January 21–28, 1999

music

Return Flight

Jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd goes back to his bossa nova roots on My Inspiration.

by a.d. amorosi

Long before Antonio Carlos Jobim and Stan Getz had a hit in 1963 with "The Girl from Ipanema," guitarist Charlie Byrd was teaching Getz about the delicate intricacies of Jobim's bossa nova that he'd picked up while traveling through Brazil. For decades, Byrd has mined bossa nova and Brazilian folk music the way a blues man does the Delta, discovering a million new ways to swim it.

With his new album, My Inspiration - Music of Brazil (Concord Picante), the gentlemanly guitarist from Virginia, who now lives in Baltimore, may just "get it right" this time. Getting it right means a lot to a man who's traveled the world to study under Django Reinhardt and classical guitarists Sophocles Papas and Andres Segovia.

"Django was a genuine gypsy, a free spirit who always did the unexpected," laughs Byrd, 73, about playing with the dexterous jazz guitarist in 1945, while stationed in the army in Paris.

Byrd remarks that Reinhardt, like his next teacher, the more formal instructor and classical genius Segovia, was generous with his craft and explanations of his unique fingerpicking, a way of playing Byrd adopted long before '45.

"I think it was the hardiness and vigorous way Django played that most fascinated me about his sound. He put a lot of physicality into each note, a must then without amplification. I incorporated a lot of what he did into my playing like the 3/4 note chord tremolos you'd play on a mandolin."

Byrd was mesmerized by Segovia's ringing tones and studied with the master in Italy in 1954.

"I had never heard such lovely sounds before," recalls Byrd. "He hardly used any vibrato and allowed the gut strings to vibrate freely. It was an amazingly different technique than playing with a plectrum."

Byrd was so impressed with Segovia that he considered a classical career for a short time.

"But playing like Segovia means you're not doing anything else," he laughs. "I came to my senses."

No sooner than the lightbulb went off, he started hanging and playing at jazz bars in New York where Afro-Latin jazz players like Machito were working with bop barons like Dizzy Gillespie. When Cubano jazz became a hot style, Byrd found himself performing gigs with lots of Cuban musicians.

Byrd was well acquainted with the Latin sound when he found himself stationed in South America and Brazil, playing guitar for a State Department-sponsored tour.

"When I heard the bossa nova for the first time, I realized immediately that it was a music of the guitar. Joao Gilberto, Dori Caymmi. Their sound is one that can't be substituted in a bossa rhythm section."

By 1960, bossa nova took over Byrd's jazz style. Taking a chance that audiences and players would adapt to the genre's soft textures and gentle sensual rhythms, Byrd made Brazilian folk music his passion.

"Once you discover this, like a jazz player does its varied forms from ragtime to the avant-garde, I discovered the many colors and sounds of Brazil."

On My Inspiration, for the first time ever, Byrd utilizes an all-Brazilian rhythm section, Trio da Paz, throughout the entire record. When I ask what took him so long, he answers: "It musta slipped my mind."

While Byrd gently weeps his way through traditional Brazilian folk tunes like "Violao Quebrada," it's Byrd's tackling of modern Brazilian songwriter Mario Adnet that excites him. Byrd also enlisted the haunting voice of the songwriter's sister Maucha, who adds a forlorn sense of drama to the record.

Yet the most poignant part of Inspiration is hearing Byrd go back to the well from which his dedication first sprung, to the sound of sandy shores and windy nights that is Jobim. Byrd strums Jobim favorites "Esperanca Perdida" and "So Danco Samba" with the familiarity of a lover.

"His songs are always worth playing again," says Byrd of the man whose material he and he alone introduced to the States. "And I think revisiting it is always a nice trip."

The Charlie Byrd Trio, with Philadelphia bassist Dylan Taylor and drummer Scott Robinson, will play on Friday and Saturday, Jan. 22 and 23, at 8 p.m., $15, New Market Cabaret, 415 S. Second St., 215-627-9801.