Stan Getz discusses playing bass as a young man.

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Stan Getz on selecting bandmembers.

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Stan Getz discusses his love of New York.

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Q: “You started out playing bass in a high school band or something, is that right?”

A: “In junior high school, the director of the band was also the physical training instructor, and one day in the physical training class, he told us all to stand at ease and he kept walking around and looking at us with his hands behind his back. And his name was William P.F. Walker [ph]. Even then, I know he was an alchy because he always smelled of mint. Yeah, he was hiding it. And after about five minutes, he said to me, "Getz, come with me." And we went upstairs to the tower, which was the band room and he got out his bass fiddle and he said, "This is a bass fiddle and we have a concert in two weeks, and we need somebody to play the bass part on the minuets on E-Flat Symphony by Mozart. And I had been playing harmonica before then and I really loved music. And he started to show me how to finger it and showed me how to play it and he insisted I use the German method of bowing and not the French, which to me was very clumsy. And at that time, I was biting my fingernails. When you press your fingers into the neck, your fingers will bleed, and so I stopped biting my nails and I played at the concert. I played it for about six months, maybe nine months but I wanted a melody instrument, so my father got me a saxophone.”