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Baden Powell comes from a musical family, and his father, who was a troop leader, named his son for Robert S.S. Baden-Powell, the British founder of the Boy Scouts.
Beginning in his early teens Baden Powell played professionally. In the mid-1950s he met Antônio Carlos Jobim, one of the best known of the bossa nova composers; he encouraged Baden Powell to devote himself to the new music. Perhaps Baden Powell’s most distinctive contribution to the bossa nova style was the incorporation of African influences, derived from his study of African rituals in Brazil.
In 1964 he moved to Europe, first to Paris and later to West Germany, and he subsequently recorded with such jazz musicians as Stan Getz, Herbie Mann, and Stéphane Grappelli.