Laurindo Almeida

Laurindo Almeida September 2 1917 July 26 1995 was a Brazilian guitarist and composer in classical jazz and Latin music He and Bud Shank were pioneers in the creation of bossa nova Almeida was the first guitarist to receive Grammy Awards for both classical and jazz performances His discography encompasses more than a hundred recordings over five decades In addition to his recording achievements Almeida continued his work with the film studios throughout his career playing guitar lute mandolin and other instruments for more than 800 motion picture and television soundtracks such as The High Chaparral and The Gift an episode of The Twilight Zone Almeida made cameo appearances in the 1954 movie A Star is Born and on a 1959 episode of Peter Gunn titled Skin Deep His performing credits included major motion pictures such as Goodbye My Lady 1956 Funny Girl 1968 and The Godfather 1972 He composed the complete film scores for ten motion pictures and portions for hundreds of others including Charles and Ray Eamess 1957 film Day of the Dead6 He also underscored and performed for Clint Eastwoods Unforgiven 1992 His final film work was in The Cat in the Hat 2003 in which his whistling cover of The Girl from Ipanema is briefly heard Some articles report Almeida won at least one Oscar award for film composition however while he was involved in films that were nominated he did not receive an Oscar for his film work from Wikipedia