Charlie Byrd

16 September 1925, Chuckatuck, Virginia, USA, d. 2 December 1999, Annapolis, Maryland, USA. Byrd began playing guitar while still a small child and by the start of World War II was already highly proficient. During the war he met and played with Django Reinhardt and soon after the end of the war he became a full-time professional musician. He played in a number of popular dance bands but at the end of the 40s abandoned ambitions to play jazz and turned instead to the study of classical guitar. After studying under several leading tutors, including Andrès Segovia, he returned to the USA where he formed his own band in Washington, DC. With this group he played jazz but brought to his interpretations many of the techniques and some of the forms of the classical repertoire.

In the late 50s he was with Woody Herman and in the early 60s played with Stan Getz, with whom he developed his interest in Latin American music, thus helping to generate the jazz-bossa nova craze. The duo recorded 1962’s Jazz Samba, which went on to become one of the bestselling jazz records of the 60s. In 1973, he became co-founder, with Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis, of Great Guitars. During the rest of the 70s and on through the 80s he performed regularly on the international club and festival circuit, sometimes as a single, sometimes in duo and often with Great Guitars. In 1992, he recorded with the Washington Guitar Quintet for the Concord Concerto label. Byrd’s jazz work was distinguished by his classical training and his interest in other musical forms. As a jazz soloist he sometimes lacked the fluid swing of such contemporaries as Kessel and Ellis, but he was a masterly technician. He lost his long battle with lung cancer in December 1999. (Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze).