Stan Getz — Getz/Gilberto #2

The side A quartet tracks show Getz settling into the bossa nova groove with more confidence than he had on the first album. By 1963 he had already recorded Jazz Samba and Jazz Samba Encore, and the hesitance that occasionally surfaced on those records is gone here. On Meditation, he phrases behind the beat with the ease of someone who has internalized the rhythm rather than studied it, and his tone stays warm without the insistent vibrato that could make his earlier bossa nova work sound like a tourist translating a phrase he didn't quite understand.

Jobim's piano is as minimal as it was on the first record, contributing only what the harmony needs and leaving space for Getz to stretch. Neto and Banana provide the same light, rolling pulse that anchored the original sessions, never pushing and never dragging.

The problem is the material. Meditation and Samba Da Minha Terra are legitimate Jobim compositions that hold their own, and the former gives Getz one of his most lyrical statements on either Getz/Gilberto album. But Stan's Blues is exactly what the title says: a twelve-bar head that could have been recorded in any context and serves no purpose beyond filling time.

Here's That Rainy Day, the Jimmy Van Heusen standard, is competent and lifeless, a concession to listeners who wanted familiar repertoire instead of another Brazilian theme. Grandfather's Waltz has a lilting melody but no development, and it fades into background music within thirty seconds.

Side B is Gilberto alone, the result of tension between him and Getz that led producer Creed Taylor to separate them. According to the fact sheet, Gilberto found Getz's rhythmic approach too hard and told Jobim to translate an insult as a compliment. The solo performances are elegant in the manner of Gilberto's early albums, but they suffer from the reduction.

Rosa Morena and Um Abraço no Bonfa are samba themes that benefit from the intimacy, and Gilberto's nylon-string guitar and near-whispered vocals create the same hypnotic effect that defined his work on Chega de Saudade. But Bim Bom, one of his own compositions from his 1958 single, is a miniature that works as an album closer but not as a statement, and O Pato, while charming, is a novelty.

The two halves never cohere because they were never meant to. This is two EPs on one LP, and the seams show.

The album peaks early and never recovers the momentum. Meditation, the second Jobim theme on side A, is the clear high point: Getz's solo unfolds with patience, and the interplay between his saxophone and Jobim's piano has the conversational ease that made the first Getz/Gilberto worth releasing. After that the side sags.

The blues and the standard are professional but anonymous, the kind of tracks that fill out a set list but not an album, and by the time side A ends the argument for this record existing has already collapsed.

Side B starts over with a different aesthetic. The solo Gilberto performances are quieter and more introspective, but the lack of a rhythm section makes them feel like demos rather than finished statements. The back half has melodic appeal, but it drifts rather than builds, and the pacing never lifts.

The two sides together run just over thirty minutes, and even that feels padded. The division of the album reflects the division in the studio: Getz wanted one thing, Gilberto wanted another, and Taylor gave them each half an LP to make their case. Neither half justifies the whole, and the sequencing makes no attempt to disguise the compromise.

This is the weakest entry in Getz's bossa nova run, and it ranks below the original Getz/Gilberto by a wide margin for the obvious reason that it is the outtakes from that session released as a product. The first album was a landmark because it brought together three master musicians at the peak of their powers and gave them material worthy of the collaboration. This one is what was left in the vault after the landmark was finished: decent performances of secondary themes, filler to meet a running time, and solo recordings made to avoid further conflict in the studio.

Listeners who come to this record hoping for a sequel to the first Getz/Gilberto will find a few moments that justify the search—Meditation earns its place in the Jobim catalog, and the solo Gilberto performances on side B are as refined as anything on his early albums—but they will also find that the album as a whole adds nothing to what the collaboration already accomplished. For Getz completists and listeners curious about the material that didn't make the original cut, this is worth hearing once. For anyone else, it is skippable.

The first Getz/Gilberto said everything this partnership had to say in thirty-three minutes of focused, purposeful music. This one says that even a great session runs dry when you go back to the well a second time. Start with Meditation and Samba Da Minha Terra, skip the blues and the standard, and then move on to the original Getz/Gilberto if you haven't already, or to João Gilberto's Chega de Saudade to hear where the bossa nova aesthetic came from before Getz arrived.