Spin And Groove

Stan Getz had already proved everything he needed to prove by 1982. Forty-something years into his career, three decades past the cool West Coast sound that first made his name, he walked into two studios — one in San Francisco, one in New York — with a quartet he trusted, and recorded what I genuinely think is one of his most honest albums. Pure Getz isn’t showy. It doesn’t announce itself. It just plays, beautifully, and then it’s over, and you want to put it on again immediately.

I’ve been sitting with this record for a while now. Long enough to know exactly which moments I keep going back to.

Stan Getz in 1982

By the early ’80s, Getz had already moved through so many phases — cool jazz, bossa nova (that whole Getz/Gilberto period), fusion experiments in the ’70s that not everyone loved — and arrived somewhere quieter and more certain. His tone had thickened over the decades. There’s a warmth in his later recordings that the earlier ones, brilliant as they are, don’t quite have. Less flash. More weight.

Pure Getz was his first studio album for Concord Jazz, released in 1982 on the CJ 188 catalogue. Recorded in January and February of that year — January 29 at Coast Recorders in San Francisco, then February 5 at Soundmixers in New York — it captures him at a moment when he knew exactly what he was doing and had no need to prove otherwise.

The quartet on Pure Getz matters. Jim McNeely on piano is an exceptional partner — inventive without being intrusive, giving Getz space but never just sitting back. Marc Johnson on bass. Victor Lewis on drums for most tracks, Billy Hart stepping in for three of them. It’s a working unit. You can hear it. The interplay between these four musicians sounds like people who’ve been listening to each other for years, which they had.

The Album Itself

Seven tracks. Around 47 minutes. The repertoire is a mix of jazz standards and compositions by some of Getz’s most significant contemporaries — and that choice alone tells you a lot about where his head was.

The Wikipedia entry on Pure Getz has the full recording credits, but here’s the tracklist with timings, because the running times matter on this record — some of these take their time, deliberately:

Tracks Worth Your Attention

Blood Count is the one. It’s Billy Strayhorn’s composition — written by Strayhorn when he was dying of oesophageal cancer in 1967 — and there’s an emotional weight to it that very few musicians manage to carry without over-playing. Getz apparently had never heard the piece before these sessions. Never played it. He came in, listened, and recorded it. That’s the take you’re hearing.

Three and a half minutes. That’s all it is. But the way he plays it — alternating between these quiet, almost suspended phrases and sudden, darker surges — it’s the kind of performance that makes you stop whatever you’re doing. I’ve probably listened to that track thirty times by now. It gets me every time.

Very Early is Bill Evans at his most introspective, and Getz finds exactly the right register for it. Waltz time. Unhurried. McNeely’s piano work here is genuinely lovely — he understands that less is more, especially behind Getz on a ballad.

Then Tempus Fugit closes the record and completely changes the mood. Bud Powell wrote it, and it moves — fast, urgent, almost a shock after the tender stuff on Side 2. It’s a good reminder that Getz could swing hard when he wanted to. He just didn’t always want to.

Come Rain Or Come Shine runs over eight minutes and doesn’t outstay its welcome for a single second. Which is rare. Most eight-minute jazz ballads start to feel like they’re circling the airport by minute five. This one earns every second.

The Vinyl Pressing

My copy is the original Concord Jazz pressing from 1982 — CJ 188. It’s in good shape. Some light surface noise between tracks, nothing that bothers me. The pressing itself is clean and the dynamic range is noticeably wide. Acoustic jazz from this era, recorded well, tends to sit on vinyl beautifully — no compression issues, no digital harshness. It just sounds like instruments in a room, which is exactly what it is.

If you’re hunting for a copy, Discogs usually has them for reasonable money. Check the condition notes carefully — the gatefold sleeve is prone to seam splits on older copies.

How I Recorded the Video

I recorded the full album playback on my Technics SL-1200 MK3D. The cartridge I was running at the time was an Ortofon DJ Mk1 fitted with an Arkiv stylus — not the typical setup people reach for with jazz, but I’ve found it tracks beautifully on well-pressed records and the Arkiv tip is surprisingly musical for something designed with DJ use in mind. More detail in the high frequencies than you’d expect. Better stylus-to-groove contact on dynamic passages.

The RIAA equalization goes through my Yamaha HA-5 phono equalizer — a humble, underrated little unit that I’ve written about separately. It handles the MM signal cleanly and adds nothing I don’t want. From there, I ran the signal into a Roland GO:MIXER PRO-X, which handles the analogue-to-digital conversion and outputs directly via USB. Video was captured on my iPad Pro 2020 in video mode alongside the audio.

It’s not a complicated rig. Turntable → phono stage → mixer → iPad. But every component in that chain is doing its job properly, and on a record like Pure Getz — where the music is mostly saxophone, piano, bass and drums in a quiet room — the signal path transparency matters. There’s nowhere for a weak link to hide.

Why This Record Belongs in Your Collection

I’m not going to oversell it. Pure Getz isn’t the most famous Stan Getz album. If you’re new to him, people will tell you to start with Getz/Gilberto, and they’re probably right. But this one is the one I keep coming back to. There’s something about the combination of repertoire, the band chemistry, and where Getz was in his career that makes it feel extraordinarily personal.

He was 54 when he recorded it. He had about eight years left. And he sounds completely at peace with who he was as a musician — not chasing anything, not proving anything. Just playing.

That’s a rare thing to hear on a record. And on vinyl, with the warmth and the room noise and the slight hiss between phrases, it sounds even more present. Like he’s actually there.

Put it on sometime when you’ve got the house to yourself. Side 2 especially. Start with I Wish I Knew. See where it takes you.