Stan Getzcharlie Byrd - Jazz Samba +Album Reviews

Perfection

Jon Warshawsky | San Diego, CA USA | 11/07/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"How do you critique the album that started an era? Forty years later, Jazz Samba is still one of the most relaxing, rhythmically pleasing albums made. All instrumental, with the tenor sax of Stan Getz (the guy John Coltrane professed to admire!) and inspired guitar of Charlie Byrd. The entire album was recorded in one session in the performance hall of a Washington, D.C., church, and it puts legions of studio albums to shame.While Desafinado and Bahia are the best known tracks, the album is a seamless experience and it is difficult to single out certain songs as superior. If Getz is one of the masters of the tenor saxophone, it is also hard to separate his proficiency from the effort as a whole -- it truly comes across as a tight ensemble effort. (For a contrast, Duke Ellington's masterful and equally essential Money Jungle released the same year finds the trio of Ellington, Mingus and Max Roach locked in a musical duel on a couple of tracks.)Favorites? I enjoy Samba de Uma Nota So, but every time I reach for Jazz Samba I alway listen to the entire album. At least once. This and Getz/Gilberto belong in every jazz collection."

The soundtrack to my dreams.

darragh o'donoghue | 07/11/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"the perfect introduction to U.S.-filtered bossa nova. I say 'U.S.' because the sound Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz bring to these classics are considerably smoother and broader than originals which can be often raspy or intensely private, but always richly nuanced. Getz's playing is masterfully self-effacing, never virtuosic for its own sake: you might forget he's even there as he conducts intimate conversations with Byrd's often Reinhardt-like guitar, or the quietly insistent rhythms, and yet he is the soul of this beach music that sounds so sad.The best tracks are the old Jobim favourites 'Desafinado' and 'One note samba', in which the familiar melodies are taken through the most intricate, yet never alienating, variations, always obeying that hypnotic bossa nova beat. 'E Luxo Se' is a wide-eyed beauty, beaming the kind of melody that makes you instantly happy no matter how miserable you felt before you heard it. The same could be said for the whole of this marvellous album, perhaps best listened to at night when you're feeling weary, ready to dream..."

Stan and Charlie record first Bossa Nova hit.

rash67 | USA | 07/15/1998

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Great companion to "Getz/Gilberto". Pure Samba without singers.

Charlie Byrd went to Brazil and heard the then unknown Antonio Carlos Jobim. He played Jobim records for Stan Getz, they got Keter Betts and two drummers went to All Soul's Unitarian Church in DC, and created the first Bossa Nova, Samba record in the US - a monster hit with "Desafinado". It changed America, and Jazz forever. For a decade every Jazz player tried to imitate it. The best selling Jazz CD of the decade, that's how good it is. A number one Hit of the Billboard Jazz, Pop and Rock charts at the same time. No other Jazz album, not other album of any type, not even "Kind of Blue", even "Getz /Gilberto", has ever achieved that.

Listen to subtle polyrhythym drumming from Deppenschmidt & Riechenbach which add an authentic Carnivale touch. There is more traditional Samba polyrhythm on this CD than any of the subsequent Getz Bossa Nova CD's and most BN cd's by subsequent artists who tried to capitalize om the BN craze. Hear this on "E Luxo So".

Stan floats and soars in "Desafinado" (Portuguese for "offkey"), "E Luxo So" and "Bahia". Most authentic Brazilian Getz Samba recording.

Hear Stan make each note 3-Dimensional blue fog note count."

Beautiful!, Lyrical!! Soaring!!! One of the ten best Jazz recordings ever made."

from my 1998 review

2006 update

Yes it's true, as wonderful a sax man as Getz was, and I think he was the best, he was cheap. He got all the credit and most of the money for this album and he and Byrd fought over the rights to it for a decade in the courts.

Nevertheless its' wonderful. - maybe that's why they fought

This CD is a perennial favorite that never grows old.

Jobim had admired Getz Cool, melancholy Sound for a decade and had actually modeled his new toned down, slowed down Samba sound, called "Bossa Nova", on the Getz sound before they even met!

For people who like Bossa Nova but don't like Astrud Gilberto's singing on "Getz/Gilberto", this is the ideal album.

see my list of Best Cool albums and Best Getz.

Highest recommendation! I hope that when I eventually die, (no time soon) at my funeral someone will play the soaring, always happy "E Luxo So" to send me on my way!"

Beautiful & breezy

G B | Connecticut | 08/17/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is the album that kicked off the bossa nova craze in the US over 40 years ago. In the hands of lesser musicians this style could degenerate into lightweight cocktail music, but not here. Stan Getz's feathery, soft saxophone playing weaves beautiful melodies over the swaying, dancing Brazilian rhythms. Charlie Byrd's is terrific on the acoustic guitar and the tunes will get stuck in your head after 3 spins or less. The only possible complaint is the short playing time -- a mere 35 minutes. This recording isn't as well-known as Getz/Gilberto but is just as essential. If you like Getz's playing, be sure to get some of his other, non-bossa-nova recordings as well. (One more caveat: those looking for more vocals by Astrud or Joao Gilberto will be disappointed -- this CD is entirely instrumental.)"

Tenor Saxophone and Acoustic Guitar Duets For All Seasons

Tim McCoy | Etiwanda, California United States | 02/29/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Go to your nearest music store or get on the Net and buy this album right now. Skip dinner, skip the latest episode of "Survivor," skip tonight's poker game, do yourself a favor, go buy this album. Incredible as it seems to me now, this is the 3rd album I ever bought back in 1963, after Martin Denny's "Quiet Village" and Joan Baez's "In Concert," and it just blew me away. I just played this album about an hour ago and it still takes my breath away because it is so astonishingly beautiful, melodic, rhythmic and completely original. Jazz Samba is firmly ensconced in my own personal Pantheon of the greatest pop albums ever made. I mean right there with Sergeant Pepper, Fanfare for the Common Man, Graceland, September of My Years, Kind of Blue, Court and Spark, Highway 61 Revisited, Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, Waylon Jenning's Dreamin' My Dreams, Gordon Lightfoot's Saturday Concert, and Eric Clapton's Unplugged. No matter what kind of music you like---classical, symphonic, swing, country, rock, cool jazz, Dixieland jazz, calypso, soul, hip-hop, bluegrass, folk---you are going to love this music and the bossa nova form this album put on the contemporary musical roadmap. It is interesting to keep in mind that Jazz Samba and the sweet guitar music of Charlie Byrd and rich breathy vibrato of Stan Getz's saxophone caught the public's attention so thoroughly when it was released that it was the number 1 album, across all genres, for several weeks in 1962. So, get set for one of the most memorable musical experiences of your life. You'll be hearing a most unusual marriage of tenor saxophone with acoustic guitar, with the two congenial partners exchanging the most engaging musical conversations imaginable, weaving in and out of each other's solos with immaculate beauty and terrific melodies you'll be humming for the rest of your time on this alternately amusing and perplexing little planet. Let the rhythm of Brazil, the great songwriting of Antonio Carlos Jobim and other bossa nova tunesmiths, and American jazz virtuosity waft thru your home or car stereo and let Jazz Samba introduce you to messrs. Byrd, Getz, Gene Byrd (bass, guitar), Keter Betts (bass), Buddy Deppenschmidt (drums) and Bill Reichenbach (drums). In addition to all of its other attributes, this album has an extraordinary intimacy about it; you feel as though you're sitting right in the middle of this small 5-piece band as they trade off solos with each other. Their warm, breezy, haunting musicianship will make you a bossa nova fan for life, and I genuinely believe that you will know that you have experienced an archetype. There are other great, great bossa nova albums from this era, among them "Getz-Gilberto," "Black Orpheus," "Jazz Samba Encore," "Bossa Nova Pelos Passaros," but this is the one that shook the world. Forty+plus years later, let it shake yours. Among the great attributes of this album is that it possesses two of the loveliest, most unforgettable songs ever recorded: "Desafinado" and "The One Note Samba," both of which were written by Brazil's great composer, Jobim. This gifted songwriter (lovingly called "Tom" by the Brazilians) died in 1994 at the age of 66; Stan Getz died in 1991 at the age of 64; Charlie Byrd died in 1999 at 74 (one month shy of seeing the new millenium). But they live again through this timeless album, which by the way, was recorded in ONE DAY day on February 13, 1962, in Pierce Hall at the All Soul's Unitarian Church in Washington, D.C. Once hearing Jazz Samba, you will agree that this hall was clearly an acoustically-warm, perfect venue for making a ground-breaking album. An excellent sanctuary for Stan, Charlie and friends to get together to materialize a music form that was very new to American ears and something that still sounds like a unique type of gospel to me."

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