On a winter’s day in Washington, D.C., February 13, 1962, a band of musicians led by guitarist Charlie Byrd gathered to record an album with legendary saxophonist Stan Getz. Little could they imagine that in just three hours, before Getz took the shuttle back to New York, they would have recorded a catalytic album that would have an immediate and lasting impact on the global music scene. Jazz Samba would change their lives and permanently alter the sonic landscape for musicians and music lovers.

The rare combination of saxophone and acoustic nylon string guitars recorded that day in Pierce Hall, All Souls Church, married the new and little known bossa nova music of Brazil with the sound of American jazz. Jazz Samba became the only jazz album ever to reach No. 1 in the Billboard pop chart where it remained for 70 weeks! It spawned a musical craze that inspired everyone from Sinatra to Miles Davis and Elvis Presley to record bossa nova albums and further ignited the careers of Byrd and Getz. Most importantly, the album shone a huge spotlight on the Brazilian originators such as Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto, who were becoming widely known in the Southern Hemisphere. Their irresistible music became the epitome of cool––a perfect musical partner to the emerging modern world of the 1960s.

Stories of how the album came about point to several avenues of inspiration. The Charlie Byrd Trio heard the new sound of bossa nova in Brazil during a U.S. State Department sponsored tour of Latin America in 1961. The trio, featuring drummer Buddy Deppenschmidt and bassist Keter Betts, came back with more than they bargained for––a bunch of bossa nova albums in their luggage plus some first-hand schooling in the percussive rhythms of the bossa nova style. After prompting from his rhythm section and his wife, Ginny, Charlie Byrd brought the project to Stan Getz and Verve Records, with Creed Taylor as producer.

For the recording, Byrd used both Deppenschmidt and Bill Reichenbach on the drums. Betts played the bass, and Charlie’s brother Joe [Gene] Byrd added rhythm guitar and bass. It was an unusual line-up, but the work they committed to tape that February afternoon held a magic that immediately captured the public ear.

Ken Avis, Liner Notes

Veronneau Jazz Samba Project, Veronneau Music, 2012

“I was always curious about why the classic 1962 Jazz Samba album, featuring Stan Getz and the hit "Desafinado" was recorded at the All Souls Unitarian Church on Sixteenth Street. …When a New York session didn't pan out, they decided to do it in D.C., probably at the Jewish Community Center at Sixteenth and Q streets, NW, where Charlie and his group performed regularly. But there was a bus stop right outside the recital hall and the noise would disrupt any recording. All Souls Unitarian Church, further up Sixteenth Street, had a hall [Pierce Hall] with excellent acoustics and no traffic noise."

Rusty Hassan
"Jazz Radio in Washington – A Personal Retrospective"
Washington History: Jazz in Washington, April 2014

Charlie Byrd and his musicians on the album did not have a contract with Verve and they only received standard union compensation for the recording. In 1964, Byrd sued Verve’s parent company MGM, and in 1967 he settled for $50,000 and future royalties on the album.

“In a 1963 Downbeat article, Byrd recalled, ‘Buddy Deppenschmidt deserves an awful lot of credit for his part in the album; he spent so much time working on getting the exact rhythmic thing down.’ Yet despite the huge success of Jazz Samba, Deppenschmidt received all of $150 for his playing on it (he left Byrd's band later in 1962). While Byrd took Verve's parent company MGM to court in 1964 for a fairer share of the album's royalties, Deppenschmidt waited much longer, until 2001, to sue Verve and its then parent, the Universal Music Group; according to the drummer, he reached a settlement with them around 2004. His and Betts' vital contributions to the conception and realization of the album were largely ignored until June 2004, when JazzTimes published David Adler's article ‘Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd: Give the Drummer Some.’”

Chris McGowan
“Blame It on the Bossa Nova”
Jazz Samba’s 50th Birthday”
Huffington Post Arts & Culture, April 17, 2012.