Playing primarily the tenor saxophone, Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, with his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of his idol, Lester Young.

Coming to prominence in the late 1940s with Woody Herman's big band, Getz is described by critic Scott Yanow as "one of the all-time great tenor saxophonists".

Influenced by João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim, he also helped popularize bossa nova in the United States with the hit 1964 single "The Girl from Ipanema".

Stan Getz was born Stanley Gayetski on February 2, 1927, at St. Vincent's Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.

His paternal grandparents Harris and Beckie Gayetski were originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, but had emigrated to escape the anti-Jewish pogroms to Whitechapel, in the East End of London.

Getz worked hard in school, receiving straight A's, and finished sixth grade close to the top of his class.

[5] After performing with Jimmy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman, Getz was a soloist with Woody Herman from 1947 to 1949[2] in The Second Herd, and he first gained wide attention as one of the band's saxophonists, who were known collectively as "The Four Brothers"; the others being Serge Chaloff, Zoot Sims and Herbie Steward.

[8] In the same period, Getz performed with pianists Al Haig and Duke Jordan and drummers Roy Haynes and Max Roach, as well as bassist Tommy Potter, all of whom had worked with Charlie Parker.

He enhanced his profile with his featured performance on Johnny Smith's version of the song "Moonlight in Vermont", recorded in 1952, which became a hit single and stayed on the charts for months.

[13] Returning to the U.S. from Europe in 1961, Getz recorded the album Focus with arrangements by Eddie Sauter, who created a strings backing for the saxophonist.

[14] Getz became involved in introducing bossa nova music to the American audience [2] teaming with guitarist Charlie Byrd, who had just returned from a U.S. State Department tour of Brazil.

Getz and producer Creed Taylor claimed that the music's success was a result of their discovery of the talent of Astrud Gilberto, who had never recorded as a vocalist.

In 1972, Getz recorded the jazz fusion album Captain Marvel with Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Tony Williams, and in this period experimented with an Echoplex on his saxophone.

Getz married Beverly Byrne, a vocalist with the Gene Krupa band, on November 7, 1946, in Los Angeles; the couple had three children.

During the following period, as he was trying to persuade her to come back, he sent her two test pressings, one of which, Jazz Samba with Charlie Byrd, was pivotal to her plans for the next record, Getz/Gilberto.

On November 21, 1962, Brazil sent scores of musicians to Carnegie Hall[21] as a result of the bossa nova craze created by Jazz Samba.

They would become very close friends during the recording of Getz/Gilberto, and Gilberto would even move in with the Getzes, occasionally joined by the children of his own two marriages and his second wife, Miúcha.

As a countermove, Getz filed for divorce from Monica in 1981,[23] but the couple reconciled at his insistence in 1982 and signed a Reconciliation Agreement in which they agreed to jointly buy a house they had found in San Francisco.

[5] Bob Brookmeyer, another performing colleague, responded to speculation Getz had a heart operation with the rhetorical question "Did they put one in?