Well, we can all stop pointing fingers at who we think is to blame for the financial meltdown of recent weeks and months. We finally know who the culprit is….Stan Getz.
Here is the story….
The daily Stockholm newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Oct 14 2008 edition, concluded that Stan Getz was partly to blame for the financial crisis now plaguing the world.
The reason?
After an article in the New York Times, “Taking a hard new look at a Greenspan legacy” the Swedish paper concluded that things might have been different had former Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan pursued a musical career.
[EXCERPT from PBS.org page]
ALAN GREENSPAN: Then, I decided that baseball was my thing. And I was actually getting very good, but at the age of 14, I hit a plateau and I never improved.
JIM LEHRER: You were a left-hander, first baseman, right?
ALAN GREENSPAN: I was a left-handed first baseman. I hit the ball pretty well. Then, I got into music, and I became a professional musician for a couple of years.
JIM LEHRER: Played the clarinet…
ALAN GREENSPAN: Clarinet, saxophone, flute, bass clarinet.
JIM LEHRER: Which one did you enjoy the most?
ALAN GREENSPAN: I actually enjoyed the clarinet the best, but I was a fairly good amateur, but a moderate professional. But what really did me in is I had, as an amateur, had to play next to Stan Getz. I was 16; he was 15. I decided, “Do I really want to be in this business?”
JIM LEHRER: Why, because he was so good?
ALAN GREENSPAN: Oh, my god.
JIM LEHRER: Was he really good?
ALAN GREENSPAN: And he was one of the really historic famous sax players. And the best economic decision I ever made in my life was to decide to leave the music business and go into economics……[end]
So there you have it…little did Stan know how much damage he would cause in future years by his fabulous sax playing. And who ever said that jazz players couldn’t make a difference?
