Baden Powell: One Of The World’s Great Guitarists

I used to think my parents were rather lame when it came to rock and roll. In 1988, I bought the Jimi Hendrix Smash Hits CD (one of my first CDs) and played it for my dad, thinking that he grew up with this stuff. He sorta recognized. I brought home Led Zeppelin IV and jammed it, and he didn’t know what it was. He knew some Stones and the Beatles, etc., but there was this gap in rock knowledge that I always found frustrating, particularly as I went through my eighth-grade classic-rock phase. My mom knew even less than my dad! I’m sure I did lots of eye-rolling. Looking back on it now, I realize I gave my parents short shirft. They were actually cooler than most. They spent 1969-1975 living in Brazil, and during their first three years there they lived in the small town of Pirapora in the state of Minas Gerais, not exactly a haven for popular culture. Being Peace Corps volunteers, they immersed themselves in the local culture, eschewing American sounds for Brasilian ones. One of the musicians they really took to was Baden Powell.

My dad picked up a guitar in Brazil, a beautiful handmade thing made of unusual woods and a really wide neck that never tapers. He used to play bossa nova and samba songs for us when my sister and I were kids, and it never dawned on me that not every dad does this. He’d play Baden Powell songs, but he was more of a chord-strummer than a finger-picker, so I was pretty astounded when I heard the actual Baden Powell records. To call him a virtuoso is a gross understatement. The guy is Django Reinhardt good, and on sheer musicianship alone the records succeed. But there’s more to Baden Powell (named after Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts!) than that. He has a protean way of synthesizing genres, bringing together the melodicism and syncopation of bossa nova, the scale explorations of jazz, and the complicated rhythms of samba. Hell, there’s plenty of classical influence in there, too. In a way, it’s archetypal Brazilian music, though less song-oriented than, say, Caetano Veloso.

“Samba Triste” is an enduring favorite, covered by Stan Getz and more.

Dig that guy going crazy on the cuica! That’s the percussion instrument that sounds like moving your straw up and down in the top of a fast food soft drink cup.

Here he is in 1999, a year before his death.

Enjoy!