Laurindo Almeida

Over an extensive and remarkably fruitful professional life, Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida attained a pervasive presence in popular music that continues to lack full acknowledgment. He bore primary responsibility for the Brazilian and North American fusion known as samba jazz, which later emerged as the popular style bossa nova, performing behind dozens of prominent pop vocalists and enriching the sonic character of countless studio ensembles. Credible accounts credit him with contributions to no fewer than 800 film soundtracks, including The Old Man and the Sea, How the West Was Won, and Breakfast at Tiffany's, along with numerous television scores. He also produced a series of guitar instruction volumes that remain in active use around the world. Esteemed as a master improviser, skilled arranger, and outstanding interpreter of classical works, he bequeathed exceptional recordings of pieces by J.S. Bach, Fryderyk Chopin, Claude Debussy, and Joaquín Rodrigo, together with numerous Brazilian composers such as Heitor Villa-Lobos, Radamés Gnattali, and Alfredo Vianna. His original chamber output includes a concerto for guitar and orchestra.

Laurindo Jose de Araujo Almeida Nobrega Neto entered the world on September 2, 1917, in the village of Prainha near the Port of Santos in São Paulo state, Brazil. His mother, a pianist with classical training, supplied his earliest lessons, and he later cited her devotion to the music of Fryderyk Chopin as a decisive influence. After watching his sister receive guitar instruction, young "Lindo" took her instrument and practiced alone in a barn, learning entirely by ear and adapting the piano passages he had heard his mother perform onto the guitar strings. Years afterward he expressed his preference for the guitar's immediate intimacy over the piano's percussive quality. By age nine he had developed exceptional facility and stood poised to achieve virtuosic command, only to lose his father to typhoid fever. At twelve he moved to São Paulo with his brother, enlisted in the Revolutionary Army at fifteen, and sustained wounds during a civil conflict. While recovering in a hospital he encountered Garoto, the nationally admired guitarist who had come to play for the patients, and within a few years Almeida would perform and record extensively alongside him.

In 1935 Almeida relocated to Rio de Janeiro, formed a partnership with singer and tenor guitarist Nestor Amaral, and commenced radio work while functioning as songwriter, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist at the Casino da Urea. He created folk songs, fox trots, sambas, choros, waltzes, and comedic pieces, collaborating with a wide array of artists that included choro master Pixinguinha. He also amassed 78-rpm jazz discs, particularly admiring Fats Waller's piano approach. At nineteen, in 1936, he secured employment, largely on banjo for audibility, aboard the cruise ship Cuyaba for six months, docking at every European coastal nation from Spain to Germany. During a stop in Paris he witnessed Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli live. In 1941 he appeared at the Casino Copacabana and transferred the next year to the Casino Balneario da Urca, where he met Portuguese ballerina Natalia, or Maria Miguelina Ferreira Ribeiro, in 1944 and soon married her.

Following a northern tour with Carmen Miranda, Laurindo Almeida settled in Los Angeles in 1947, financed by royalties from his composition "Johnny Pedlar," later popularized as "Johnny Peddler" by Jimmy Dorsey, Les Brown, and the Andrews Sisters. He performed in Laguna Beach with Nestor Amaral, José Oliveira, and violinist Elisabeth Waldo, joined variety bills featuring vocalist Dennis Day alongside comedians Victor Borge and Red Skelton, and appeared in films with Jimmy Durante and Danny Kaye. His singular technique of employing only fingers on the strings set him apart from contemporaries who relied on picks. When queried about preferred guitarists, he cited classical virtuoso Andrés Segovia and Oscar Moore of the King Cole Trio, an answer emblematic of his dual allegiance. His studio contributions attracted bandleader Stan Kenton, who engaged and showcased him while incorporating elements of the northeastern Brazilian baiao, samba, and choro; Kenton later wrote "Lament" expressly for him. Almeida remained with Kenton's orchestra until 1952, and Capitol, the band's label, issued his debut solo album, Concert Creations for Guitar, in 1950.

Just as Machito, Dizzy Gillespie, and Chano Pozo infused the late-1940s scene with Afro-Cuban jazz, Almeida's session activity during his initial American decade introduced Brazilian rhythms and melodies to modern jazz. Between 1953 and 1958 he recorded several jazz samba albums with saxophonist Bud Shank that later gained recognition as forerunners of the bossa nova wave. Alongside ongoing sessions with vocalists such as June Christy, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Frankie Laine, Peggy Lee, Robert Mitchum, Connie Russell, Frank Sinatra, Martha Tilton, Mel Tormé, and Kitty White, as well as groups including the Four Freshmen, the Hi-Lo's, and the Platters, he collaborated with bandleader Ray Anthony, pianist George Shearing, multi-instrumentalist Herbie Mann, space age pop figure Juan Garcia Esquivel, Kenton associate Pete Rugolo, and film composer Henry Mancini.

From 1960 to 1967 Almeida released at least nine pop-oriented albums for Capitol in addition to an equal number of classical titles for the same label. Once the bossa nova phenomenon took hold, he supplied an authentic Brazilian voice to recordings by Stan Getz, Shorty Rogers, and Cal Tjader; he also contributed to a Harry Belafonte Christmas album and made a record with the Modern Jazz Quartet, touring Europe with the ensemble. While continuing his association with Mancini, he participated anonymously in Guitars Unlimited and the 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett, performed with bandleader Gerald Wilson, supported Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., and shared a session with trumpeter Rafael Méndez. In 1968 he appeared on the soundtrack for the film Charly, drawn from Daniel Keyes's novel Flowers for Algernon.

In 1970 Almeida joined the musicians backing Phil Ochs on the album Greatest Hits, produced by Van Dyke Parks, who later recruited him for Discover America in 1972. In 1974 he and Bud Shank established the L.A. 4 with bassist Ray Brown and drummer Shelly Manne, subsequently replaced by Jeff Hamilton; the group ultimately issued at least eight albums, chiefly for Concord Records, the label with which Almeida maintained a close affiliation until the end of his life. During the 1980s he performed with his second wife, Canadian soprano Deltra Ruth Eamon, recorded multiple albums with guitarist Charlie Byrd, and led a trio at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. In 1988 he assembled the three-piece Guitarjam featuring Sharon Isbin and Larry Coryell. Almeida consistently championed musicians he admired and offered particular encouragement to fellow guitarists, among them Brazilian Baden Powell and classicist Paulo Bellinati. At seventy-four he recorded the live album Outra Vez with his trio at a club near San Diego, presenting original compositions alongside works by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Enriqué Granados, Thelonious Monk, Ludwig van Beethoven, Irving Berlin, and Antonin Dvorák. Such stylistic breadth typified Laurindo Almeida, who died on July 26, 1995, in Van Nuys, California.