Laurindo's Guitar (2020)

This is the story of how in the year 2000, I acquired my favorite guitarist’s favorite guitar. It is a six-string Spanish classical guitar made by Felix Manzanero and once owned by Laurindo Almeida.

I was standing in Laurindo’s kitchen listening to his wife Didi telling stories. Laurindo had been sick with leukemia and out of kindness to Clint Eastwood did him a special favor. Almeida played the Manzanero on the sound track for Eastwood’s 1992 movie The Unforgiven. Didi went on to say that Eastwood had popped his head into Almeida’s recording booth and deadpanned “don’t play too good, Laurindo.”

The feeling of epiphany at that moment was inescapable. I had never forgotten the gorgeous sound of the guitar on that soundtrack. And now I was astonished that I was not only buying that guitar but also, that for about four years, I had been listening to, studying, and playing the music of the person who had performed that beautiful haunting melody.

All I knew while I sat in the theater reading the credits after the movie was that I loved that tone. I didn’t know in 1992 that Laurindo Almeida, one of Brazil's most famous musicians, was a prolific composer and arranger and one of the most brilliant guitarists of the 20th century. I didn’t know that he had won five Grammy awards and was the first musician to win Grammys in both classical guitar and jazz guitar. I didn’t know that Almeida had played on over eight hundred Hollywood soundtracks. I didn’t know who Laurindo Almeida was and I didn’t even know Brazilian jazz existed.