Ba-ba-da-ba

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts.

07/04/63 : Jazz Samba - Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd

Rolling Stone gave us a few jazz albums, but we've met remarkably few of them in the charts so it will be interesting to see what this is like. But I'm not expecting to actually like it though...

I guess it's jazzy samba - or maybe samba-y jazz. It's not as challenging as I feared, so I can't say I hated it - but it all felt very musical wallpaper-ish and drifted by without really making the slightest impression on me. I guess "why?" would be my lasting impression of the whole thing - which can't really be considered a recommendation.

We're at #16 in the charts this week on their last week of a three week run - it managed four runs across the year given them seven weeks on the chart in total, with it having peaked at #15 in its very first week. The top five this week were Cliff Richard, Buddy Holly, The Beatles, All Star Festival (which seems very high) and Elvis Presley, with the highest new entry being Brenda Lee (#18).

Wikipedia tells us it's not a jazz samba record at all, but a bossa nova one and it "signaled the beginning of the bossa nova craze in America". Hold on - there was a bossa nova craze?!? Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd both surprised me by being white, as were most of the guys who played on the album, including the fabulously named drumming duo of Buddy Deppenschmidt and Bill Reichenbach. A fun trivia fact that I stumbled across is that Bill's son (Bill Jr) is very much the go-to trombone player for Hollywood, with his IMDB page listing 632 films he's worked on, including Jurassic Park, Schindler's List and Toy Story - and he also played on Thriller (which isn't an album you immediately associate with the trombone). Back to the album, it was very well received critically and got to #1 in the US - so I guess there really was a bossa nova craze!

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a version of this for £4, but if you fancy splashing out then you can pick up a 180 gm reissue from '95 for £223.05 - which seems pretty pricey to me! I guess if you're a bossa nova fan then this is of interest, but I'd have to say it left me very nonplussed.

14/04/63 - Yeah, I quite liked this

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