Getz Swinging Under Swedish Skies
Getz at his lyrical peak, swinging hard and loose with a Swedish rhythm section.
The record opens with Stan Getz's tenor sound cutting through a relaxed rhythm section, the saxophone sliding around the melody with a smooth, unhurried ease. Bengt Hallberg's piano keeps things light and bouncy behind him, while Gunnar Johnson's bass and Anders Burman's drums hold a steady, swinging pulse. Tempos stay mostly mid-range, and the mood is warm and open rather than dense or dramatic.
This is Getz doing what he does best. The AllMusic reviewer Stacia Proefrock called it top-notch Getz all the way through, and that holds up: his phrasing rides inside the melodies while still pushing against them, so the standards sound fresh without losing their shape. Nothing here is overwrought. It is a quartet playing well together, recorded in Stockholm in 1955 and released on Verve.
In terms of his career, this is a strong place to hear Getz in a straightforward setting, though it is not the record to start with if you want his most famous work. Listeners new to him would do better with the more widely known sessions, and then come back to this one as a solid, enjoyable example of his lyrical playing in a small-group context.
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