Creativity Quote by Stan Getz

Getz is pushing back against the tidy myth that art and commerce are natural allies. In one breath he reframes the record not as merchandise but as a self-portrait: something you make to prove you were here, to catch your sound before it evaporates. That word "document" matters. It casts the studio as an archive and the musician as both subject and historian, insisting that the point of recording is permanence, not market velocity.

The subtext is a quiet act of reputation management. Stan Getz was, improbably, a jazz star with genuine crossover gravity: "Getz/Gilberto" moved units like a pop blockbuster, and bossa nova became a lifestyle accessory partly because his saxophone made it feel elegant and exportable. When someone like that says he isn't chasing sales, he's not denying success; he's trying to separate success from motive. It's a way of claiming authorship over a career the industry would love to narrate as product strategy.

"I still feel that way" signals defensiveness learned over time. By the late 20th century, jazz musicians were living through the long comedown: shrinking label support, the rise of rock-era marketing, and a record business increasingly allergic to subtlety. Getz answers with a simple criterion - beauty - that refuses the usual metrics. Not anti-commercial, just not governed by it. The line lands because it sounds like an artist insisting on an inner ledger: the only sales figure that counts is whether the record tells the truth about who you were when you made it.