Track Listing

1. Desafinado
2. Samba Dees Days
3. O Pato
4. Samba Triste
5. Samba de Uma Nota So
6. E Luxo So
7. Bahia (aka Baia)
8. Daesafinado

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3695 in Music
• Released on: 1997-05-20
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued

Amazon.com essential recording
Guitarist Charlie Byrd was invited to travel and play in Brazil during a cultural goodwill tour sponsored by the Kennedy administration in 1961. He was completely enamoured by the music, and when he returned, he headed straight for the recording studio to make the now classic Jazz Samba. Collaborating with Stan Getz on tenor sax and backed by a band that included Gene Byrd (bass, guitar), Keter Betts (bass), and Buddy Deppenschmidt and Bill Reichenbach (drums), Byrd forged a new and brilliant sound. American record companies were to churn out hundreds of watered bossa-pop albums that have since given the style its lounge-addled image, but this album stands as a tribute to the vitality and adaptability of jazz. --Louis Gibson

Customer Reviews

A Higly subjective tribute to a Great Jazz Album
Want to know what the world was like in 1963, in San Francisco, on sunny afternoons, when all the windows were open on a garden from a small apartment high on the Ashbury Street Hill where Anne and Stan Rice lived and wrote? --- Before the Flower Children came. ---- Then listen to this classic album, the album that defined "jazz" for me more than bossa nova. It was an album that made me want to flee the foggy streets of San Francisco, put on khaki clothes and drift south. It took me well over twenty years to get to Brazil, and the tunes were no longer in my head. Don't know who Stan and Anne are? No surprise. --- They were young writers, dreamers and students. ---- Just wanted to make this review a little reflective of what those moments were like, what this soft sweet, gentle, and sophisticated music brings to mind as I play it on a sunny Sunday in the desert, just wanted to convey the beauty, the pleasure.....and who knows, maybe the innocence? It's making me want to dance.--- Here's to missing you, Stan. Here's looking at you, kid. --- A love is still a love....as time goes by.

ok but not ideal
it's great, i just don't dig Byrd's vibe as much as i do Joao Gilberto or Luiz Bonfa or AC Jobim. i dig the way the brazillian guys did their thing so much more, Getz/Gilberto is a good starter, Jazz Samba Encore, and anything else with those guys playing guitar is worth a listen...

Swirling, beautiful bossa nova-jazz
Jazz is all about being evocative- the greatest examples of the genre have always been the ones that take the listener to another place, that have expressed emotions and ideas with uncanny accuracy. In essence, the best jazz recordings feel like they're coming from somewhere inside you, born out of your dreams and private thoughts and inner longings. Which, I guess, is why I'm so fond of Jazz Samba. The album's warm, lyrical tone instantly paints a portrait of some sun-splashed and utterly peaeful Brazilian beach, a hidden little paradise by a crystal ocean. But there's more to it than that. Jazz Samba's lush textures and instantly hypnotic imagery are downright theraputic. When you're stressed out, angry, or depressed, this is the ideal record to put on; the hypnotic, shuffling bass line that opens "Desafinado" casts a spell that isn't lifted until Getz's gorgeous, velvety solo at the end of "Bahia." The music radiates so much warmth and joy in the meantime, wiping away just about every single one of your worries and fears. It really is a neat trick. Of course, like any great piece of music, Jazz Samba is much more than music. Getz and Byrd make for a formidable team, bridging the gap between jazz's emotive cool and bossa nova's swinging sensuality with irresisitable finesse. The music is simultaneously dreamy and upbeat, hypnotic and energetic, beautiful and propulsive. Basically, it's a great album, and one that belongs in every jazz collection.