexual -- what Getz almost certainly meant by this was that Mulligan could be a very bitchy person, i.e, that Mulligan's behavior, in Getz's view, matched that of the caricatured effeminate homosexual, not that Mulligan literally was gay.)

Larry, how does Gioia WEST COAST JAZZ match up for you with other books of the same subject?

fwiw, the only tension I hear on the Getz/Mulligan joint is the good kind. Those two feed one another to the point that "Too Close for Comfort" takes on a bit of irony. Mulligan in particular is in great form for most of the record.

This reminds me that I need to pick up Getz's FOCUS, a disc I keep putting off to the next time I visit the store.

Thanks, Paul. I’d agree that Getz never really got ruffled musically, but his obstinance & ego certainly had adverse effects on the overall success of some of his sessions. Larry beat me to the punch on citing those two meetings with Chet as persuasive examples. It’s funny, but despite occasional instances of playing past each other, the material collected on West Coast Live (Pacific Jazz) finds them on pretty congenial terms. It’s also nice to hear them plying the Baker/Mulligan pianoless config at length & in decent sound for the time period.

Al, if you haven’t heard it, I’d recommend putting a copy of Sweet Rain in the shopping cart too.

Gioia's West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California 1945-1960 (Oxford University Press, 1992) and Robert Gordon's Jazz West Coast: The Los Angeles Jazz Scene of the 1950s (Quartet Books, 1986) are the only two that come to mind, though I recall that there's also an oral history account of the Central Avenue scene. I read both Gioia and Gordon at one time, and neither seemed to me to be quite the book I wanted -- i.e. one that was as acute as the best critical writing on specific West Coast figures. Lord knows it's a complex and tricky subject -- calling for IMO a good deal of sympathy for the West Coast sensibility (for want of a better term), or at least an awareness of its necessity in the eyes of those who made that music and those to whom it appealed so strongly, but not without ignoring its tendency toward alternate world cleverness and miniaturization (in the name of control? -- thus the alternate world theme again?) Seems to me that blend of pathos and adventurousness in the face of bizarre circumstances that runs through the movie "The Incredible Shrinking Man" captures some of the West Coast jazz aura. Also, Shorty Rogers knew enough about science fiction to give us his "Martians Go Home." And isn't there a West Coast piece titled "Slan"? Don't have the Mulligan-Getz album anymore, so I can't check actuality against memories, but at one point I must have decided that I wasn't likely to listen to it again.

Larry, thanks for those stories. No surprise really, though I didn't know about the bad vibes between Getz and Mulligan. Of course, as Al says, the tension still didn't seem to hinder the music in that case; the Verve date with Baker might be another story.

I've read Gioia's "West Coast Jazz;" time to pick it up again. As for "Focus," I dithered on buying it for ages, and finally picked it up at the blowout sale at Tower a few weeks back. It's fantastic--there's really nothing like it, and Getz's brilliant originality truly shines. In fact, the large canvas of the album gives him room to improvise in a truly "compositional" way. Pick it up, you'll not regret it.

Wow, Paul, I'm surprised a Getz guy like you hadn't checked out Focus until now. We had the LP in my house when I was kid back in the 60s. It was the only jazz recording of my brother's that I enjoyed, I think.

Yeah, I guess the orchestral stuff scared me off. But Bruce Ackley played the "Mickey One" soundtrack for me a few months ago (it's another monstrous one), and that dispelled any notion that I might not like Focus. Better late than never...