Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Laurindo Almeida was born Laurindo Jose de Araujo Almeida Nobrega Neto was born in the village of Prainha, Brazil on September 2, 1917. A self-taught guitarist, during his teenage years, he moved to São Paulo, worked as a radio artist, staff arranger and nightclub performer. At 19, he worked his way to Europe playing guitar in a cruise ship orchestra. While in Paris, he attended a performance at the Hot Club by Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, who became a lifelong artistic inspiration.

Returning to Brazil, Laurindo composed, performed and became known for playing classical Spanish and popular guitar. He moved to the United States in 1947 when one of his songs “Johnny Peddler” became a hit record by the Andrew Sisters. Once in Los Angeles, Almeida immediately went to work in film studio orchestras.

Almeida was first introduced to the jazz public as a featured guitarist with the Stan Kenton band in the late 1940s during the height of its success. His recording career enjoyed auspicious early success with the 1953 recordings now called Brazilliance No. 1 and No. 2 that was widely regarded as “landmark” recordings. Almeida and Shank’s combination of Brazilian and jazz rhythms in which Almeida coined the term “samba-jazz”. He would go on to have a classical solo recording career with Capitol Records beginning in 1954, winning a Grammy at the first awards ceremony.

Almeida won five career Grammys, toured, recorded and performed with the Modern Jazz Quartet, Charlie Byrd, Baden Powell, Stan Getz, Herbie Mann, Larry Coryell, Ray Brown, Shelly Manne and Jeff Hamilton to name a few. In addition he performed on more than 800 motion picture and television soundtracks such as The High Chaparral, Peter Gunn, Funny Girl, The Godfather and Unforgiven. He has been inducted into Fanfare’s Classical Recording Hall of Fame, received the Latin American & Caribbean Cultural Society Award and was awarded the “Comendador da Ordem do Rio Branco” by the Brazilian government.

Guitarist, composer and educator Laurindo Almeida was taught, recorded and performed until the week before passing away on July 26, 1995 at age 77 in Van Nuys, California.

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