IN APPRECIATION : He once had disparaging words for rock ‘n’ roll, but his solo on a pop album years later may have represented some change of heart.

I’d wager that I’m the only Stan Getz fan who, upon hearing the news Friday of the tenor sax great’s death at age 64, immediately reached for a Huey Lewis & the News album.

Oh, I know Getz had gained international renown among jazz fans in the ‘50s with his work in Woody Herman’s band; when I was playing tenor sax in the Rancho Santiago College Jazz Band a couple of years back, I had the impossible job of trying to learn, then emulate, Getz’s famous gossamer solo through the ungodly changes of “Early Autumn,” a chordal maze he negotiated as easy as C-F-G.

And I realize he cemented his reputation with the world at large via his epiphanic bossa-nova work with Joao and Astrud Gilberto on “The Girl From Ipanema” and other ultra-sultry sambas.

Nevertheless, the Getz performance I most wanted to hear was the guest solo he played on an instrumental version of Huey Lewis’ 1987 pop hit “Small World,” a remarkable example of just how much invention a skilled musician could pack into a simple three- or four-chord rock song structure.

Beyond that, it represented something of a vindication for this sax-playing rock ‘n’ roll fan who also happens to like jazz.

It must have been 20 years ago when I heard Getz make some disparaging remark about rock music, something to the effect: “Well, that stuff’s OK when you’re a kid, but one day you grow up, and then you like jazz.”

It struck me then, and for years afterward, as the essence of the patronizing attitude most jazz musicians had (and have) about rock--the exact same antipathy many classical musicians held about jazz when it was new.

It was never clear to me why anyone, especially a musician as talented as Getz, needed to debase another musical form in order to extol his chosen avenue of expression. While jazz usually offers more complexity and intelligence than garden-variety rock, I’ve always found a lot more heart and soul, more primal emotion, in rock than in jazz, especially jazz of the post-’50s cool school that Getz personified.

Still, there was always that monstrously graceful Getz technique and style I could never dismiss.

Over the years, I’d bought some of his straight-ahead jazz recordings and listened in awe. More than once, while feeling my fingers fumble their way up and down the scales on my own horn, I’ve pondered how and where I might get hold of Mephistopheles so we could work out one of those midnight deals that would allow me to play like Getz for just one day, or even an hour.

When his name popped up in the credits on the Huey Lewis album four years ago, however, I didn’t feel anything representing wicked glee; it wasn’t as if Getz had finally seen the light, or that he’d simply sold out for a paycheck. It just elicited a little smile of appreciation--maybe he’d finally discovered the truth in Duke Ellington’s famous comment that there are really only two kinds of music after all: good music and bad music.

Whether Getz ever really came to that sort of acceptance about rock ‘n’ roll, I don’t know. Two things I am sure of: I’m glad I still have his music to listen to. And I’m sad he’s gone.