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Laurindo Almeida Featuring Bud Shank
"Brazilliance"
I can still remember, and vividly too, the impression this music made upon me when it was first released by Pacific Jazz Records more than 30 years ago. West Coast jazz was in the first flower of its creativity; Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Shorty Rogers, Art Pepper, Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker and others were breaking new ground, or at least reinterpreting the jazz past in interesting, original ways, and each month, it seemed, we
jazz fans were treated to one or more new musical delights from this nascent center of jazz creativity. Bud Shank was just beginning to emerge as one of the more dependably creative young performers on the Los Angeles scene, with a lilting, immediately recognizable
alto sound that like several of his models had little to do with the almost inescapable influence of Charlie Parker, the then reigning jazz saxophonist. Still, the few recordings
Shank had made several with Shorty Rogers, and the Pacific Jazz sessions with trombonists Bob Enevoldsen, Stu Williamson and Maynard Ferguson-despite the assurance and decidedly lyrical bent of his playing, marking him as a player to watch, left many of
us, I think, totally unprepared for the striking power and sheer loveliness of the music he created in tandem with Laurindo Almeida, the first fruits of which are offered in this marvelous, deeply satisfying album.
Make no mistake, The Laurindo Almeida Quartet (as the album was first titled) was something of an experimental album for its time, representing as it did the first successful fusion of American jazz and traditional Brazilian music. Most of us jazz fans of the time had heard nothing like it before; few Americans in fact had even heard any authentic Brazilian folk-based music of the sort that Almeida brought to the sessions. So, it was ear-opening, not only in terms of the song materials and the easy, infectious rhythms
underlying them, but also in light of the soaring, incandescent clarity of Shank's playing, revealing for the first time the full extent of his fast-maturing conception, which meshed flawlessly with Almeida's commanding, effortless-sounding acoustic guitar and the beguiling arrangements he had fashioned for the group.
On its release the album caused something of a quiet sensation in jazz circles. It was widely praised in the jazz press for the freshness and audacity of its conception, the all-but-perfect way the two musics had been brought into beautiful, fruitful alignment no
less than the flawless playing of the principals. Along with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, the Chet Baker Quartet and the John Lewis-Bill Perkins Grand Encounter sessions, the Almeida-Shank collaborations on this album take their place among the classic Pacific Jazz recordings.
Now, it should not be forgotten that in previous years jazz had incorporated Latin rhythms in various ways, Dizzy Gillespie's and George Shearing's efforts in these directions being good examples of the successful use of Afro-Cuban rhythmic elements in a jazz context, and others could be cited as well. However, what distinguished the present performances from these and like efforts was the fact that the Almeida quartet had taken a subtly different tack, in essence approaching matters from the other side, laying in jazz over what was essentially a
program of authentic Brazilian music, retaining the character of the latter while adding to it the
colors, inflections and improvisational flavor of jazz. "The idea of putting samba and jazz together was different," Almeida recalled, adding, "As long as samba is in 2%, and jazz is a la
breve, why not put the two together?" In consequence, the results were more than subtly different from those earlier attempts at this sort of fusion.
Shank's graceful contributions notwithstanding, Almeida was the real linchpin of this musical experiment. After all, it was he who brought the bulk of the repertoire to it, crafted the arrangements used by the group and who, as a Brazilian musician with wide familiarity with his country's native music, was the ultimate arbiter of the musical authenticity of the
group's approach. A native of Sao Paulo, where he was born in 1917, Almeida at the time of
these recordings was highly regarded as a classical guitar virtuoso who had made a number of recordings of this music (as he continued to do in subsequent years). Paralleling his classical activities the guitarist had had extensive experience in Brazilian popular music as well,
performing on radio and in nightclubs in Rio de Janeiro. American listeners first became aware of his formidable talents in 1947 when he came to the U.S. to join the Stan Kenton Orchestra as a featured soloist, following which he involved himself in studio recording
activities and led various groups in the Los Angeles area where he settled.
The present group was an outgrowth of a trio the guitarist had been leading in late 1952 at the 881 Club in Hollywood. Replacing the group's regular bassist, the veteran Harry Babasin began performing duets with Almeida on Brazilian choros, adding to their baiao,
butuque and samba rhythms the syncopations of jazz. This evolved gradually, the bassist
recalled, for "during the evening Laurindo would play several sets of solo guitar, and rather
than just hang around the bar or take a walk, I found myself joining him on bass." At Babasin's
urging, Almeida soon joined him in a series of rehearsal sessions with Shank, and drummer
Roy Harte in the back room of the latter's Drum City, an instrument store in Hollywood. "We
rehearsed for about a month," Harte recalled. "It was Harry's idea, and his bass parts provided
the lead rhythmically."
"Actually, we rehearsed for our own education," he continued, "to see whether Laurindo
would swing. Of course, we all knew how great he was as a formal guitarist, but we wanted
to find out if he could really swing in jazz. The whole thing was to combine the baiao beat
with jazz. That was what we were aiming at a jazz baiao [because] the samba was considered corny then. Our main purpose was to achieve the light, swinging feel of the
baiao combined with jazz blowing. In order to get this, I played brushes on a conga drum,
not a snare drum. This gave it a light feeling. Actually, I was trying to play with my right hand
to Bud's jazz blowing, and with my left I was putting in the samba color with Laurindo's playing."
Once the four musicians had worked out a satisfactory approach to, in Babasin's words,
"a combination of samba rhythm and jazz, played with a free, light, loose feeling," and
developed a repertoire of sufficient breadth, they approached Richard Bock, then serving as
talent booker for The Haig, one of Los Angeles' leading jazz clubs of the period, and were
engaged to perform there one night a week, during which they tightened up their collective
performing skills, refined their arrangements and playing formats and expanded their repertoire further. Bock, who had established Pacific Jazz Records less than a year earlier and was experiencing great success with the first recordings of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, which also
had come into being at The Haig, quickly agreed to record the group. In April of 1953, at two
separate sessions held a week apart, the Laurindo Almeida Quartet undertook its first recordings.
The results were initially released on two 10" Pacific Jazz albums, LP 7 and LP 13, and
were later combined onto a single 12" disc, LP 1204. The alternate version of Speak Low,
included here, was first released on the compilation album Jazz West Coast, Vol. 1 (JWC 500).
As you'll hear, the results were uniformly felicitous, and the experiment must be counted
an unqualified success. Not only had Almeida selected the repertoire wisely (only the
standards Stairway To The Stars and Speak Low, jazz composer Dick Hazzard's Hazardous
and Babasin's Noctambulism deviate from the all-Brazilian cast of the remainder of the song
program) but had devised a series of arrangements that while remaining faithful to the authentic
character of the folk-based song materials, skillfully integrated the jazz elements that
Shank, Babasin and Harte brought to the music, framing their talents perfectly in short, at least
in the context of this music, where real individuality of expression was subsumed by the
larger goals. The resultant synthesis, and that's what it truly is, is thoroughly, winningly graceful
in character, the sinuous rhythms and charmingly lyrical qualities of the Brazilian song materi-
als, unfamiliar and unobtrusively "exotic" to American listeners of the time, always uppermost
in Almeida's mind, preserved in, even dominating the guitarist's controlled, lucid, elegant
settings, most of which had been fully worked out in virtually all of their component parts,
the only exceptions being Shank's warm, lucent improvisations.
Despite the beauty and originality of the music it created, a prior commitment prevented
the group's Haig engagement being extended. And while Shank, Harte and especially Babasin felt they had created a worthwhile jazz offshoot of real attractiveness and commer-
cial potential, and wanted to persevere with it by seeking playing engagements outside the
Los Angeles area, the guitarist demurred. Having gained a solid toehold in the city's film and
commercial music recording studios and also desirous of continuing with his career as a
concert guitarist, Almeida decided to remain in Los Angeles. Unable to find a replacement of
anywhere near his abilities, the three Americans reluctantly disbanded and went their separate
ways. Here ends its first chapter, with the next, five years in the future, to be taken up in the second volume of the Brazilliance recordings.
-- Pete Welding
(album notes)
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Laurindo José de Araújo Almeida Nóbrega Neto (2 September 1917 – 26 July 1995) was a Brazilian guitarist and composer in classical, jazz, and Latin music. He was one of the pioneers in the creation of bossa nova. Almeida was the first guitarist to receive Grammy Awards for both classical and jazz performances. His discography encompasses more than a hundred recordings over five decades.
Laurindo José de Araújo Almeida Nobrega Neto was born in the village of Prainha, Brazil near Santos in the state of São Paulo.
Born into a musical family, Almeida was a self-taught guitarist. During his teenage years, Almeida moved to São Paulo, where he worked as a radio artist, staff arranger and nightclub performer. At the age of 19, he worked his way to Europe playing guitar in a cruise ship orchestra. In Paris, he attended a performance at the Hot Club de France by Stéphane Grappelli and famed guitarist Django Reinhardt, who became a lifelong artistic inspiration.
Returning to Brazil, Almeida continued composing and performing. He became known for playing both classical Spanish and popular guitar ...
Clifford Everett "Bud" Shank Jr. (May 27, 1926 – April 2, 2009) was an American alto saxophonist and flautist. He rose to prominence in the early 1950s playing lead alto and flute in Stan Kenton's Innovations in Modern Music Orchestra and throughout the decade worked in various small jazz combos. He spent the 1960s as a first-call studio musician in Hollywood. In the 1970s and 1980s, he performed regularly with the L. A. Four. Shank ultimately abandoned the flute to focus exclusively on playing jazz on the alto saxophone. He also recorded on tenor and baritone sax. His most famous recording is probably the version of "Harlem Nocturne" used as the theme song in Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. He is also known for the soundtrack recordings with his group to the surfing films of Bruce Brown in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and for the alto flute solo on the song "California Dreamin'" recorded by the Mamas & the Papas in 1965. ... Bud Shank was born in Dayton, Ohio, United States. ... ... -- Wikipedia
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Great Instrumental Music