A genuinely joyful and rewarding musical experience, the glorious Stan Getz/Gary McFarland album Big Band Bossa Nova holds up well and sounds as new and as exciting, some six decades later, as it did when it was first released back in 1962.
Big Band Bossa Nova was only the second of the tenor saxophonist’s five Creed Taylor-produced bossa nova-oriented Verve discs waxed between 1962 and 1966. Featured here is a tasty selection of tracks by Antonio Carlos Jobim (“Chega de Saudade,” “One Note Samba”), Luiz Bonfá (“Manha de Carnival”) and João Donato (“Bim Bom”) as well as four very fitting McFarland originals.
Recorded over two days in August 1962 and one session in October of that year, Getz and McFarland are accompanied by a top-shelf group of A-list studio musicians, including:
Hank Jones – piano
Jim Hall – guitar
Tommy Williams – bass
Johnny Rae – drums
Carmen Costa, Jose Paulo – percussion
Doc Severinson and Bernie Glow, Clark Terry or Joe Ferrante, Nick Travis – trumpet
Bob Brookmeyer or Willie Dennis – trombone
Tony Studd – bass trombone
Ray Alonge – French horn
Jerry Sanfino or Ray Beckenstein – flute
Eddie Caine – alto flute
Babe Clarke and Ray Beckentein or Walt Levinsky – clarinet
Romeo Penque – bass clarinet
The record was released just in time for Christmas 1962, and it is a true gift. It may be worth remembering that this wasn’t the only Big Band Bossa Nova record that came out that year: there’s also one by Quincy Jones (featuring “Soul Bossa Nova,” the Austin Powers theme), and one each by lounge-meister Enoch Light and Brazilian guitarist Oscar Castero-Neves. I think the Getz/McFarland pairing holds up best as an authentic representation of the music it claims to be.
Maybe no one put it better than DownBeat editor-at-the-time Don DeMichael did in his thoughtful five-star review of Big Band Bossa Nova, which appeared in the December 6, 1962, issue of the magazine:
“This is one of the most musical albums I’ve ever heard. And, please, let’s drop the pigeonhole bit—it doesn’t make a great deal of difference if this music is called jazz, bossa nova, or what.
And Getz. . . . His playing is flowing, lyrical, inventive, beautifully songlike — commonplace words all, and none describe adequately or even come close. (…)
McFarland shares in the artistic success of the album. His writing is peerless. With what he’s shown on this effort and his own adaptation of ‘How to Succeed [in Business] without Really Trying’ released earlier this year, he looms large as an outstanding writer. He knows the proper combination of instruments to achieve certain sounds, and he has the taste not to use all the instruments at hand all the time. His sparing use of the ensemble allows the beauty of the soloist and the material to shine through.
Perhaps McFarland’s mastery of writing in song form explains his taste in orchestration,
for the four songs he contributed (Bataneo, Melancólica, Amigos, and Triste) are much, much more than record-date lines. (…)
But it’s still Getz who is most responsible for the beauty of the album. This record, ‘Focus,’ and ‘Jazz Samba,’ all issued this year, plus the quality of his 1962 in-person performances—well, most of them—lead me to believe Getz is at the height of his creative powers. And he sure wasn’t a slouch before.”
About the cover: The perfectly lovely abstract expressionist painting on the cover of Big Band Bossa Nova is the work of the wholly under-appreciated Puerto Rican painter Olga Albizu (1924-2005). During the fifties, Albizu worked as a secretary at RCA Records in New York City. A friend of hers had hung some of Albizu’s paintings in the RCA offices, where they were discovered by the company’s art director, Bob Jones.
Two of her paintings appeared on the covers of two classical records on the RCA label, issued in the late fifties. Producer Creed Taylor was likely immediately attracted to these covers and commissioned one for the cover of Bob Brookmeyer’s 1961 Verve album Gloomy Sunday and Other Bright Moments (also with Gary McFarland).
Taylor chose one of Albizu’s paintings for Stan Getz’s 1962 breakout album Jazz Samba. Subsequently, Albizu’s warm abstracts became the visual representation of the remaining four album sleeves in Getz’s bossa nova records for Verve. (Resonance Records would also use an Albizu image for the cover of their 2016 release Getz/Gilberto ’76.)
Albizu’s only other Verve cover was the classic Bill Evans album Trio 64, another album which became a hit at the time. Perhaps because the Albizu covers had become so closely identified with Stan Getz’s bossa nova records, very little of her work was seen on record sleeves thereafter.
#McFarlandMonday