Jazz And Samba

A celebration of the birth of Jazz and Samba.   This program was originally produced by Sid Gribetz in July 2012.  The emphasis of the show was the 50th Anniversary of the Bossa Nova craze and the proliferation of jazz records throughout 1962 with the samba influence.    On February 13, 1962, Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd met in Washington D.C.’s  All Souls Church for a casual record session.  The resulting album, “Jazz Samba”, with its single “Desafinado”, became THE big hit record of the summer of 1962 and ignited a bossa nova craze in jazz and popular music.  Within months, jazz artists from Coleman Hawkins to Gene Ammons to Cannonball Adderley all recorded samba records, and the wave would crest with several more efforts from Byrd and Getz, culminating with the all time hit “The Girl From Ipanema”.   To be sure, for several years before, Gilberto and Jobim and their compatriots had already brought jazz and other outside sensitivities to native Brazilian rhythms to forge the new bossa nova style.  The movie Black Orpheus, with its thrilling yet haunting soundtrack was a landmark.  Additional early impact was the efforts by musicians such as Bud Shank and Dizzy Gillespie, who had already spread the samba gospel to a wider audience.  Charlie Byrd, with his group of bassist Keter Betts and drummer Buddy Deppenschmidt, returned from a winter 1961 State Department tour of South America fully imbued with the bossa nova sound.  They imparted their new wisdom on the “Jazz Samba” album, and the fuse was lit.   Our radio broadcast celebrated that fabled summer of 1962, when bossa nova was in the air, and we played many of the "jazz and samba" records of that year, for your sultry summer enjoyment.