Laurindo

Laurindo Almeida, a brilliant Brazilian guitarist who was equally skilled at both classical music and bossa novas, gained famed originally for his work with Bud Shank in the mid-1950s. However, in the 1960s, his string of LPs for Capitol were generally quite commercial and overly brief. This album is fairly typical in that the material contains a few songs used widely in jazz (such as "Secret Love" and "Here's that Rainy Day"), current pop tunes ("Call Me" and "Goin' Out of My Head") and a few lesser-known numbers. All 11 performances clock in between two and four minutes, as Almeida is joined by an anonymous string section, background horns and rhythm players, all arranged unimaginatively by Lex de Azevedo. The playing is pleasing but very predictable, and at best these soothing sounds work well as background music.

The gracefully aging Brazilian guitarist takes a trio into a jazz club in Pacific Beach (near San Diego) and delivers a lovely, swinging set of transcriptions and arrangements of music from three continents, bracketed by the music of Jobim ("Outra Vez" to start, and a medley of hits to close). While Almeida was not a technical dazzler at age 74, it doesn't matter; his selection of notes, his feeling for the samba, his selection of material, and his fine-tuned timing with his rhythm section (Bob Magnusson, bass; Jim Plank, drums) make this a hugely enjoyable record.

Two acoustic-guitar aces, Laurindo Almeida and Charlie Byrd, who were instrumental (no pun intended) in popularizing Brazilian bossa nova to American audiences (and subsequently, the world), join forces and stretch out on some tunes from, well, Brazil. The languid, sultry rhythms, the immaculate picking, the superbly tasteful backing by Milt Holland and Bob Magnusson–all one would need now is a floral-print shirt, an outdoor cafe (or porch), and one's favorite libation to live a life free from care and woe for at least as long as this disc plays. ~ CDUniverse