Tempo o' the Day

The recent cyber scandal that's beset the web site Wikopedia arose out of numerous erroneous entries such as the totally-out-to-lunch one to the effect that musician Nino Tempo is, in fact, a pseudonym for jazz saxophonist Stan Getz.

I was prompted to think about that recent brouhaha because today is Nino's birthday. Certainly one of the most interesting figures in the music industry, Tempo is arguably one of the few artists to have carved out successful careers for himself on both sides of the jazz-rock divide (and, no, Quincy Jones doesn't count). This is a fact expanded upon in a story that I wrote about Nino a couple of years ago for the on-line mag Spectropop . Tempo plays tenor sax just about as well as Getz, but did the latter EVER arrange anything as deliriously looney and brilliant as Nino's bagpipe rock arrangement of "I Love How You Love Me" (link for a limited time only) for himself and sister April Stevens? To have been both Don Costa's tenor man of choice AND one of Phil Spector's chief arrangers is quite an (not even dubious) achievement.

To set the record straight one final time, while I have never been in the same room with Stan and Nino at the same time, I can assure you that I have spent time with the latter long after Stan Getz experienced, in the immortal words of writer Eve Babitz, "the last word in your friends having fun without you. "

A great guy!