Creativity Quote by Stan Getz

Getz nails the moment jazz stopped being treated like a timestamp and started being treated like inventory. Calling records "documents" frames an album as evidence: of a bandstand chemistry you can’t fake, of a particular night’s air, of an artist’s evolving voice. A document isn’t supposed to be optimized. It can be rough, idiosyncratic, even inconvenient. It exists to preserve what happened.

"Product" is the opposite word on purpose. It’s corporate language, slippery and bloodless, suggesting packaging, market segmentation, repeatability. Getz isn’t just complaining about money; he’s pointing at a shift in who the record is for. A document serves the music (and, by extension, the listener who wants the truth of it). A product serves the company, the release schedule, radio formats, and whatever trend research says is safest this quarter. The subtext is a warning: when the goal becomes sellability, the studio stops being a place to capture performances and becomes a factory to manufacture outcomes.

The context matters. Getz came up when a great take could be a career chapter, when labels still gambled on singular temperaments. By the time he’s saying this, the industry is consolidating, jazz is being squeezed by rock-era economics, and the LP is increasingly a branded unit with predictable singles and polished "crossover" sheen. He’s defending imperfection as a kind of honesty - and accusing the business of mistaking polish for value.