You don’t rehearse jazz to death to get the camera angles. – Stan Getz
A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other’s ideas. – Stan Getz
The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body. – Stan Getz
Let’s face it–we’d all sound like that if we could. – John Coltrane
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
Trane was a very humble man, and I’m personally very happy that he wasn’t just another Stan imitator. Or could you imagine “Crescent” played by one of those Getz clones? Or the other way round: How would Trane have sounded on “The Girl From Ipanema”?
There is always a neurosis attached to saxophone players. They have their different ways of working on their reeds, putting them in little water cans, and filing at them etc. — We trumpeters have our mouthpieces, and that’s it. There is not much you can do about that. You have to live with it, or buy yourself a new one.
Okay, when the mechanics strike … Well, as a trumpeter you put some oil at the valves, and there you go. But the sax players … poor existences … 😉 (Hey, I was only kidding!)
I don’t know what Trane would have sounded like on “…Ipanema”, but I know how Archie Shepp sounded.