[Dixielandjazz] Stan Getz Interview reference to mentor Jack Teagarden

[Steve barbone]

Jack Teagarden was an early mentor to Stan Getz. Following is an interesting
bit of information snipped from another jazz chat list, about it. If you
want the full interview, write me off list.

One never knows, do one? :-) VBG

Cheers,
Steve


On another chat list,  "Steve Voce" <stevevoce at onetel.com> wrote

Stan Getz was at the height of his awe-inspiring powers in July 1981
when I spent a morning sunbathing on a private beach at Nice with him, his
girlfriend and his acupuncturist. Stan had just begun his protracted divorce
from Monica (it took about six years). He held the acupuncturist in high
regard and had brought him with him from the States.

'I have these pains in my back, and he gives me relief from them,' Stan
told me. The pains perhaps needed not so much relieving as diagnosing, for
they transpired to be the early manifestations of the lung cancer from which
Stan was to die.

  He was at his most genial that day and we met again in the afternoon to
record an interview for radio. I had my portable Uher reel-to-reel recorder
of the type used by the BBC. It was not until afterwards when I returned to
my hotel and tried to play back the tape that I realized that the batteries
had subsided during our talk. Because the recording had thus slowed down,
the tape when played back soon raced up to an undecipherable gabble. Stan
was about to leave for the States, so there was no chance of doing the
interview again. When I arrived home I tossed the reel to one side.

It lay un-played for a couple of decades.

I have just rediscovered it. Here's what I have managed to extract.  I've
cut out with rigour anything that I can't be certain of deciphering, largely
because the pattern of the conversation is of my suggestions that Stan's
playing has changed over the years and him gently proposing that it hasn't.
 
-------Start of interview ----

I had suggested to Stan that his old boss Jack Teagarden had become set in
his style at an early age and then didn't change his playing much.

'I think I'm pretty much the same as Jack Teagarden actually. My playing
has stayed the same, maybe a little more refined. But it's the music that I
play and the musicians I play with that change. From when I first began to
love music my conception of it didn't really vary. I'm affected by young
musicians that play in my group, and I influence them, of course. I like to
let them develop in their own way as long as they don't go too far out.

'I was 15 when I spent a year with Jack Teagarden. He was so great and
still sounds that way to me. It doesn't have to be a tenor player that
influences a tenor player. Jack showed the world how to approach a wind
instrument and he was a major influence on my playing. He had a wonderful
sound and he was a major stylist. He had a classical sound, too, a beautiful
sound. Trombone players today use all seven slide positions. He rarely moved
out of the second position and he could find any note there.

'He became my guardian. He had to for me to go on the road with him. I'd
left high school at 15 and in America you're not allowed to leave school
till you're 16. |He wanted to take me with the band to St Louis and he said
"I'll adopt him," and that's how we got round it.

'I was 17 when I heard Lester Young. Then when I was 18 I played a year
with Benny Goodman and he was another profound influence. And of course
Charlie Parker and Milers Davis - everyone you hear comes into your frame
without you knowing it. You don't try to emulate. It goes inwards.

-----remainder snipped----