Tasteful, low-key, and ingratiatingly melodic,
Charlie Byrd had two notable accomplishments to his credit -- applying acoustic
classical guitar techniques to
jazz and popular music and helping to introduce Brazilian music to mass North American audiences. Born into a musical family,
Byrd experienced his first brush with greatness while a teenager in France during World War II, playing with his idol
Django Reinhardt. After some postwar gigs with Sol Yaged, Joe Marsala and Freddie Slack,
Byrd temporarily abandoned
jazz to study
classical guitar with Sophocles Papas in 1950 and
Andrés Segovia in 1954.
However he re-emerged later in the decade gigging around the Washington D.C. area in
jazz settings, often splitting his sets into distinct
jazz and
classical segments. He started recording for Savoy as a leader in 1957, and also recorded with the Woody Herman Band in 1958-59. A tour of South America under the aegis of the U.S. State Department in 1961, proved to be a revelation, for it was in Brazil that
Byrd discovered the emerging
bossa nova movement. Once back in D.C., he played some
bossa nova tapes to
Stan Getz, who then convinced Verve's Creed Taylor to record an album of Brazilian music with himself and
Byrd. That album,
Jazz Samba, became a pop hit in 1962 on the strength of the single "Desafinado" and launched the
bossa nova wave in North America. Thanks to the
bossa nova, several albums for Riverside followed, including the defining
Bossa Nova Pelos Passaros, and he was able to land a major contract with Columbia, though the records from that association often consisted of watered-down
easy listening pop. In 1973, he formed the group Great Guitars with
Herb Ellis and
Barney Kessel and also that year, wrote an instruction manual for the guitar that has become widely used. From 1974 onward,
Byrd recorded for the Concord Jazz label in a variety of settings, including sessions with
Laurindo Almeida and
Bud Shank. He died December 2, 1999 after a long bout with cancer. ~ Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide
