Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Castro, Ruy, 1948–

[Chega de saudade. English]

Bossa nova: the story of the Brazilian music that seduced the world / by Ruy Castro.

p. cm.

Includes discography (p. 337) and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-55652-494-3

ISBN-10: 1-55652-494-3

1. Bossa nova (Music)—Brazil—History and criticism. I. Title.

ML3487.B7 C39 2000

781.64—dc21

00-031749

Cover design: Joan Sommers Design

Interior design: Mel Kupfer

©2000 by A Cappella Books and Ruy Castro

All rights reserved

First English-language edition

Published by A Cappella Books, an imprint of

Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, IL 60610

ISBN-13: 978-1-55652-494-3

ISBN-10: 1-55652-494-3

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2

First published in Brazil by Companhia Das Letras

©1990 by Ruy Castro

Translated by Lysa Salsbury

Foreword ©2000 by Julian Dibbell

This book is dedicated

to my daughters,

Pilar and Bianca.

Note to the Reader

At the end of this book a brief glossary will be found containing all musical and other Brazilian terms and names not defined in the text. For place names in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, see the maps on pages xxiii–xvi.

Contents

Introduction and Acknowledgments

Foreword

Prologue: Juazeiro, 1948

Part I: The Great Dream

1. The Sounds That Came out of the Basement

2. Hot Times at the Lojas Murray

3. Battle of the Vocal Ensembles

4. The Mountains, the Sun, and the Sea

5. Torchy Copacabana

6. The Gang

7. In Search of the Lost Self

8. The Arrival of the Beat

9. One Minute and Fifty-Nine Seconds That Changed Everything

10. “Desafinado” (Off-Key)

Part II: The Long Holiday

11. Bossa Nova Goes to School

12. Colorful Harmonies

13. Love, a Smile, and a Flower

14. It’s Salt, It’s Sun, It’s South

15. Bossa Nova for Sale

16. “Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl from Ipanema)

17. A Bite of the Apple

18. The Armed Flower

19. Shuttle Service

20. The Diaspora

21. The World as an Exit

Epilogue: What Happened to Them

A Select Bossa Nova Discography

Glossary

Index

Introduction and Acknowledgments

This is the story of bossa nova, and the young men and women who made the scene when they were between fifteen and thirty years old. It is also a book that aims to be as factual and objective as possible. It is clear that, as it was written by someone who has been listening to bossa nova music since it was given its name (someone who refused to conform when Brazil began to favor other exotic blends of music), a measured dose of enthusiasm has been added to the recipe—without the expression, I hope, of any bias, either in favor of or against, the path taken by any one participant. But human beings, like albums, have A and B sides, and the utmost effort was made to reveal both.

In order to compile this historical narrative, firsthand information was sought from the protagonists, assistants, and key players of each event described herein, cited in the list of acknowledgments. All important information was checked and rechecked with more than one source. The nature of certain pieces of information made it impossible to categorize them as originating from an “interview which took place on day X, in city Y, with Such-and-Such,” because this would transgress the ethical precept of safeguarding the anonymity of the source. However, even when it appears simple to figure out the source or sources for any piece of information, the responsibility for divulging them is mine. Sources who didn’t mind being identified are mentioned within the body of the text.

I think it important to note that I listened to all the recordings mentioned in the text, including extremely rare first records by Os Garotos da Lua (The Boys from the Moon), João Gilberto, João Donato, and Johnny Alf. I also had access to private tape recordings of João Gilberto, the first bossa nova performances in universities, the Bon Gourmet show, and a complete recording of the 1962 Carnegie Hall bossa nova concert.

Writing this book was facilitated by my prior acquaintance with several bossa nova celebrities, but it would not have been possible without the generosity and interest of more than a hundred people. For eighteen months, from January 1989 to August 1990, they patiently participated in long interviews, providing information, ransacking drawers, clarifying dates, locating records, copying tapes, tearing photos out of their albums, drawing maps, and giving detailed descriptions of homes, bars, and boats. Many of these interviews required three or four sessions, and almost all of them were granted in person, in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo—but there were also hundreds of phone calls to Salvador, Juazeiro, Porto Alegre, Vitória, Belo Horizonte, and even Lisbon. A few interviewees were consulted only by telephone and, without even meeting me, provided valuable information. Others went to the trouble of replying to me in writing. My most heartfelt thanks to all of them. They were, in alphabetical order by last name:

Elba and João Luiz de Albuquerque; the late Lúcio Alves; Walter Arruda; Badeco of Os Cariocas; Billy Blanco; the late Ronaldo Bôscoli; Candinho (José Cândido de Mello Mattos); Heitor Carrillo; Achilles Chirol; Walter Clark; Luís Cláudio; Carlos Conde; Umberto Contardi; Haroldo Costa; Cravinho (Aminthas Jorge Cravo); the late Ivon Curi; Sônia Delfino; Reinaldo Di Giorgio Jr.; João Donato; Chico Feitosa; Juvenal Fernandes; Laurinha Figueiredo; Luvercy Fiorini; Janio de Freitas; Moysés Fuks; Paulo Garcez; João Gilberto; Sheila and the late Luís (“Chupeta”) Gomes; Christina Gurjão; Oswaldo Gurzoni; Júlio Hungria; the late Antonio Carlos Jobim; Jorge Karam; Alfonso Lafita; the late Nara Leão; Jacques and Lídia Libion; Paulo Lorgus; Carlos Lyra; the late Edison Machado; Tito Madi; Mariza Gata Mansa; Emília and Pacífico Mascarenhas; João Mário Medeiros; Acyr Bastos Mello; Cyrene Mendonça; Roberto Menescal; André Midani; Miéle; Miúcha; Paulo Moura; Álvaro de Moya; Tião Neto; Paulo César de Oliveira; Laura and Chico Pereira; Carlos Alberto Pingarilho; Armando Pittigliani; Nilo Queiroz; José Domingos Rafaelli; Álvaro Ramos; Flávio Ramos; the late Alberto Ruschel; Wanda Sá; Sabá; Maurício Sherman; Jonas Silva; Walter Silva; Raul de Souza; Mário Telles; José Ramos Tinhorão; Marcos Valle; David Drew Zingg; Ziraldo.

It is impossible to adequately express my gratitude to the following for the information they provided on the early João Gilberto: Belinha Abujamra, Miécio Caffé, Ieda Castiel, Clovis Moura, Merita Moura, Dr. Giuseppe Muccini, Dr. Dewilson de Oliveira, and Dona Dadainha de Oliveira Sá, all from Juazeiro, Bahia. Paulo Diniz, Dr. Alberto Fernandes, Glênio Reis, and the late Dona Boneca Regina told me about his days in Porto Alegre, and Oswaldo Carneiro, Henrique Fernando Cruz, and Maria do Carmo Queiroz provided decisive information on the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club.

I also owe special thanks to Leon Barg, of Curitiba, for his fabulous collection of 78 r.p.m.s; Sérgio Cabral; Ricardo Carvalho, for providing his dedicated research on Vinícius de Moraes; Almir Chediak; Isabel Leão Diégues, for allowing access to her mother Nara’s files; and Arnaldo de Souteiro, who seems to know everything there is to know about the international development of bossa nova. And many thanks to friends like Rita Kauffman and the dear, late Giovani Mafra e Silva, whose help in Rio was invaluable to this book, as well as to Alice Sampaio and Sueli Queiroz, in São Paulo, for many personal reasons.

Foreword

“Stop telling stories,” said Dionne Warwick in the midst of a 1966 visit to Rio de Janeiro. “Everybody knows it was Burt Bacharach who invented bossa nova.” She actually believed this, evidently, but don’t be too quick to snicker. Her notion of the music’s origins may have been all wet, but at least she had one.

For the rest of us Americans, as a rule, bossa nova is a music laced with meaning but void of history. We locate it historically, if we do, not within any context of its own, but as a scene in one of our favorite pop-cultural narratives—a brief Brazilian seduction on the eve of a much more momentous British invasion. In the role of seductress: “The Girl from Ipanema,” composed by Antonio Carlos “Tom” Jobim, sung with unnerving cool by Astrud Gilberto, fortified by Stan Getz’s throaty sax, and anchored by the telegraphically syncopated guitar of Astrud’s husband, bossa nova icon João Gilberto. Hurling itself to the top of the charts in early 1964, that brilliant single charmed the U.S. public into one last fling with jazzy sophistication before Beatlemania decreed the reign of rock’s vulgar beauty. It was a melancholy farewell to Camelot, to the pop ideal of urbane elegance, and inevitably, to bossa nova’s own short moment at the center of our attention.

That’s not to say Americans didn’t fall hard for that sweet, soft sound. In fact, the bossa nova craze in the United States was longer and deeper than snapshot memories suggest. The new Brazilian sound had, after all, been making major incursions into the American pop scene for years before the Brits made theirs: the soundtrack from the popular 1959 Franco-Brazilian film Black Orpheus, for instance, gave American audiences an early taste of bossa nova’s gliding groove, and Getz and Charlie Byrd’s 1962 hit version of the bossa anthem “Desafinado” upped the dosage. In the wake of Getz’s phenomenally successful collaborations, bossa nova records became an obligatory pit stop on the career path of every sixties pop singer from Elvis (“Bossa Nova Baby”) to Eydie Gormé (“Blame It on the Bossa Nova”). Jazz musicians got the message, too. Stan Kenton, Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Zoot Sims, Quincy Jones, Herbie Mann, Cannonball Adderley, Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, Wes Montgomery, George Shearing, Oscar Peterson—all made bossa nova albums, many of them perhaps only too aware that the warmly inviting Brazilian import represented cerebral modern jazz’s last chance at staying on the pop radar.

But by the end of the sixties there was no denying that the chance had passed. Rock and the counterculture it rode in on had decisively staked their claim on popular music’s future, and from where they stood bossa nova could only look like a desperate rearguard action, a last grasp for relevance by a doomed culture of Rat Packers and other hep-talking Mr. Joneses. Left for dead, bossa nova instead faded quietly and imperishably into the background. Without ever quite drawing attention to itself, “The Girl from Ipanema” spent the next few decades becoming one of the most-performed songs in the history of recording, rivaled only by the Beatles’ “Yesterday.” Bossa nova was everywhere, if you listened for it. Its breathy, minimalist vocalisms, arty chord changes, and sly, shuffling beat simply slipped into pop’s global circulatory system and became what they have remained: a free-floating signifier of intercontinental savoir faire.

We hear it at a distance now, with ironic affection or with distracted pleasure. It is a mood for us, a namelessly familiar scent of knowingness and calm, and if it even occurs to us that it comes from someplace, the place we think of first is not a real one. It’s that imaginary world of jet-setting, highball-drinking ease that went up in a Chesterfield haze when the sixties caught fire.

This book is not about that place. For Brazilians, bossa nova comes from another lost world—a world far more historically concrete for them, and one whose legacy they have never, to this day, ceased striving to come to terms with. The effort continues here, with clarity and wit. In these pages, Ruy Castro has rendered a rich and engaging portrait of the world that invented bossa nova, and no one who reads this book can fail to come away with a deepened sense of what—and how much—that invention has meant to Brazil.

Still, accustomed as we are to hearing bossa nova as background music, American readers may struggle at first to see in it the depth that Castro does. You may find yourself wondering just how such pretty little tunes could have shaken up Brazil’s popular culture as much as they evidently did—which is as much as rock shook up ours. You may wonder just what set of historical circumstances could have conspired to place a music so radically quiet at the heart of Brazil’s noisiest cultural debates. You may look for explanations, and you will find them, ultimately, in the sheer aesthetic drama of the story Castro has to tell. But it couldn’t hurt to know a little bit of the background, too, before you start.

In Brazil, the late 1950s—during which the bossa nova movement emerged from the nightclubs and apartments of middle-class Rio and thrived—were a time of unprecedented and almost painfully precarious national optimism. After decades of coups, dictatorships, and civil wars, the country at last had a democratically elected, technocratically oriented president in office, the energetic Juscelino Kubitschek. The economy was relatively healthy, and an ambitious program of national modernization was underway. Brazil’s first domestic car, the tiny Romi-Isetta, was tooling down the highways. A brand-new capital city, the dazzlingly modernist Brasilia, was rising from the red dirt of the country’s hitherto desolate central plains. Brazil, it seemed, stood poised to finally leave its perennial semidevelopment behind and step into a future of sleek, high-capitalist urbanity.

And nothing proclaimed the imminence of this change like bossa nova. Its serenely syncretic style—turning classic samba into an almost Mondrian esque construction of clean, angular melodic lines and daringly off-kilter rhythms—was the most self-assured bid for modernity Brazil’s musical culture had ever produced.

Which was saying a lot. For if the country had long been an economic laggard, in musical terms it had always more than held its own. Samba—rooted in a mix of Afro-Brazilian party rhythms and nineteenth-century ballroom dances like the polka, the tango, and the habanera—had by the thirties grown into an advanced music-industrial infrastructure easily as productive as its American counterpart. Boisterous, march-step sambas moved the crowds at Carnival time, while the rest of the year was ruled by “samba-songs” and other forms of balladry, sung by suavely natural voices like radio star Orlando Silva’s and shaped by the refined yet lively sensibilities of orchestra leaders like Radamés Gnattali and the legendary Pixinguinha. Kept percolating by steady influences from the American pop machine and the richly musical Brazilian hinterlands, midcentury commercial samba was a graceful, cosmopolitan product—a splendid example of modern pop-cultural design.

And even so, when bossa nova hit the airwaves, it did so with the force of epiphany. Young urbanites, in particular, heard the first bossa nova single—João Gilberto’s classic 1958 version of Tom Jobim’s “Chega de Saudade”—as a kind of annunciation. Jobim’s melodic sophistication, in itself, was startling enough. The song’s labyrinth of unfamiliar, postbop intervals sounded beautifully simple and yet, as at least one radio call-in contest proved, was tough for even the hippest young listeners to reproduce. But what really caught people’s attention was the gently dizzying interplay between Gilberto’s voice and his guitar. Shamelessly unadorned by vibrato or emotion, that voice danced with breathtaking precision around the quiet beat of the guitar, which in turn danced unpredictably around the conventional rhythms of the samba. A generation of Brazilians listened raptly. The record sounded like a message from an undiscovered country, daring them to come discover it.

And come they did. But the Brazil conjured up by Kubitschek’s bold initiatives, Brasilia’s bold shapes, and bossa nova’s bold sounds never quite materialized. When Kubitschek left office in 1960, the inflationary side effects of his big-ticket projects were already getting out of hand. More significantly, the broad hopes of improvement that had flowered during his term were running head-on into the hard wall of Brazil’s bleak class structure, leading precipitously toward open confrontation between reformist and conservative political groups. When it finally came, the confrontation was over before it began: in early 1964, just as “The Girl from Ipanema” was cresting the U.S. charts, the Brazilian armed forces shut down the civilian government, establishing a military regime that was to last another twenty years.

By then, the bossa nova movement had effectively run its course. Its most important figures—Gilberto and Jobim—continued to work the territory they had mapped out together at the start, and both went on to produce some of their finest music in the years that followed. But the rest of bossa nova’s original coterie—younger musicians like Nara Leão, Carlos Lyra, Ronaldo Bôscoli, and Roberto Menescal, who had caught the wave that “Chega de Saudade” set in motion—dissolved into carping factions of radicalized folkies and smug aesthetes, caught up in the political crosswinds of the moment and in the creative impasses any artistic breakthrough ultimately reaches. They’d lost touch with the energy that made the movement move, and so had Brazilian audiences, who turned their attention to newer sounds—among them, not surprisingly, a homegrown version of rock, known locally as ye-ye-ye.

But if it no longer made sense to speak of bossa nova in anything but the past tense, that’s not to say it was no longer spoken of. The anonymous retirement that awaited it in the rest of the world was not to be its fate at home. Various aesthetic camps disputed the right to carry its banner, all with more or less legitimate claims to do so. But in the end, the group that ultimately preached most passionately in bossa nova’s name was in many ways the most improbable of its disciples.

Led by two extremely articulate young singer-songwriters, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, the late-sixties pop movement known as tropicalismo (or Tropicália) seemed at first glance to fly in the face of everything bossa nova was about. Voraciously eclectic, the tropicalistas threw rural accordion music, outdated torch songs, jingles, Stockhausen, and the howl of machinery into their mix of sounds, often combining them to jarring effect in a single song. Most provocative of all, they even took up the electric guitars of ye-ye-ye, despised as imperialist noise by their artistic peers. Tropicália was, in short, an affront to the decorum bossa nova had made an art of, and it was booed off more than one stage by audiences who took it upon themselves to defend bossa nova’s lingering standards of good taste.

And yet, in interview after interview, Veloso and Gil insisted they had come not to bury bossa nova but to carry on its modernizing work. Although they regularly cited the Beatles as an influence, they invoked more often the name of João Gilberto, in whose voice and guitar they still heard the sounds of an undiscovered country. For them, though, that country was no longer the Brazil of a space-age, First World future. It was a Brazil that looked its contradictions squarely in the face—its sophistication and its barbarity, its First World dreams and its Third World lives—and made something beautifully, arrestingly true out of them. What the tropicalistas were doing, as they saw it, was simply taking the quiet clash of realities in Gilberto’s hypermodern roots music and amplifying it. They were taking the suave humor in the Gilberto/Jobim hit “Desafinado” (Off-Key)—a winking apology for those whose sense of harmony diverges from the norm—and turning it into a celebration of cultural dissonance in all its forms. Or as Veloso once put it, in a song critical of those who would reduce bossa nova to a set of formal rules: “The truth is that we learned from João forever to be out of tune.”

As it happens, the tropicalistas’ reinvention of bossa nova is one chapter of the story that you won’t find in this book. But just knowing something of its terms may add to the pleasure of reading what is rightly Bossa Nova’s heart, soul, and narrative backbone: the unlikely rise of João Gilberto from hopeless dreamer to his current stature as one of the great geniuses of pop-song history. Castro deftly mythologizes the five-year-long via crucis of nervous breakdowns and quasi-homelessness that led to Gilberto’s discovery of the sacred beat, shaping it into a saga that thrills all on its own. But its thrills are that much deeper if you picture Gilberto pursuing not just a beat, or a style, but a more perfect feel for the shape of an imperfect modernity.

That, after all, is something American listeners can surely relate to. And that, finally, is what this book teaches us: not just who really invented bossa nova, but why we need to start hearing it as more than just a mood. Lord knows we’re ready to. Rock’s claim on the future of popular music expired some time ago, and amid the scramble of new, competing claims, there are inevitably some that look to the immediate pre-rock past for inspiration. Thus it is that lounge lovers, jazz revanchists, and other kindred camps, God bless them all, have begun the long-overdue rethinking of bossa nova’s banishment to the background. But the process remains far from complete. For while there’s nothing wrong with loving bossa nova for its leopard-print retro charms or as a souvenir from jazz’s last real brush with mass appeal, we’ll never really know what bossa nova can offer us until we find out what it offered Brazilians. And that, perhaps, is nothing more or less than what the last century’s greatest art usually offered: the bumpy contradictions of modern life made plain and, if we’re lucky, beautiful.

Julian Dibbell

March 2000

Prologue

Juazeiro, 1948

The loudspeaker that hung from one of the posts on Rua do Apolo in Juazeiro, Bahia, played “Naná,” sung by Orlando Silva, at least three times a day. The record sleeve said 1948, and “Naná,” a slow foxtrot by Custódio Mesquita and Geysa Bôscoli, was an old hit from 1940. But Mr. Emicles, the owner of the sound system, wasn’t particularly concerned about playing the latest music sensations. He played the records he liked to listen to through his speakers, and only now and again would he make concessions to the enduring patience of his audience—the entire population of Juazeiro—and go to Salvador to buy new records. Fortunately, Mr. Emicles’s taste in music was as wide and varied as a rainbow. Among the featured attractions in his repertoire were “Song of India” by Tommy Dorsey; “Caravan” by Duke Ellington; “Siboney” by Gregorio Barrios; “Musica proibita” (Forbidden Music) by Carlo Buti; “Ménilmontant” by Charles Trenet; “Cambalache” by Francisco Canaro; and “Dream Lover” by Jeanette McDonald. No radio station in Juazeiro—if Juazeiro had had a radio station—could have done better.

And, of course, Mr. Emicles’s program also included a lot of Brazilian music: “Bolinha de papel” (Little Paper Ball) by Anjos do Inferno (Hell’s Angels); “Onde o céu azul é mais azul” (Where the Blue Sky Is Bluest) by Francisco Alves; “Boogie-woogie na favela” (Boogie-Woogie in the Slums) by Cyro Monteiro; “Ave-Maria no morro” (Ave Maria on the Hill) by Trio de Ouro (Gold Trio); “A primeira vez” (The First Time) by Orlando Silva; “Adeus, batucada” (Goodbye, Batucada) by Carmen Miranda, and “O samba da minha terra” (Samba of My Land) by Dorival Caymmi. Except for brief intervals for the transmission of mass, and commercial announcements, Mr. Emicles’s squeaky sound system filled the air in Juazeiro all day long with music of all genres, from all eras, which was torture for some—especially at night, when Mr. Emicles booked a local band to play live.

So long as the town plant provided electricity, there was music in the air. The plans for Paulo Afonso’s hydroelectric plant were still on the drawing board, and when the lights flickered two or three times around eleven o’clock at night, it was a warning that within ten minutes, the electricity would be cut off and social life in Juazeiro would have to be postponed until the next day. The speakers were silenced, the already dim street lights would go out, and families would go home to bed. From that point on, the soundtrack was provided by the late-nighters with their guitars. They wandered the streets, serenading and making themselves targets for the liquid rewards of chamberpot contents, thrown out of windows onto their heads.

Obviously, this law of silence did not apply during Carnival or the roda of São Gonçalo, a type of Candomblé ritual, during which the city danced all night to the sounds emanating from the speakers. Does that mean then that Juazeiro was like New Orleans? Well, not quite.

In 1948, Juazeiro was a town of ten thousand, among which was a boy of seventeen whom everybody called Joãozinho da Patu. Jorge Amado waxed lyrical in his description of Juazeiro in his novel Seara Vermelha (The Golden Harvest), but real life there was depressing. Very few of the streets were paved, and all of the homes had tiled floors which the townspeople had to pour water over every other day, to refresh the body and soul. The heat was Dante-esque, and wasn’t even alleviated by the whirlwinds that swept through Juazeiro. It was worse when it was windy, because then you literally ate dust. The millions of liters of water in the São Francisco river flowing right on the town’s doorstep did not prevent it from becoming a sand pit, in which even the cacti perspired in retaliation. The São Francisco was cruel. It would burst its banks without warning, even if it hadn’t rained, and among other reprobate qualities (piranhas, for example), it would flood only the poor areas—being careful to spare the Praça da Matriz, one of the few tree-lined areas of Juazeiro, where the comparatively wealthy preferred to live.

The square obviously owed its name to the parish church of Our Lady of the Grottos, which, according to the memories of even those citizens who were then already old-timers in Juazeiro, had been under repair as long as people could remember. The boys of the town, Joãozinho’s friends, nicknamed the church “The Unfinished Symphony,” because it was as if that skeleton of girders and scaffolding had become a part of the façade, and the works would never be finished while the old parish priest was still able to wheedle money from the congregation.

One of the benefactors of the church construction project was Mr. Juveniano de Oliveira, Joãozinho’s father. As Catholic as they come, he would even have made a donation toward an effort to remove the dandruff from the parish priest’s cassock. Mr. Juveniano attributed to divine intervention the fact that, despite having only a primary school education, he had become one of the wealthiest businessmen in Juazeiro. But his business acumen also helped. He began with a fabric store, expanded into the grain industry, became the owner of several barges on the São Francisco river, and, in partnership with his brother Walter, bought two or three farms and even owned an islet on the river. As if that weren’t enough, his company, Oliveira & Brother, held the representation rights of Anglo-American Petroleum for the entire region of São Francisco. The only thing left to do to crown his career was to become a Rotarian. With all this activity, Mr. Juveniano still found time to play amateur cavaquinho and saxophone, and to be the official moving spirit of the century-old 22nd-of-March Band in Barro Vermelho, in the neighboring district of Curaça.

Mr. Juveniano lived in Praça da Matriz, in a large one-story house that was always freshly painted, and filled with new children and antique furniture. He could be seen daily on his way to work, lean, fair-skinned, loose-limbed, and dapper, in his shirts with starched collars, the cuffs fastened with wrist-studs. An unfair rumor circulated about him, that he used high-falutin words to talk about mundane matters. One of the stories was that, before owning a barge service and therefore being able to cross the São Francisco for free, at whatever time he chose, he would approach the ferryman and ask, “My highly esteemed ferryman, how much will you charge to take me from this pole to that hemisphere?”—referring to Petrolina, which, despite being located in the state of Pernambuco, was merely on the other side of the river.

His pseudo-erudite patois did not disguise the fact that Mr. Juveniano had no more than an elementary school education, but the truth was that he was a wealthy man in Juazeiro. What those who envied him couldn’t understand was how, despite being somewhat countrified, he was able to get married for the second time (he was a widower from his first marriage) to the beautiful and refined Dona Patu of Salvador. Their amazement derived from the fact that she was beautiful and refined, and her relatives, from the influential Viana family, included doctors, politicians, and directors of chic clubs in the capital, like the Bahia Tennis Club and the Yacht Club. Dona Patu was a woman who commanded respect: austere and haughty, she would cross the street with a short, hurried step, greeting people, but without stopping to engage in conversation. Families would go to visit her, taking advantage of the opportunity to admire her embroidery. Occasionally, when she served lunch at her home, she would offer the guests lavender water, and some of them would embarrass themselves by drinking it.

It is hardly surprising that Mr. Juveniano should have directed all his efforts toward the education of his children, of which he had many. He already had Walter, from his first marriage, and with Dona Patu there came in rapid succession Dadainha, Vavá, Joãozinho, Dedé, Vivinha, and the baby of the family, Jovininho. Educating his many children was a challenging and expensive task. In Juazeiro in the 1940s, formal education ended at the elementary level, and for middle school on up, boys had to go to Salvador, or to Aracaju, which was closer. But Mr. Juveniano was successful in his endeavor, because by one means or another, he managed to ensure that each of his children received his or her high school diploma. That is, except for one, whom everybody said was the most intelligent: Joãozinho, of course.

From the time that he wore short pants, when he rode his bicycle through the Far West-style streets of Juazeiro, Joãozinho had already decided to follow a more challenging path: he would become João Gilberto.

His mother could not be blamed for considering him scatterbrained, because he would continually lose his schoolbooks, notebooks, and pens. One day, Joãozinho left home wearing a new pair of shoes and Dona Patu admonished him, half-seriously and half-joking, not to lose them. The street kids were playing a game of soccer in the square, and invited him to join in. Joãozinho took off his shoes to play, but, remembering what his mother had told him, buried them in the sand so as not to lose them. When the game was over, he went to look for them and couldn’t remember where he had buried them. He returned home barefoot and got the scolding of his life.

In 1942, when he was eleven years old, his father sent him to the Padre Antônio Vieira boarding school in Aracaju. Joãozinho was not an exceptional student: Latin and geometry were decidedly beyond him. He was much more interested in cheering for a local soccer team, Silvestre, and in forming vocal ensembles with his friends. At fourteen years of age, during one of his vacations in Juazeiro, a godfather who loved the nightlife gave him a guitar. It was just what he needed.

He learned to play the instrument using the Turuna Elementary Method common to those wandering folk, printed on cheap paper, because it was the first method of instruction he was able to lay his hands on. The Turuna did not turn him into Andrés Segovia, but it taught him enough chords to allow him to accompany himself and to try to harmonize with the breaking voices of his friends. Joãozinho’s voice was also changing, and much to his despair, the trombone-like timbre which he had begun to acquire sometimes wavered to that of a flute, without warning. But at fifteen, when he returned to Juazeiro—without the least intention of continuing his formal studies—his voice had already settled into that rich and well-rounded tenor with which he would toast the town with songs beneath the tamarind tree.

One of the rare trees in Juazeiro was a giant tamarind in Praça da Matriz. Tamarinds like dry soil, but that one must have loved it, because it grew to the point of being taller than any house in town. Its canopy gave a shade under which many generations placed chairs to sit and chat. When João Gilberto was a teenager, the tamarind tree was as important to life in Juazeiro as the town’s two social clubs, the 28 de Setembro (28th of September) and the Sociedade Apolo Juazeirense (Juazeiro Apollo Society). Meetings were arranged beneath its shade, and at night, the most flirtatious couples bickered over space by its trunk. Deals were closed there, the idle discussed politics, and kids gathered to play the guitar.

Joãozinho, Waltinho, Pedrito, and Alberto were part of one of those guitar groups. The four of them sang and played, but the solos were often sung by Waltinho, whom many agreed had the best voice in the group. (Later, Pedrito and Alberto would go on to other things, but Waltinho became the bossa nova composer and vocalist Walter Santos, who wrote “Amanhã” [Tomorrow].) Joãozinho was the leader and arranger of the group.

Underneath the tamarind tree, they rehearsed an entire repertoire in preparation for the day on which they might sing into the microphone of Mr. Emicles’ sound system. Their hits were “Marina,” which Dorival Caymmi had just released, and the Spanish “Malagueña Salerosa” (Sexy Woman from Malaga). But in fact, they sang everything they heard played through the speakers. If it had been left up to the four, all of whom were very shy, they never would have approached Mr. Emicles and the world would have been none the wiser for what it had missed. But a cousin of Joãozinho’s, Dewilson, convinced the owner of the sound system to allow them to perform now and again. They sang, pleased thousands, and became mini-celebrities in the region. They weren’t exactly the Mills Brothers, but in 1947 the nightlife in Juazeiro hadn’t quite made the Top Ten Most Exciting list, so even a small live performance by young local musicians was always a big deal.

The town had one movie theater, the Apollo, whose films had already been gathering dust for at least ten years by the time they made it there—and it was because of this that Joãozinho was able to see all the old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals released by RKO, which had long since left the larger cities. (He was so taken with Fred Astaire that he even talked about learning how to tap dance.) After the movie, there was the mandatory stroll down Rua do Apolo, with the speaker presiding over all, and at eleven, the plant gave the signal to turn in for the night. For the boys, an alternative to serenading was the red light area in Rua da Boa Esperança. (During Carnival, the prostitutes would form a group and parade through the town, wearing Technicolor costumes and painted lips. Theirs was considered the prettiest group.) But there is no evidence that, even at eighteen, Joãozinho ever frequented Rua da Boa Esperança.

Life finally acquired a little more meaning on the weekends, with the club dances. The 28 de Setembro featured an orchestra conducted by the saxophonist Babauzinho, whom Joãozinho much admired. During Carnival, Babauzinho would host two dances daily: one at night for the adults, and one in the afternoon for the kids, which Joãozinho always attended. He didn’t go for fun—to be honest, he didn’t care much for Carnival—but to accompany his girlfriends Merita, Belinha, and Ieda, and occasionally, to squirt ether in their armpits. But what he really liked to do was to listen to Babauzinho.

After months of straining their vocal chords over Mr. Emicles’s sound system, Joãozinho and his friends were given the chance to perform at a dance at the 28 de Setembro—fortunately, not during Carnival. Just as happens in the movies, Babauzinho’s orchestra could not play for some reason, and Joãozinho, Waltinho, Pedrito, and Alberto were invited to take their place. It would be their first paid performance, and they had given the arrangement of “Malagueña,” with which they would open the show, special treatment. It promised to be a big night for them and—they hoped—for the audience.

And it was, but not quite as they had expected. As soon as they played the first chords of “Malagueña,” a fight broke out in the dance hall between a well-known doctor in the town, Dr. Lauro, and the husband of one of the society ladies. Other revelers joined the brawl, and bottles and chairs flew through the air. Joãozinho, Waltinho, Pedrito, and Alberto continued to sing at the top of their lungs in the middle of the chaos, in an attempt to convey the lyricism of “Malagueña.” Joãozinho’s friend Merita still remembers today how he insisted on fulfilling his obligations, singing in the middle of the tumult. But when a bottle narrowly missed hitting them, he and his friends decided it would be wise to leave. (Talk about traumatic!) The dance ended there, but the following day, Joãozinho insisted on, and received, remuneration for their work.

Other dances would come and go, including that of New Year’s Eve, 1949, and Joãozinho sang at many of them. His voice was powerful enough to be heard throughout the dance hall, and it didn’t matter if the audience joined in. With a good microphone, his every tremolo could be heard—which, together with being perfectly in tune, was one of his specialties. Joãozinho’s voice wouldn’t exactly shatter crystal, but then that of Orlando Silva, the object of his greatest admiration, did not achieve that extreme, either. And Orlando was even sensational in sambas and marchinhas, as he would prove at other Carnivals with his recordings of “Jardineira” (The Gardener), “Jurei, mas fracassei” (I Broke My Promise) and “Meu consolo é você” (You Are My Solace). When they called him “the new Orlando Silva,” Joãozinho swelled with pride, because that’s exactly what he wanted to be.

He was now living for music to the exclusion of all else. His guitar became almost a part of his body, and one of his pastimes was to sit in the window of his home in Praça da Matriz, singing to girls who walked past in their frilly dresses. Some songs had lyrics that bore an impudent message, such as “Um cantinho e você” (In a Corner with You), a current hit of Dick Farney’s. But the messages, if they were even understood, were received in fun by the girls because Joãozinho, despite being continually surrounded by female friends, had never had a real girlfriend in Juazeiro. If he had been able to, he would have dated Ieda, the prettiest girl in town—a gaúcha whose father, a civil servant, had been transferred there. Ieda had blonde hair and green eyes, and she inflamed the desire of all the boys. She liked Joãozinho to serenade her at her window, but when it came to choosing a boyfriend, she opted for a young man named Charles, over whom the other girls squabbled. The boys of Juazeiro envied Charles and, given that they could not beat him in the game of conquests, spitefully branded him a fool and tried to show him up in the only way they knew how, with their songs and guitar playing.

The guitar fit Joãozinho’s reserved character like a glove. Not that he was shy; his friends from Juazeiro describe him as anything but. If he had been, he wouldn’t have opened up to the point of sighing and telling the group, “I would like to marry a ballerina …” Nor would he have stood at the microphone of the sound system and dedicated his songs to the girls of the town. On the contrary: he was witty, talkative, and could be delightfully devilish, as when he attributed those dedications to other boys who already had girlfriends, forcing them to explain themselves, and enjoying seeing them get into trouble. However, the arrival of a stranger in the group was enough to make him hide behind his guitar. Without realizing it, he began to turn his instrument into a shield, to prevent the world from getting too close. Luckily, the world rarely went to Juazeiro.

His father was not at all happy about Joãozinho playing the guitar. His plans for Joãozinho involved him becoming a doctor, engineer, lawyer, or other serious professional. And if he didn’t become any of the latter, then he would inherit the company, together with his brother. Mr. Juveniano had still not realized that Joãozinho was not made for the world of business or academics. And among other idiosyncratic characteristics, Joãozinho was the least religious in a family of pietists and devotees. Not even Dadainha, the eldest sister and the only one with any kind of influence over him, managed to drag him into “The Unfinished Symphony.” (Years later, Joãozinho would embrace his faith to the point of crossing himself before entering an elevator. But in Juazeiro, he seemed very removed from those kind of concerns.) Joãozinho’s absence at church put his father in a very awkward position with the other children, but what truly bothered him was that Joãozinho wanted nothing to do with anything that wasn’t his guitar.

In an attempt to bring him into line, he stopped giving him the usual small change for the cinema, jujubes, and other children’s treats. This created a problem for Joãozinho, who then had no money to buy cigarettes (having taken up smoking) or even worse, strings for his guitar. Any other child would have conformed under such paternal pressure. But he was saved by the unhesitating solidarity of his friends, who set aside money from their monthly allowances and took up a collection in order to subsidize his guitar string purchases—and thus, the evenings in Juazeiro continued to be lulled by his renditions of “Naná.”

However, as if the pressure from his father weren’t enough, Juazeiro was beginning to feel too small for Joãozinho. Shortly after his eighteenth birthday in June 1949, he felt ready to leave and move far away with his voice. The first step would be to travel to Salvador, where he would sometimes go, by train, with his cousin Dewilson. The trip took twenty-four hours by train, with an overnight stay in Senhor do Bonfim, and they would take bananas to eat on the journey. During these trips to the capital, he would restrict himself to strolling through the city and coveting the radio station buildings from afar, without having the courage to actually go in and say that he was a singer. After all, he had no idea whom to ask for. But he had several important cousins living in Salvador, like Jovino, Alípio, and Yulo. When he went to live there, they would help him with the only thing he needed: to get into one of those radio stations. His voice would do the rest.

During the last guitar sessions beneath the tamarind tree, once he had decided to leave Juazeiro, Joãozinho was in a euphoric mood, and throwing his arms wide in anticipation of what awaited him in Salvador, he announced to his friends, “Champagne, women, and music, here I come!”

And he went.

But João Gilberto knew from the beginning that he would not stay long in Salvador; he was on his way to Rio de Janeiro.

Part I

The Great Dream

1

The Sounds That Came out of the Basement

The little green wallet: the passport to proximity to the inaccessible gods

In the summer of 1949, the natives were restless in the land of Carnival. The cuícas rumbled in the streets of Rio in February, and the knobs of the Philcos were already catching fire to the sounds of that year’s hits. Every three minutes, National Radio would pound out “Chiquita bacana” by Emilinha Borba and “General da banda” by Blecaute. Not even the deaf were spared the carnage. And this wasn’t even one of the worst Carnivals: some sambas and marchinhas were fun, like the euphoric “Que samba bom!” (What Great Samba!), the risqué “Jacarepaguá,” and the surly “Pedreiro Waldemar” (Waldemar the Stonecutter). There were dozens of other songs, written to last about as long as the effects of an inhaled squirt from a Rodouro ether atomizer at the Hotel Quitandinha dance in Petrópolis, but that, nevertheless, people learned and sang. The samba schools were for the samba dancers, not the tourists, foreign or domestic. And given that television didn’t exist, no one stayed at home like couch potatoes, merely experiencing the bizarre chaos vicar iously. They went out into the streets to have fun; during the first two months of the year, the entire city of Rio de Janeiro was a Carnival with a cast of millions (to be exact, 2,377,451 participants, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics in 1950).

Put that way, it sounds fantastic, but for those who didn’t like samba and hated Carnival, it could be hell. That summer of 1949, for example, a gang of young men and women from Tijuca, in the Zona Norte (Northern Zone) of Rio, had better things to do than to parade around the Carnival King. They were very busy restoring, painting, and decorating a 1,500-square-foot basement at 74, Rua Dr. Moura Brito. It wasn’t exactly a basement, but the ground floor, with a separate entrance, of a two-story house, the residential part of which was on the second floor. The girls were named Joca, Didi, and Teresa Queiroz, were aged between fifteen and seventeen years old and, like all their friends,wore ponytails, checkered skirts and knee socks, and swooned over Robert Taylor. The three bobby-soxers studied at the Instituto Brasil–Estados Unidos (Brazilian-American Institute), were cousins, and lived in their family’s two-story house.

They hosted a work party for their neighborhood friends and transformed the basement: they waxed the parquet floor; they lined the ceiling with a green-and white-striped canvas; they created a makeshift minibar with an old Norge refrigerator filled with supplies of Crush, Guará, and Coca-Cola; and—most importantly—they papered the walls with record sleeves, clippings from Life and O Cruzeiro magazines, photos, and anything else connected with their favorite singers, Frank Sinatra and his Brazilian counterpart Dick Farney. (Later, the décor would be further improved with a huge poster of the two idols—together!)

By the entrance, Joca, Didi, and Teresa hung the framed musical scores of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day,” and João de Barro and Alberto Ribeiro’s “Copacabana,” cut in two, forming a rectangle. The two songs were symbols of that era. “Night and Day,” first recorded in 1932 by Fred Astaire, would become almost the exclusive property of Sinatra in the forties and, combined with his collection of bow ties, had been one of the main causes of female fainting fits during World War II. (Those who are less than a hundred years old might not believe it, but Frank Sinatra was a sex symbol in those days. He was also so thin that when he walked around on stage with the microphone in his hand—he was one of the first singers to do this—he had to be careful not to disappear behind the cord.) And “Copacabana” was the song that shot Brazilian Dick Farney to fame, proving to nonbelievers that it was possible to be hip, romantic, and sensual in Portuguese, without the operatic raptures of Vicente Celestino.

There was a reason for the excitement of Joca, Didi, and Teresa and their friends: the basement was being overhauled in order to become the headquarters of a fan club—the first in Brazil.

If Farnésio Dutra, a Carioca, had kept his original name, he would probably not have gone far. But with such a charming name as Dick Farney, the velvet fingers that played piano in Carlos Machado’s orchestra at the Urca Casino back when gambling was allowed, and his casual, soft singing style, his opportunities increased tenfold. With just one record, he became the national answer to the prayers of a good number of young postwar Brazilians who had fallen in love with the American swing bands, crooners, and vocal ensembles. For these young people—whose reservations about Carmen Miranda derived largely from the fact that she had not become sufficiently Americanized—the world was not a tambourine, but rather Axel Stordahl’s sophisticated harmonies for Sinatra’s records with Columbia. Or, at its most extreme, the sea of guitars, violins, cellos, and oboes led by maestro Radamés Gnatalli, lapping at the sands and mermaids embodied in the music sung by Dick. The suave Farney recorded “Copacabana” with Continental in July 1946, at the age of 25. Then, in an unheard-of move by a Brazilian novice singer, he barely waited for the wax to dry before leaving his fans watching the ships in Praça Mauá, boarding one of them in search of the greatest adventure: trying to build a career in America as an American singer.

Successfully singing in English in the United States seemed like madness at a time when Brazilian musicians’ only apparent use was to feature as whimsical characters in Walt Disney films set in Bahia. (Or not? After all, his namesake, Dick Haymes, was Argentine—and despite everything, he was Dick Haymes!) It’s true that Farney already had a starting contract for fifty-two weeks with the radio chain NBC—the brainchild of an American conductor named Bill Hitchcock, who had heard him at the Urca. The opportunities in Brazil for singers like him, who needed to be accompanied by a large orchestra, were few and far between. President Eurico Gaspar Dutra had threatened to close the casinos (“You’ll shee: I shall closhe the cashinoshe,” he announced in his peculiar diction), and indeed he did. In doing so, he also shut down the orchestras who played at them, and laid off innumerable crooners.

So what did Dick have to lose now? Not a lot, and maybe something would pan out. He had a good image, perfect English, the voice of Bing Crosby (with a few Sinatra-like touches) and, most importantly, he had already mastered an enviable jazz piano style. And didn’t everything work out? Within a short time, reports began to arrive that Dick was truly dominating the chic cabarets of New York, recording hits such as “Tenderly” with Majestic Records, and that he had even managed to land two radio programs dedicated exclusively to him, sponsored by Pepsi-Cola and Chesterfields cigarettes. Of course, there were those who sneered quietly to themselves and refused to believe the reports.

In order to silence the skeptics, live recordings of those programs, brought over on V-discs by Dick’s father, began to make the rounds of the radio stations in Rio, as if providing proof of the crime. (V-discs were sixteen-inch 33 r.p.m. acetate records produced by the Allied forces during World War II in order to bombard the Axis powers with Glenn Miller recordings. They were part of Allied propaganda. With the final victory of “In the Mood” over “Die Fahne Hoch,” those cumbersome objects were used to record everything, but only the radio stations had the equipment needed to play them.) From that point on, no one doubted that Americans were actually paying money to hear a Brazilian named Dick Farney.

In the two and a half years that followed his departure, his Brazilian recording label, Continental, continued to flood the domestic market with the songs he had recorded, of which he had left behind a large supply before he departed. His renditions of other songs that were even more modern than “Copacabana,” like “Ser ou não ser” (To Be or Not to Be), “Marina,” and “Esquece” (Forget) were launched in dribs and drabs during 1947 and 1948, in the hope of maintaining Farney’s popularity should he return one day.

Dick return? At that point, no one in Brazil thought that would happen. The more presumptuous believed that, if he continued in the same vein, Dick would soon overshadow Sinatra himself and, following in Carmen Miranda’s footsteps, would only return to Brazil on vacation. After all, his recording of “Tenderly,” a ballad by the pianist Walter Gross—at that time accompanist to the young Mel Tormé—had entered the American charts, or so they believed. Why would Dick want to return to Brazil?

But in December 1948, he announced his return to Rio de Janeiro—to stay. He would leave behind the success he had managed to build abroad in order to pursue his career in Brazil. No one really understood why, but Brazilians being who they are, many saw this as a patriotic gesture, and his popularity in Brazil exploded. No one questioned his return. If they had, and Dick had replied—like many others before and after him—”The food didn’t agree with me,” “I missed my mother,” or “Folks, there’s no moonlight like this, etc.,” they would have thought it perfectly normal. But Dick didn’t proffer any of those clichés, and, anyway, they didn’t fit to his image as a well-bred, refined, and wordly gentleman.

The truth was that he returned because his contract with NBC had expired and there weren’t any promising opportunities on the horizon—a common situation for any musician in his own country, but very inconvenient for a foreigner.

And besides, he did miss his mother.

A few months before Dick Farney’s return, Praça Mauá would receive another Brazilian who had come from New York: the broadcaster Luís Serrano, who stepped off the boat with a suitcase full of records and two or three ideas in his head. The records were the latest hits released in the United States by Capitol, a recording label founded in 1943 in Los Angeles by the composer Johnny Mercer and others. In just a short time, Capitol would become, both artistically and commercially, the most cutting-edge label in the market. Every label needs at least one star in order to launch itself. Well, Capitol started with the guitarist Les Paul (the very same inventor of the famous guitar), Woody Herman’s and Stan Kenton’s bands, the world-famous “King” Cole Trio, and singers like Mel Tormé, Margaret Whiting, Peggy Lee, Dinah Shore, Rose Murphy, and Nellie Lutcher. How about that? Only, none of them were stars when they were signed by Capitol. But it didn’t take long for them to become stars, and when that happened, Capitol became the hottest record label on the planet. The company even built that revolutionary building, shaped like a stack of records, on Vine Street in Los Angeles.

In 1948, Capitol identified a market to be conquered in Brazil, and considered installing a representative there. Luís Serrano was the go-between, and the Brazilian recording label that was awarded its representation rights was Sinter, which had just barely been launched—and, not coincidentally, belonged to Luís’s brother Paulo Serrano. The first records produced by those stars began to come out in Brazil in 1950, which spared jazz fans from coming to blows over them in Rio stores that imported records, such as Lojas Murray and Suebra.

Luís Serrano had another idea which he didn’t hesitate to carry out: hosting a daily program called Disc-Jockey on Rádio Globo, from 6:00 to 6:30 P.M. The program’s very name was ultra-hip and, among other innovative features, he played records (almost all the music heard on radio then was live), interviewed musicians, and encouraged significant interaction between fans, just as had begun to be done in the United States. And just like in the United States, this exchange of information was much easier and more useful to him if the fans gathered in clubs—fan clubs—whose activities he would promote and which he could furnish with records (with an understandable preference for Capitol’s upcoming international events).

Serrano inaugurated the program at the end of that year and mentioned the idea of the clubs on the air. Joca, Didi, and Teresa were the first to jump at it. In a few days, they had appropriately outfitted the basement in Tijuca; they informed Serrano that they would be the owners; he alerted Sinatra and Farney fans over the microphone at Rádio Globo; the fans began to appear in Rua Dr. Moura Brito; Dick Farney was returning to Brazil—and, in February of 1949, ignoring the uproar of cuícas and reco-recos coming from the uncivilized outside world, they declared the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club officially open.

And, unbeknownst to all, bossa nova was already being dreamed up.

For many members, even those who later became celebrities, having belonged to the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club was one of the greatest achievements of their lives. Just ask the saxophonist Paulo Moura. He was seventeen, a tailor’s apprentice, and for a while was refused membership. On arriving at the club and asking for an application to join, he learned that his admission hinged on what he knew how to play on the clarinet he carried under his arm. (All members had to be able to dance, sing, or play an instrument, even if they did it badly—but not too badly.) The boy played a few scales and his judges, their ears finely tuned to what they had heard Benny Goodman do with the same instrument, were not overly impressed. Moura got in by the skin of his teeth, and only because the club needed a clarinetist. Two years later, Paulo Moura would face a tougher jury, that of the long-haired National School of Music, and would play those same scales so well that they not only admitted him, they made him skip ahead to the fifth year. Those girls were a little too strict.

Johnny Alf, then twenty years old, needed a piano. Compared to the other members, the young Alf (whose real name was Alfredo José da Silva) was considered poor. His father was an army corporal who had been drafted to fight in the Brazilian civil war of 1932, and died in combat in the valley of Paraíba when Alfredo was only three years old. His mother, a maid, had gone to work in the home of a family in Tijuca and took Alfredo with her. His mother’s boss liked music, and the boy. She enrolled him in IBEU (Instituto Brasil–Estados Unidos—Brazilian-American Institute), where they gave him his nickname and made him study classical piano with the instructor, Geni Bálsamo. But, because he had to share the instrument with other family members, Alf spent more time listening to records by the “King” Cole Trio or the English pianist George Shearing than actually practicing. When he found out that the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club had a piano that was silent most of the time, he overcame his extreme shyness and joined. He was easily accepted: all Alf had to do was to open the piano and run his fingers over the keys for fifteen seconds.

The Sinatra-Farney Fan Club piano was an old brown upright Playel, the heroic ex-accompaniment to silent films, with keys so decayed that it appeared to have been a reject from the cinema for the deaf. It had been donated by a member named Carlos Manga, whose mother had wanted to get rid of it and had thought about selling it to the rag-and-bone man. It was out-of-tune down to the very last note, and following its donation, the club evicted a family of cockroaches that were nesting in it, turned it over to a piano tuner, and had it revarnished. Alf had permission to spend weekday afternoons—outside the club’s normal opening hours—practicing and trying out songs like “I’m in the Mood for Love” and “How High the Moon,” as long as he didn’t make too much noise.

Noise was the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club’s main problem. Despite the tolerant attitude of the owners of the house, Dr. José Queiroz and Dona Jandira, Joca’s parents, and Dona Zeca, Didi and Teresa’s mother, the girls were only given permission to turn the basement into a club provided that they didn’t bother the neighbors. This limited the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club’s activities to Saturday afternoons and evenings, so in the beginning a good part of the music that was played there came from an ancient Victrola set up by the father of a member named Oswaldo Carneiro. It had only one speaker, a laryngitic amplifier, and a turntable that would only play 78 r.p.m. records—whose disposable steel RCA Victor needles were the length and thickness of rose thorns. It was those kind of needles, from the days of Enrico Caruso, that dragged doggedly over the ultramodern arrangements by Pete Rugolo for Stan Kenton’s orchestra on purple label Capitol records—which had not yet been released in Brazil, but that Luís Serrano provided with great pleasure. The fan club might have been dedicated to Sinatra and Farney, but the enthusiasm of its members for Stan Kenton was quite overwhelming. People would all but fall to their knees when listening to his recording of “Artistry in Rhythm.”

The 78s comprised the club’s primary raw material, but they were high-risk objects: they had to be carried around the city and they broke easily. Only one member, an Englishman living in Rio named Derek, had a car; jitney vehicles were rare, Rio had barely toyed with the idea of a subway system, and the main form of transportation was the streetcar. It was a miracle that so many stacks of records arrived at the club in one piece, with all that to-ing and fro-ing. The previous year, 1948, the American Columbia label had released the first 33 r.p.m. long-plays, and there were already some in Brazil, but few people there had the equipment to play them on. The sleeves of the new LPs proudly announced that they had “unbreakable microgrooves”—and more than one dedicated IBEU student became tongue-tied trying to pronounce that.

The news that Sinatra was releasing a new record always stirred up a frenzy of excitement, although it wasn’t anything particularly unusual. Stars like him released a record every fortnight in the United States, given that the 78s only yielded two sides. This record would finally make it to Brazil, following some delay, and bring together everyone in the club to gather around the sacred object. The records were fantastically resilient to normal use, but in the case of those that were played most often (such as “That Old Feeling,” side A, and “Poinciana,” side B, sung by Sinatra, a Columbia blue label recording), the wax quickly deteriorated from jet black to milky gray after weeks of being subjected to punishment by the needles.

The adulation for Sinatra was so intense that if Farney had not returned to Brazil and appeared at the club in person, his fans would have been perfectly content with Frank. As the latter was an untouchable deity, they required nothing from him, save that he continue to record two hits every fortnight. As if that weren’t enough, the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club felt as if its admiration were returned in kind, for when they wrote a letter to Frank, he wrote back! Through the American Columbia, Luís Serrano managed to get hold of Sinatra’s “address” (actually that of his main fan club in the United States) and as a result, the mail would periodically deliver to Dr. Moura Brito street, lovingly “autographed” photos, “unreleased” records, and abundant material on Sinatra.

Together with Serrano, the other main supplier of memorabilia for the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club was Dick Farney. Upon his return from the States, he was delighted to learn that a Brazilian fan club had been established in his honor—and, even better, a fan club that suited his low-key character, without the hysterical foolishness typically lavished on other singers. The young men and women of Tijuca were serious, and in their company, he was able to forget that he was “the romantic Brazilian troubadour,” as he was dubbed in America. With them, he was able to talk about modern jazz, discuss piano styles, and even debate the latest stylistic innovations of Gerry Mulligan, Lee Konitz, and Lennie Tristano, which were emerging on the West Coast.

The kids in the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club were also the kind he could invite to his home (actually that of his parents, with whom he lived) on Rua Dr. Júlio Ottoni in the fashionable, upper-class district of Santa Teresa. They became such good friends that Dick would sometimes even go to Tijuca himself to pick some of them up in his Cadillac convertible, which was black with a white top, and which he had purchased from Carmen Miranda and brought back from the United States. The gatherings at his home involved long conversations, in which Dick would describe his encounters with their heroes—Nat “King” Cole, Mel Tormé, Woody Herman, Anita O’Day, and, the greatest honor of all, Frank—to whom he would refer, perfectly naturally, by their first names. “Well, then I said to Frank …” All of those conversations were highlighted with records that only he could have, like an acetate disc with Frank singing and President Truman playing the piano. Or Dick would sit down at the piano and, accompanied by his brother Cyleno on drums, demonstrate what it was he was trying to say. Almost all of his gatherings turned into live performances.

It had never occurred to any member of the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club that Dick might be exaggerating the details of his intimacy with the American idols (after all, what about those photos in which he appeared with them?), and everyone’s heartbeats quickened when one of those idols came to tour Brazil and Dick invited them to his home—in the presence of his Tijuca fans. That’s what happened when they heard that Billy Eckstine was coming to sing in the Golden Room of the Copacabana Palace. The boys prepared a vocal arrangement of “I Apologize” to greet him at the airport, but at the last minute Eckstine failed to appear, and the disappointment was overwhelming. But Stan Kenton—Stan Kenton!—traveled to Brazil from Argentina on vacation and went to visit Dick. He didn’t come to perform, but one of the musicians who was traveling with him played one or two intimate numbers with one of the more liberal female members of the club.

However, nothing surpassed the night on which Sinatra-Farney Fan Club members rubbed elbows with the singer Frankie Laine at Dick’s house. As is almost inevitable among singers, Laine would sometimes decide to clarify a certain piece of information by singing, and suddenly, the boys were right there listening to one of their heroes do live what he did on his records: sing “Jezebel.” And the entire club felt as if they had played a small part when, years later, Frankie Laine recorded—in Portuguese—Dorival Caymmi and Carlinhos Guinle’s “Não tem solução” (There’s No Solution), which Dick had taught him at his home.

By the summer of 1950, the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club had fifty paying members; they were a select few. Non-members could only attend gatherings if they were invited by a member, whether they were the millionaire jazz enthusiast Jorginho Guinle, who was invited by Dick, or the teenage Ivan Lessa, a future writer and an unrestrained fan of Billy Eckstine. What limited the number of members was the condition that everyone had to know how to do something—a requirement that many, out of shyness, did not try to fulfill. But once admitted, all new members felt suffused with the delightful certainty of artistic vocation, even though they didn’t always possess the corresponding talent.

Some considered themselves dancers, others played an instrument (those who were already professional musicians, like the violinist Fafá Lemos, had a definite advantage). Everyone, without exception, sang or, at the very least, were pros at lip-synching to famous recordings. The majority wanted to believe that, as happened in musicals with Gene Kelly, Sinatra, and Ann Miller (“On the Town” was the hit of the year), music would suddenly burst from the clouds—played by an invisible MGM orchestra led by Lennie Hayton—and that it was only a matter of going out and tap-dancing on the sidewalks, without a single passerby regarding you strangely.

The Sinatra-Farney Fan Club gave them a chance to do just that, or at least something like it. In the beginning, the shows took place in the basement of Rua Dr. Moura Brito. Their forte was mock jam sessions, with the defenseless “The More I See You” subjected to the whims of Johnny Alf or Raul Mascarenhas on the piano, or the boldness of the very young João Donato on the accordion. They also put on comical sketches, in which two members would ridicule their favorite villains, Bing Crosby and Al Jolson, lip-synching to a recording of their duet in “The Spaniard That Blighted My Life.” (Farney’s great singing rival, Lúcio Alves, was deliberately ignored.) They would also entertain themselves with dance numbers, and games of “guess who’s singing?,” testing their knowledge of the most unguessable American music trivia. But the highlight was, naturally, special appearances by Dick himself, who would often go to the club and create a traffic jam in Tijuca when he parked his Caddy in Rua Dr. Moura Brito.

Much of what was sung or played there was recorded on an antedeluvian American Revere tape machine, which was the size of a suitcase. (Unfortunately, the Revere’s case was a suitcase and, despite its weight, also traveled through the city by streetcar, from members’ homes to the club and vice-versa.) Blank tapes were hard to come by, forcing them to record over things that had already been recorded, which broke their hearts. Thus, treasures such as the first notes of Donato’s accordion in “I Wish I Knew” and Alf on the piano in “Stella by Starlight” were lost forever.

The sounds that came out of the basement rarely pleased the neighbors. For this reason, promptly at 10:00 P.M., the two policemen who made the rounds of the neighborhood would knock on the door of the club to remind them of the silence curfew. They did so very much against their own personal wishes, because when they arrived a little early, the young policemen would forget about their beat and sit down on the sidewalk, enjoying the music. It was then that the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club realized that it was growing too big to limit its activities to the basement. If they could not have Radio City Music Hall in New York at their disposal, the only thing left to do was to take over Rio de Janeiro.

The first activities transferred out of the basement were the jam sessions. At first, they took place on Saturday nights at dance halls like Avenida and Brazil, on Avenida Rio Branco, and then they moved to the Chez Penny nightclub in Copacabana. They were often visited by musicians who had already turned professional, such as the pianist Jacques Klein and the tenor saxophonist Cipó, who adored playing with them. Or by the veteran American soprano saxophonist Booker Pittman, who had lived in Brazil for years, but whose heart would never leave the brothels of Storyville, in New Orleans. (Booker was well received, despite the fact that everyone hated his instrument. The worldwide craze for soprano sax had not yet begun and the only well-known players on the surface of the planet, besides Booker, were Sidney Bechet and the Brazilian hillbilly artist Ratinho, Jararaca’s associate.)

But the jams were small in order to accommodate all of the club’s talent, and they began to offer complete entertainment packages for anyone who wanted to hire them to liven up their parties. (Well, not exactly “hire”—not only were the boys not paid, they didn’t even receive a stipend for the streetcar or for a snack during their performances. Their “payment” was the possibility of being invited to other parties to show off their talents.) Thus, the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club managed to get into the Tijuca Tennis Club, the smart Fluminense club, and the Athletic Association of the Bank of Brazil; performed musical and comical sets at a benefits show held at the Rio Teatro Municipal; and even traveled to perform in Curitiba, in the remote state of Parana.

The artistic director and founding member of the club was law student and bank teller Carlos Manga. Among the privileges of his position was being the club’s official Sinatra impersonator—those who were resentful, due to having had their membership applications denied, said that this job should have been Dick’s. As director, the image that Manga had of a modern show consisted of furnishing the setting, such as a bar, with American-style décor and arranging for the couple Tecla and Natanael to burst through a screen onto the stage and dance the jitterbug (a type of St. Vitus’ dance with a boogie-woogie rhythm). Today, this might seem outdated, but in those days it so impressed the filmmaker Milton Rodrigues that he invited Manga to be his assistant on a melodrama that he was directing, “O Pecado de Nina” (Nina’s Sin), with Fada Santoro. Manga accepted and took along Dick’s brother, Cyleno, who became the romantic leading man, rechristened Cyl Farney. From 1951 on, the two worked together as director and star in the bigger movies from the Atlântida studio—which were detested, naturally, by their ex-companions of the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club, who had little respect even for the musicals produced by 20th Century Fox.

However, despite its expansion and domination of new areas, the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club continued to depend on the basement in Moura Brito. It was there that Joca, Didi, and Teresa received members, planned rehearsals, arranged performances, and centered their activities. In July 1950, Dona Zeca, Didi and Teresa’s mother, passed away. The house was sold and the two girls went to live with relatives in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Joca and her parents moved to an apartment in Urca, which was unsuitable for housing a club. This alone was sufficient to disband the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club, but there were other contributing factors.

As was inevitable, some of the main stars of the club, like João Donato, Johnny Alf, Paulo Moura, Raul Mascarenhas, Doris Monteiro, and Nora Ney, began to turn professional. Cyleno Farney and Carlos Manga were now involved in the film industry. Other members married and began to live on parole. Even Dick got married, which meant that he had less time for his fans, and he also moved to Urca. Although he allowed club correspondence to be sent to his new address in Rua Almirante Gomes Pereira, it just wasn’t the same. And to complete the final blow dealt involuntarily to the club by the institution of matrimony, Sinatra married Ava Gardner and entered his infamous celebrity hell. Success appeared to evade him: for the next three years, until 1953, all his recordings flopped, his films were terrible, and no one enjoyed watching him being given the run-around by Ava with a Spaniard named Mario Cabre. How could anyone be a fan of a singer who was being cheated on by his wife with a bullfighter?

This all happened at the time when an artist by the name of Johnnie Ray was achieving popularity in the United States; he was a supremely romantic ballad singer (who was, curiously, deaf) whose greatest musical idiosyncrasy was to pronounce monosyllabic words like “cry” with three syllables: “ccc-rrr-yyy.” “Cry” was the title of the song that became his greatest hit. The Sinatra-Farney Fan Club crowd did not convert to Johnnie Ray, preferring to remain orphans. But the club had reached the end of the road.

A limited end, because for a few years, the club continued to exist in spirit. Some jam sessions still took place at Dick’s new house in the name of the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club. At other times, these gatherings took place at Jorginho Guinle’s luxurious apartment in Flamengo and, as they included ex-members of the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club, they allowed those who attended, like poet Vinícius de Moraes, to say that they had belonged to the club.

The jams that most preserved the old spirit of the club—because so many former members attended—were those that Paulo Moura held at his house in Tijuca in 1954. They brought together, as well as the occasional appearance by Donato and Alf, youngsters under twenty such as pianist Luizinho Eça, guitarist Durval Ferreira, harmonica player Maurício Einhorn, and a youngster of thirteen named Bebeto who, unable to decide between playing the alto saxophone, the flute, or the double bass, ended up opting to play all three in the soon-to-be-formed Tamba Trio. All of them, future bossa nova ace musicians. The sounds they created were not the same as those played at the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club and were not the same as those that were to become bossa nova, but Joca, Didi, and Teresa would not lose out by waiting.

2

Hot Times at the Lojas Murray

The singer’s singer: Lúcio Alves, the guru of vocal ensembles

Manchete Press

A few months after its creation in 1949, the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club looked around and realized that it was not alone in the Rio fan club market. Nor would it ever be, with the fuss being created by Luís Serrano’s program on Rádio Globo, and by Paulo Santos’ Hit Parade on Rádio Guanabara, which was instigating the establishment of more clubs. There weren’t enough members to go around. The Glenn Miller Fan Club was quickly formed, which was boycotted by jazz enthusiasts. Another gang in Tijuca, in Rua Pereira Nunes, quickly counteracted with the formation of the Stan Kenton Progressive Club. Its founder, Silvio Wander, was a salesman at the record store Suebra, in Cinelândia, and received Kenton discs “hot off the press” from the United States. This club definitely annoyed the neighbors.

The club’s name was a reference to Kenton’s self-denominated “progressive jazz” style, over which the opinions of jazz fans and critics worldwide were violently divided. The controversy provoked the kind of reaction instigated by Miles Davis in 1970, when he electrified jazz and created the specter known as “fusion.” Musically, the comparison could not be applied because what Kenton promoted was a strange—but for many, a brilliant—type of swing with a symphonic accent, which those with a contradictory spirit classified as a cross between jazz and “The Firebird” by Stravinsky, with whom Kenton had studied.

Conservatives grumbled that Kenton’s bombastic band did not “swing”—which was unfair, because it “swung” far more than that of Stravinsky, although not as much as that of Count Basie. Besides, Kenton and his fans were not geared to dancing. Stan attracted a different audience of young people, although very similar among themselves, regardless of whether they were Brazilian, Cuban, or American. They were thrilled by his bold harmonics and by the veritable wealth of rhythms he crammed into the extremely short three minutes that comprised each recording. Kenton was like a variation on Midas; everything he played sounded like his own compositions to the ears of his fans.

And he had no preconceptions; he recorded everything, from great hits like “Begin the Beguine” and “The Man I Love,” which all the bands played, to certain types of music that they wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, like tangos, waltzes, and boleros. Kenton was fascinated by Latin, primarily Cuban, rhythms; but he even recorded Brazilian songs, such as “Tico-tico no fubá” (Tico-Tico Bird in the Corn Flour) by Zequinha de Abreu and “Delicado” (Delicate) by Waldir Azevedo, which he learned from his guitarist Laurindo de Almeida, who was born in Miracatu, São Paulo. It didn’t matter what Stan played. Any song that was subjected to the pen of his arranger, the Sicilian Pete Rugolo, emerged with the stamp of the Kenton style.

All of his musicians were respected (but you had to step lively to keep up with the changes in the composition of his orchestra), but the boys had a particularly soft spot for percussionist Shelly Manne, trumpeters Shorty Rogers and Maynard Ferguson, saxophonists Bill Holman and Lee Konitz, trombonists Frank Rosolino and Bill Russo, and especially for Pete Rugolo. They were the stars. But there was also Kenton’s vocal ensemble, the Pastels, revolutionarily harmonized by Kenton and Rugolo. And his vocalists? First, it was Anita O’Day, then June Christy, followed by Chris Connor. One would leave, another would join, and each was better than the one before. The man was a whiz at discovering them. And what other orchestra had a band leader with such personality? Kenton was a thirty-seven-year-old pianist with an explosive temper who would periodically threaten to leave the jazz scene, throw everything away, and change professions from band leader to psychiatrist (!). Never in a million years would such an idea have occurred to Harry James, Betty Grable’s husband.

The creation of the Kenton Progressive in Tijuca did not change the dollar rate at the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club, because the two groups were equally enthusiastic about “Blues in Riff,” “Eager Beaver,” “Southern Scandal,” and other huge hits by Stan. And in turn, even the most rabid Brazilian Kentonians, during a romantic relapse, would sigh upon hearing “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” by Sinatra, and they had great respect for Farney as a pianist although not as much for his talents as a singer. (This was not a problem: even Dick considered himself much more of a pianist than a singer.) They had a more than polite understanding. The two clubs were neighbors and even had members who belonged to both, which was never considered a case of split loyalty. One such member was João Donato, who had a framed photo of Kenton on his nightstand.

But the reaction was very different when a group from Rua Marquês de Olinda, in Botafogo, had the audacity to form the Dick Haymes–Lúcio Alves Fan Club in the middle of 1949. It was complete provocation. How could anyone prefer Dick Haymes, a worthless imitator of Bing Crosby’s vocal style, to Sinatra? And since when could Lúcio Alves be compared to Dick Farney, to the point of deserving his own fan club? Strangely enough, it did not occur to the members of the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club that Farney owed almost his entire reputation as a singer to Crosby, not to Sinatra—and that, if either of the two Brazilians was truly original, it was Lúcio Alves. What linked them was their type of repertoire and the fact that they both had a “pillow voice,” as it was known.

Another reason that Sinatra’s fans didn’t take Dick Haymes seriously was because, in addition to being a Bing Crosby wannabe, Haymes seemed to descend like a vulture on the jobs that Frank left behind. It was that way in 1939, when Sinatra left Harry James’s orchestra to sing with that of Tommy Dorsey—and Haymes took his place. The situation repeated itself in 1942, when Sinatra left Tommy Dorsey to launch a solo career and, once again, Haymes filled his place with Dorsey. And finally, Haymes also left Tommy Dorsey to try a solo career. The only thing left was for Sinatra to divorce his wife, Nancy Barbato, and for Dick to marry her. (This did not in fact happen—but almost. Sinatra left Nancy to marry Ava Gardner, and Haymes promptly left his wife, but in order to marry Rita Hayworth.)

This time, the stakes were high for the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club because the promoters of the Dick Haymes–Lúcio Alves Fan Club were Ney Lopes Cardoso, head of sales at Tonelux stores, and the journalist Sylvio Tullio Cardoso, who wrote a music review column in Diário da Noite (and soon after, in O Globo) and hosted a jazz program on Rádio Guanabara. In the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club members’ worst nightmares, they were already imagining that a conspiracy—involving a newspaper, a radio station, and an electrical appliance store (which sold records and record players)—had been hatched to crush their idols and replace them with usurpers, seducing innocent youngsters. Of course, this never entered the minds of Ney and Sylvio Tullio, but it appeared there was good reason for the Sinatra-Farney Fan Clubs members’ concern when they discovered there was a traitor in the club’s ranks.

One of its dearest members was also a member of the Dick Haymes–Lúcio Alves Fan Club. There was an uproar in seeking out the serpent in the bosom. Who was the traitor? The Katzenjammer Kid, fifteen-year-old João Donato.

Donato wasn’t just a fan of Lúcio Alves as a singer, which would have been heresy enough, but he also admired his talent as an arranger for vocal ensembles, which were the craze of the era. Donato’s treachery was revealed when he was heard whistling distractedly—on sacred Sinatra-Farney Fan Club property—Lúcio’s fabulous vocal arrangement of “Eu quero um samba” (I Want a Samba), recorded by his vocal group Os Namorados da Lua (Boyfriends from the Moon). It was the last straw. “Calabar! Judas Escariot!,” several people yelled, wanting Donato to be summarily forced to walk the gangplank. Joca, Didi, and Teresa pinned him against the wall for the court martial. When Donato admitted that he had gone to the Haymes-Lúcio “once or twice,” the girls gave him an ultimatum: “You choose. Either stay here and never set foot in that dive again, or get out of here,” ordered Joca.

“OK, I’ll stay with you,” stammered Donato. They forgave him, and he, with his hands tucked into the pockets of his shorts, retreated to a corner to laugh to himself. And of course, he continued to frequent the Haymes-Lúcio in secret.

What did they expect? In addition to it being pointless to expect sworn loyalty from a boy of fifteen who still wore shorts, you only had to know João Donato to realize that he held double, triple, and even multiple allegiances in terms of fan clubs. Besides, he would do anything to stay away from home and escape his claustrophobic relationship with his father, an Air Force ex-major and an airline pilot. Donato’s father attributed his son’s continual failure in Latin to his accordion playing. Donato got good grades in physical education and choir singing, but those subjects weren’t worth much. That same year, 1949, he had to repeat the fifth grade for the fourth time, until he finally quit his studies. His father wanted to flay him alive.

But at the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club, Donato must have known where he stood to have dared to frequent enemy territory. A few months before, the eternally stylish Dick Farney had tried to put an end to the stupid rivalry between his fans and those of Lúcio Alves, proposing to invite to the club none other than Lúcio himself. (So that they could meet him and see that, as well as being a great singer, he was also a good guy.) The members had to agree to this because they could never refuse Dick. A date was set but, for most of them, the idea of that man, with his dandy little mustache, entering the Rua Dr. Moura Brito basement arm-in-arm with Farney was worse than Dick Haymes being caught in bed with Ava Gardner. (Mind you, it’s amazing that this didn’t actually happen.)

The club was spitefully prepared to receive Lúcio Alves. Any inch of wall that was not already papered with photos or clippings of Sinatra or Farney was covered in order to make Lúcio feel as uncomfortable as possible. Not that that was difficult. The boys greeted him politely but coldly as he walked into No Man’s Land, stepping as if the floor were carpeted with flypaper. They served him flat Crush, asked about his family, and forced Dick to direct the conversation. Dick spoke of his admiration and warmth for Lúcio. Lúcio responded in kind and both explained that, if they sang more or less the same repertoire, it was because they had the same tastes in music. Following the outpouring of false praise, during which they also eulogized the civilized behavior of the fan clubs, Dick went over to the piano and Lúcio picked up his guitar. The boys merely clapped politely when Lúcio sang “De conversa em conversa” (From Conversation to Conversation) but applauded wildly for Farney’s accompaniment on the piano. It wasn’t very subtle.

After having stayed for a little more than an hour, Lúcio took his leave and, for all intents and purposes, the hostility directed toward him was hidden. But he had barely turned his back before the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club members stuck out their tongues at him and insolently waved goodbye with their thumbs touching the tip of their noses. And, with or without the fan clubs, things did not get better in the years to come.

From today’s point of view, Donato’s treachery is easy to explain. For those who really wanted to become a musician or singer in Rio in the 1950s and rise above the juvenile passions of the fan clubs, it was almost impossible to escape the admiration for Lúcio Alves. Dick Farney’s fans, for example, sometimes confused the singer and pianist with the actor that he also was, carried away by his flannel pants, bow ties, and blond cowlick. That kind of risk simply wasn’t there with Lúcio.

Lúcio Alves, six years younger than Dick, was perhaps the first Brazilian cult singer. Everyone who heard him on Rádio Tupi as the lead singer of his group, Os Namorados da Lua, was enchanted and believed that no one else had heard of him—as if he weren’t on the air, and as if radio transmission weren’t free and available to anyone who had a radio. Within a short time, he had so many such fans that the composer Silvino Neto dubbed him “the singer of the small multitudes”—in contrast to Orlando Silva, who belonged to “the real multitudes.” Orlando, by the way, was Lúcio’s hero; not knowing English, Lúcio felt a greater connection to Brazilian music than Farney felt. But like all young singers of his generation, he was also unable to escape American influences. The model for Os Namorados da Lua, of which he was the crooner, guitarist, and arranger, was a fabulous American vocal ensemble, the Starlighters. And as the lead singer, Lúcio was magnificent in adapting Crosby’s tricks, and later those of Haymes, to his style of singing sambas.

Lúcio, a prodigy, at fourteen years of age, founded Os Namorados da Lua in 1941. By growing a little mustache, he looked much older, and consequently was able to perform with the band during those lean years at the Atlântico and Copacabana casinos, which contracted the biggest names in Brazilian music. During the 1940s, Os Namorados da Lua competed with Anjos do Inferno for recognition among vocal ensembles, but in contrast to the latter, who had a successful track record, they only managed to get one song into the charts: the very same “Eu quero um samba” (I Want a Samba) by Janet de Almeida and Haroldo Barbosa, that had betrayed Donato in the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club. But vocal ensembles are born to die, and the closure of the casinos was the kiss of death for many of them, so Lúcio disbanded the group in 1947 and launched a solo career. He was doing well singing solo, but in early 1948, at twenty-one, he also decided to go to the United States as a member of the Anjos do Inferno, who had gone to Mexico and sent for him to join them on an American tour.

Léo Vilar was the leader of the Anjos. He had taken the group on tour but while on the road had married a Cuban woman and left. Lúcio was invited to replace him in New York. The Anjos were not only capable, they were also ingenious. From the start, they landed contracts with high-class nightclubs, like the Blue Angel and Reuben Bleu, singing risqué songs in Portuguese, such as “Doralice,” “Bolinha de papel” (Little Paper Ball) and “Eu sambo mesmo” (I Really Samba). They managed to do this despite working completely illegally, as far as the American Department of Immigration was concerned. They weren’t to blame in the slightest for the fact that the name under which they performed in the United States—Hell’s Angels—later became associated with a far less musical kind of group.

Under the wing of the Anjos do Inferno, Lúcio had everything he needed to be happy in America. The Anjos were paid, met their bills promptly, and had work in several cities. In New York, Lúcio became friends with Dick Farney, who in Rio had merely been an acquaintance, both personally and musically. Dick was right at home in New York and introduced Lucio to Stan Kenton, Billy Eckstine, Nat “King” Cole, and other idols. Lúcio was slack-jawed during these introductions, but could never manage to utter a single sound. He did not feel at home and preferred not to venture too far from the Somerset Hotel on 46th and Broadway; at least, not until he met and became inseparable from Jorge Aminthas Cravo (Cravinho) a wealthy young man from Bahia who was studying business administration at the University of Syracuse, close to New York. During Lúcio’s breaks, the two of them would wander down 52nd Street, which was the hottest music neighborhood in Manhattan, and sometimes it was as if they were in Copacabana.

Cravinho encouraged him to record an acetate disc in a record store that was looking for a crooner for Tex Beneke’s orchestra. Lúcio resisted, but recorded “Too Marvelous for Words,” whose English lyrics he had been carefully taught by Cravinho. Beneke heard the recording and apparently liked Lúcio. Perhaps he even gave instructions to contact him. But Lúcio didn’t want to wait. At the end of 1948, before he had even been away from Brazil for a year, he caught a DC-4 back to Rio, justifying his decision by saying: “I missed the beans.”

But he did not regret it. He returned to claim his small-time celebrity status as a solo vocalist and guru of vocal ensembles at the Lojas Murray. And as we know, he even had a fan club.

There was an electrical appliance and record store by the name of Murray, at the corner of Rua Rodrigo Silva and Rua da Assembléia, a few yards away from Avenida Rio Branco, in the center of Rio. Although its name was the Lojas Murray (the Murray Stores), it didn’t have a single branch to justify such optimism. But anyone who walked through its doors at the end of the afternoon, on any day of the week, would witness such pandemonium on the mezzanine floor that they would swear that the greatest record sales in Rio commerce were taking place right there—and only a small part of the commotion could be attributed to the presence of the stars of the Vasco da Gama soccer team, the city champions in 1949 and the nucleus of the Brazilian team in 1950, who hung out there regularly.

In fact, the Murray didn’t sell that much, given the comings and goings of people that frequented the store. The mezzanine floor saw daily gatherings of fan club members; protagonists of vocal ensembles, who were numerous; any musician who liked jazz, among whom was a man who commanded the utmost respect from everyone, the guitarist Garoto; journalism and radio celebrities like Sérgio Porto, Sylvio Tullio Cardoso, Paulo Santos, and Eustórgio de Carvalho, a.k.a. Mister Eco; future journalists such as Ivan Lessa, José Domingos Rafaelli, and Carlos Conde; and jazz enthusiasts by the dozen, divided by category—fans of the New Orleans style, swing, bebop, and the modern jazz of the “cool” school. The Murray was the largest importer of records in the city, but few could afford the new American 10-inch LPs. Most people went there to exchange ideas or 78 r.p.m.s, and to enjoy the free soundtrack of new records that arrived at the store, played by two sales clerks, Jonas and Acyr, who were both just as crazy about jazz.

The Murray owners began to take exception to the window-shoppers’ debates on jazz styles because a large part of the time, the real customers—those who actually bought the records—could not reach the counter, nor attract the attention of the sales clerks. Jonas and Acyr were always very busy arbitrating discussions on, for example, Sarah Vaughan’s superiority over Ella Fitzgerald, during which Sarah’s recording of “Black Coffee” would be played up to five times in less than an hour, against the same number of plays of Ella’s “How High the Moon.” Fitzgerald’s fans argued that Vaughan merely seemed better because her voice in “Black Coffee” was backed by Joe Lippman’s Kenton-style arrangements, which were clearly influenced by Pete Rugolo, and that was just not fair.

Well, if that was the case, the records had to be played again, because the conversation would move on from being about the singers to a debate over the arrangements. Consequently, stacks of Kenton records were taken off the shelves, placed on the turntable, and the discussion would start over. The discussions would become heated, with each litigant attempting to speak louder than the others and everyone wanting to make himself heard, while on the record that was playing, Kenton would encourage the brass section (five trumpets, five trombones) to play louder and louder. It was chaos. The manager of the store, Mr. Álvaro, fearing a conflagration, would run up the stairs to the mezzanine and ask them to keep their voices down. The discussion would die down, with Sarah winning by several points over Ella, but would be resurrected on the following day, this time with a debate between the fans of Jo Stafford and those of Dinah Shore.

Besides the passion for supreme idols such as Sinatra, Kenton, and Vaughan, everyone who frequented the Lojas Murray was crazy for American vocal ensembles. The best-loved groups were the Pastels, the Starlighters, the Modernaires (who got their start singing with the Glenn Miller orchestra and then continued on their own, when Miller took that plane), the Pied Pipers (who had done very well in breaking from Tommy Dorsey), and the Page Cavanaugh Trio. The young people listened to them avidly, and managed to identify the finest nuances of harmony on those 78s even though the sound quality was terrible. There was no shortage of records by these particular groups at the Murray. Unfortunately, this was not the case for the records of another group, which, although they hadn’t recorded much, were the band that the gang really liked: the Mel-Tones, headed by Mel Tormé. His recordings of “What Is This Thing Called Love?,” accompanied by Artie Shaw’s orchestra, and “Bewitched,” backed by Kenton’s men, made the boys sit up and listen. Consequently, no one understood when, during that era, Tormé disbanded the Mel-Tones to pursue a solo career. There were those who vowed never to forgive him for breaking up the best vocal ensemble on the planet.

It is hardly surprising that, being a part of that harmonious universe, everyone at the Murray dreamed of only one thing: being part of a vocal ensemble. Some of them already were, like Jonas Silva and Acyr Bastos Mello, the store’s counter clerks. Together with arranger Milton Silva, guitarist Alvinho Senna, and tambourine player Toninho Botelho, they were Os Garotos da Lua (The Boys from the Moon). It wasn’t a coincidence that the name sounds familiar: the Garotos appropriated not only part of the name, but also many of the ideas of Lúcio Alves’ recently disbanded Namorados da Lua—which in turn had acquired the same lunar inspiration from the name of Aloysio de Oliveira’s Bando da Lua (Band of the Moon). (There was a moon epidemic among those vocal ensembles: there was also a group called Vagalumes do Luar [Moonlight Fireflies], although they only twinkled occasionally.)

Os Garotos were considered the most Brazilian of the groups—not because they were from the arid northeast part of the country but because, contrary to the rest, they did not sing many American songs. That is, they didn’t sing them in English. But they had nothing against Inaldo Villarim’s Portuguese lyrics for “Caravan” and “In the Mood,” which he recorded in 1946, or Haroldo Barbosa’s for the highly popular “All of Me” and “The Three Bears,” his hits on Rádio Tupi. And they weren’t in the slightest bit embarrassed about reproducing, note for note, the Page Cavanaugh Trio’s ultra-cool arrangements of the latter two songs.

Os Garotos da Lua had been on the scene since 1946. After a lean start in Rio, they were contracted by Tupi to fill the void left by the Namorados da Lua, and they were promoted almost all day long on the program Parada de sucessos (Hit Parade), fearfully headed by the conservative samba old-timer Almirante. They had almost no freedom. One night, they were singing an arrangement by Cipó of “Feitiço da Vila” (Village Witchcraft), which had been strongly influenced by Stan Kenton. Almirante, who was listening to the program at home over dinner, jumped up in the middle of eating his soup and burst into the radio station with his napkin around his neck, ordering them to erase the arrangement so that “no one will ever sing that again.”

Like all groups under contract to a radio station, Os Garotos da Lua did not have an easy time. In addition to the normal obligations to continually revamp their repertoire, they had to be prepared for any emergency situation, such as composing a song on a desired theme, clothing it with one of their complicated arrangements, rehearsing it exhaustively, and then singing it on the air, live and learned by heart—and to be ready to do all this from dusk till dawn. How on earth they managed to fulfill the request, to the letter, was a mystery: none of the Garotos could read music. But once they had become accustomed to eating two meals a day, they resolved to give their all to Tupi, to continue satisfying this habit.

Competition was fierce, and at one point there were more vocal ensembles in Rio than radio stations, recording companies, and nightclubs capable of absorbing them. Almost all of them came from the north, and they appeared to descend in swarms, like locusts. Even with Anjos do Inferno and Bando da Lua touring outside Brazil, there weren’t enough microphones to accommodate Quatro Ases e um Coringa (Four Aces and a Joker), Titulares do Ritmo (The Counts of Rhythm), Vocalistas Tropicais (The Tropical Vocalists), Trio Nagô (Nagô Trio), Grupo X (Group X), Quarteto de Bronze (The Bronze Quartet), Os Trovadores (The Troubadors), Os Tocantins, the previously mentioned Vagalumes do Luar, the Quitandinha Serenaders, and of course, Os Cariocas. Some of those names might today have a rustic sound to them, but don’t be misled: most of them produced the best Brazilian popular music during those post-war years. All of them wanted to be modern, and for this reason, they kept very closely in touch with the best of what was being done by vocal ensembles in the United States.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to be good to succeed in this game of chance—discipline also counted. This is what shattered the ambitious aspirations of a group called Os Modernistas (The Modernists), who tried to band together in 1950 to become a type of Brazilian Pastels.

Os Modernistas were five young men by the names of João Luís, Chico, Fred, Janio (of course, this was before he became the important journalist Janio de Freitas), and the accordionist, arranger, and leader, João Donato. Stan Kenton’s records comprised the appetizer, main course, and dessert of their daily diet, but in order to create the vocal revolutions they dreamed of, they were at the mercy of the talent and whims of Donato. With the same exactness with which he had betrayed the members of the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club with those of the Haymes-Lúcio (and vice versa) the previous year, the light-headed Donato made his companions’ blood boil by missing rehearsals, arriving late for performances on Rádio Guanabara (where the group was on probation), or simply disappearing off the face of the earth.

It wasn’t as if Donato, who was now sixteen years old and already wearing long trousers, was one of the busiest musicians in Rio. He neglected to fulfill his obligations to the group because he would get waylaid on the street, chatting with friends about vocal ensembles. Caught between wanting to kick him out of the group or strangle him, his companions ended up forgiving him, mostly because any other course of action would have meant the end of Os Modernistas. And besides, Donato was a sensational accordion player—almost as good, perhaps, as the accordionist he most admired, the American Ernie Felice, whose records he listened to at the Murray. It was a shame that Rádio Guanabara had no patience for promising geniuses with little respect for time. They cancelled the group’s probationary period and the ensemble broke up.

But youth will not be deterred, and those same boys (as well as crooner Miltinho, and guitarist Nanai, both ex-members of the Anjos do Inferno; and minus Janio, who went to try out a career as a reporter with the newspaper Diário Carioca) reunited three years later again centering around Donato, for another brave task: rebuilding Lúcio Alves’ Namorados da Lua—without Lúcio. The latter furnished them with his repertoire, the arrangements and part of the name of the group (Namorados) reserving the right to keep the moon for possible future use. Pressured by Paulo Serrano, Os Namorados recorded at Sinter that year a new version of “Eu quero um samba” (I Want A Samba), which was even more amazing than Lúcio’s original version released in 1945.

This is a record that has to be heard to be believed. In Donato’s new arrangement, the bass notes of his accordion fractured the rhythm with musical syncopation like machine-gun fire and produced a beat that anticipated, almost note for note, that of João Gilberto’s guitar, five years before Gilberto’s recording of “Chega de saudade” (No More Blues). It was so modern that, at the time, no one understood it—and Os Namorados stayed where they were.

Dozens of vocal ensembles were formed and banded in Rio at the end of the forties, but there was one that seemed indestructible: Os Cariocas. From the time that they turned professional in 1946, with their composition of members already established—Ismael Netto, his brother Severino Filho, Badeco, Quartera, and Valdir—Os Cariocas were regarded, at least at the Murray, as the General Motors of vocal ensembles. (Just for the record, the Hi-Los, whom it was later said they copied, were formed in 1953.) Os Cariocas were the most complete in all aspects. While other groups disintegrated due to lack of leadership, Ismael would make them rehearse until a mere hello uttered by any one of them resonated perfectly—and no one complained.

They were also on Rádio Nacional, which in itself gave them five times the advantage over the competition because the Nacional was the network of the era. The program in which they starred, Um milhão de melodies (A Million Melodies), was produced by Haroldo Barbosa, which guaranteed at least two or three versions of American songs per week and gave the impression that one was listening to the Pied Pipers in Portuguese. This was ironic because it’s possible that Os Cariocas were even better than the Pied Pipers—but who would have believed such an absurd concept then?

Not coincidentally, Os Cariocas’s first hit “Adeus, América” (Goodbye, America) by Barbosa and Geraldo Jacques, in 1948, was a cynical and mocking invocation of musical nationalism—”Eu digo adeus ao boogie-woogie, ao woogie-boogie / E ao swing também / Chega de hots, fox-trots e pinotes / Que isto não me convém” (I say goodbye to boogie-woogie, to woogie-boogie / And to swing as well / No more hots, fox-trots, and jitterbugs / Because this sort of thing doesn’t agree with me)—all rolled into an energetic boogie-woogie cum samba, at which it was impossible not to laugh. The cultured folk understood. However, given that no one passed through Rádio Nacional with impunity, the other great hit by Os Cariocas, in 1950, had the kind of rhythm that, for some, served little purpose but for choreographing the killing of a cockroach in a corner of the living room: the baião, particularly the most popular baião, “Juazeiro,” by Luís Gonzaga and Humberto Teixeira. This time, cultured folk did not understand. For those who could not accept hearing a group called Os Cariocas singing exotic blends of music from the north, there was an obvious explanation: Ismael and Severino, the group’s leaders, were really not Cariocas, (that is, Rio de Janeiro-born) but from Pará, in northern Brazil.

The boys of the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club turned their noses up at Rádio Nacional, accusing it of being too “Jararaca and Ratinho” (hillbilly) for their tastes, but that was because they didn’t listen to it firsthand. In 1950, the Nacional was one of the few absolutely professional organizations in a country that prided itself on its amateur status and, despite being owned by the state, it was so profitable that it could allow itself all kinds of creative freedom. Its music department, on the twenty-first floor of the A Noite newspaper building, in Praça Mauá (facing a bay filled with ships that left carrying coffee for export, and arrived carrying imported yo-yos), had a truly First World appearance. It held no less than seven studios and an auditorium, which was famous for having a sprung stage. The permanent—and contracted!—cast was a veritable Who’s Who of Brazilian music, with almost 160 instrumentalists, 90 vocalists, and 15 conductors, among whom were Radamés Gnatalli, Léo Peracchi and Lyrio Panicalli. This crowd had to be hired on a contractual basis because, except for the news shows and soap operas, Rádio Nacional broadcast music both day and night, almost all of it live.

Not all music on Rádio Nacional was Brazilian. In terms of the amount of air time, international music surpassed the sambas, choros, and baiões by almost 3 to 1—and that included counting the Portuguese versions of American hits in with the Brazilian music category. Haroldo Barbosa in his position as head of the discotheque produced more than six hundred versions of American songs between 1937 and 1948, becoming a “partner” of Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Vincent Youmans, and other far less illustrious composers. Ultimately, xenophobia might have dominated other parts of national life, but not there. With its cadre of musicians and singers specializing in fox-trots, mambos, rumbas, tangos, waltzes, and boleros (the station even had a fake cowboy, Bob Nelson, to provide Western-style yodeling), it’s likely that Rádio Nacional was the largest rhythmical democracy in the world.

It must also have been the most arrogant, but it had good reason to be proud. Its most prestigious music program was the aforementioned Um milhão de melodies, and no one thought the title was an exaggeration. In the thirteen years that it aired on a weekly basis, from 1943 to 1956, sponsored by Coca-Cola—in fact, the program was created to launch Coca-Cola in Brazil—it’s obvious it couldn’t possibly have played those million melodies. But scratch a couple of zeros, and you’ll have almost the exact number of songs of all different types of music for which Radamés Gnatalli wrote original arrangements which he then performed with his orchestra, made up of the cream of musical talent at Nacional. Um milhão de melodies was a super-production involving so many people that they needed two maestros: one, Gnatalli, on stage, directing the musicians, and another, Peracchi, providing technical support, “conducting” the operators of eight microphones through the musical score. Everything was large-scale at Nacional, except the salaries. Compared to those of Tupi, its competitor, they could even be considered low. Despite this, artists fell over themselves in their bid to join Nacional. Its shortwave radio station guaranteed them a nationwide audience which, for them, meant widespread fame, work, and money.

Its neighbor on Avenida Venezuela, Rádio Tupi, was not that far behind in terms of popularity; and one of the reasons was that in 1946 it had been restructured from top to bottom by the man who practically built Nacional: Gilberto de Andrade. Andrade, hired by press mogul Assis Chateaubriand, not only stole big names from Nacional and brought them to Tupi, but also wreaked havoc on the Rio airwaves, stealing people and audiences away from the smaller stations. He pulled Tupi out of its romantic phase and made it tick like a clock. At this, its artistic directors began to take themselves seriously and to insist upon the fulfillment of obligations by its musicians, as if they truly understood the situation. Several hired ensembles were sent to the penalty line in 1950, and among them were Os Garotos da Lua.

Jonas Silva, a native of Pernambuco, was the crooner of the group. In 1946, at the age of eighteen, he boarded a flatbed truck in Recife, with his fellow countrymen Milton and Miguel, and headed for the radio stations and casinos of the South. They stopped in Salvador, Bahia, and were joined by two Bahia natives, Alvinho and Acyr. The five of them discovered that they could harmonize and caught the ship Itatinga, which got caught in bad weather near Vitória and almost sank on the journey due to an excess of passengers (it was the first ship to leave from Salvador since the War) and finally disembarked in Rio as Os Garotos da Lua. (Two years later, Miguel left the group and another Bahian, Toninho Botelho, who was already living in Rio, took his place). Terrible news awaited Os Garotos da Lua in Praça Mauá: the federal government was shutting down the casinos and as a result, all the vocal ensembles who had worked the casinos were returning to radio. They weren’t likely to get work any time soon.

The group went through hell and high water for more than a year before getting a break. Jonas and Acyr went to work as counter clerks at the Lojas Murray and, within a short time, Jonas became the official buyer of imported records for the store. The others made a living doing odd jobs and, in their spare time, rehearsed for all they were worth, waiting for an opportunity to come along. When their chance finally came at Rádio Tupi in 1947, they grabbed it and held on for dear life. They were extremely gifted musically, and, because Jonas and Acyr were record salesmen, they had advance access to the latest innovations by American groups. Their favorites were the Pied Pipers and the Mel-Tones, and they wasted no time in adapting their styles to their own.

Jonas’s singing was tuneful and full of verve, but his voice was rather nasal and had no vibrato; his range was so small it could have been measured with a ruler. This was during an era when the standard for vocal ensemble soloists was hard to beat, set by none other than Lúcio Alves. For the majority of Garotos da Lua tunes, Jonas’s restricted projection lent itself to wonderful renditions, such as the versions they recorded of “Caravan” and “In the Mood.” Furthermore, he wasn’t the only vocalist who sang that way. The American singer and accordionist Joe Mooney, whom everyone at the Murray admired, was another person who “sang softly,” as they called it. And there was an entire vocal ensemble, the Page Cavanaugh Trio, whose voices were also audible only at a short distance. So what, then, was the problem?

Antônio Maria, the artistic director at Tupi, thought there was a problem. Because of Jonas, the entire group was forced to whisper, he said. And when they sang carnival songs, the group “didn’t quite make it.” According to him, when the auditorium was crowded and the orchestra was playing full blast, the vocal volume of Os Garotos da Lua almost disappeared. They had to choose: either the group replaced its singer, or Tupi would replace the group.

Toninho Botelho, the recently arrived tambourine player of Os Garotos da Lua, led a conspiracy to dismiss Jonas from the group and save the group’s job. While Jonas, oblivious to the plot, mediated jazz debates at the Murray, Toninho gathered the other three at the Café Atlântida, on the ground floor of the Hotel Serrador, and reminded them of how long they had previously been out of work. Botelho had a strong card to play in his argument: if Tupi wanted to fire them because their crooner forced them to “sing softly,” they would find it difficult to get work at another radio station with the same crooner. Milton, Alvinho, and Acyr agreed with Botelho on all counts, but it wasn’t an easy decision to make. Jonas had come from the northeast with them, he was one of the two founders of the group, they had lived together for years, and damn it, they were like brothers. Jonas was also well loved in their circle of vocal ensembles and was, without comparison, the most popular person at the Murray. To get rid of him would be like inciting a coup d’état. And besides, who would take his place? All the good crooners in the square were already employed.

Alvinho stumbled on the answer to this question a few days later, when he went to Salvador to visit his family. He met a boy at Bahia’s Rádio Sociedade, who “sang like a dream” and played “a mean guitar.” That was what he wrote to Milton, Acyr, and Toninho in Rio, guaranteeing that he had found the man they were looking for.

“He sings like Lúcio,” he said in his letter.

Acyr, Jonas’s coworker at the Murray, was the first to buy the idea. Toninho didn’t need to be convinced. The two overcame Milton’s resistance and wrote to Alvinho, authorizing him to hire the guy. The latter accepted the proposal. Alvinho told the boy that he had only to wait a few days while they performed delicate surgery on the other crooner, and returned to Rio.

A week later, once Jonas had been dismissed, Alvinho went to the post office and dispatched a telegram to João Gilberto do Prado Pereira de Oliveira, c/o Rádio Sociedade, Salvador, Bahia.

3

Battle of the Vocal Ensembles

Garotos da Lua, 1950: in the front row, Acyr, Milton, and Toninho; in the back, Alvinho and the new crooner—João Gilberto

Collection of Jonas Silva

In 1950, the journey from Bahia to Rio on a flatbed truck via the BR-116 before it was paved was a test of endurance, with more dangers along its thousand miles than in the films of Republic Pictures. When it rained, whoever survived the puddles, mud slides, and craters risked toppling into deep ravines when the road suddenly disappeared. There was no direct bus service; going by train, one would die of boredom or old age; and by ship, the food was worse than on the battleship Potemkin. We can therefore assume that the artists who came from the northeast must have had enough guts to face any danger: 99 percent of them arrived in Rio by one of these means of transportation. The only civilized option was the DC-3 planes operated by Panair do Brasil. João Gilberto was in a hurry to get to Rio to answer the summons of Os Garotos da Lua, and he didn’t want to arrive at Rádio Tupi with his suit wrinkled and his lungs choked with dust. The obvious thing to do was to take the plane.

He had spent more than a year in Salvador and had not managed to find permanent work at any radio station, not even as an actor for radio soap operas, an option he had considered, although without much interest. He had gone to live with his cousins while he looked for a place to stay. Admittedly, he didn’t have to look for very long, mainly because he met Cravinho, Lúcio Alves’s friend in New York, who had also returned to Brazil. Cravinho had brought a fabulous collection of records by American singers, orchestras, and vocal ensembles to Salvador. His house, in a fashionable neighborhood, was enough to make any Rio disc jockey’s mouth water.

João Gilberto was in heaven when Cravinho would select, from among the thousands of 78s and many LPs, certain shiny discs: “Pinky” by Sarah Vaughan; “After You” by the Pastels; “Everything I Have Is Yours” by Billy Eckstine. Cravinho had heard all those stars perform live in New York. But their true idol was Brazilian: Orlando Silva. When João went to visit Cravinho, stacks and stacks of records of Orlando Silva at his best—those he recorded between 1935 and 1942—overflowed the music stands: “Céu moreno” (Dark Sky), “Lábios que beijei” (Lips That I Kissed), “Dá-me tuas mãos” (Give Me Your Hands), “Deusa do cassino” (Goddess of the Casino), “Aos pés da cruz” (At the Foot of the Cross). Neither of them had any doubt that Orlando Silva was—or had been—the best Brazilian singer of all time, and perhaps the best in the world, easily standing up to competition from Sinatra, Crosby, Haymes, Eckstine, or Tormé. For reasons they did not know, Orlando Silva had lost his voice sometime during the 1940s. After he had switched from RCA Victor to Odeon, his career began to decline. The biggest singer in Brazil for both of them now became Lúcio Alves—not coincidentally, a disciple of Orlando Silva.

All of this filled João Gilberto’s thoughts as he trudged through the corridors of Rádio Sociedade, in Salvador, looking for a break. His mother’s family was on intimate terms with Odorico Tavares, the director of the radio station. This helped him earn a little money singing (with an orchestra!) in auditorium programs. But it would be different in Rio. He had been summoned by Os Garotos da Lua, who were under contract with Rádio Tupi. On receiving Alvinho’s telegram authorizing him to travel, he pooled the money he had earned from his performances with contributions from his cousins and went to Panair to buy a ticket to Rio. And by means of a letter written by his uncle Walter, he received something else that was almost as good as money: a recommendation to work in his spare time as a clerk in the House of Representatives.

João Gilberto descended the steps of the DC-3 alone, at Galeão airport, caught a taxi, and went up to the sixth floor of Rádio Tupi on Avenida Venezuela. He had never been to Rio, but the city didn’t scare him. He was carrying his guitar inside its case and had come to conquer. His entrance into the studio, where Os Garotos da Lua were waiting for him, was practically a ticker-tape parade. Alvinho introduced him to his future colleagues and also to the star Dircinha Batista, who was a friend of the group and who just happened to be there. They asked him to play them something. João took his guitar out of its case and sang “Sinceridade,” a song by Os Cariocas. (Why didn’t he sing something by Os Garotos da Lua? Because he didn’t know any of their songs.)

This was not a test, because he had already been hired. The others were dying of curiosity, to see if he really was the wonder that Alvinho had talked about. They decided he really was. He spoke softly, with a terrible Bahian accent, and his guitar playing was nothing special, but when he sang, he could have been Orlando and Lúcio rolled into one. That is to say, João Gilberto promised them the best of both worlds.

Not even Dircinha’s presence bothered him. He sang with the confidence of a veteran, and she left declaring that Os Garotos da Lua had found one hell of a crooner. And they felt that now their chances in the Rio vocal ensembles championship had just gotten better. It wasn’t just the vocal ensemble’s job that had been saved. With the considerable volume of João Gilberto’s voice, they could comply with all of Tupi’s requirements, including the loud carnival sambas, and would not have to restrict themselves to the intimate and sophisticated themes they had been limited to with Jonas.

Ah yes, Jonas. His colleagues had been surprised at the apparent indifference with which he took the news that he had been voted out of the group that he had helped to found. Of course he was hurt, but he retained his dignity. He summoned Milton in private and complained:

“Hell, they could have talked to me. I would have understood. I knew about the problems the group was having with the radio station. I would have left sooner, without having to be given the impression that I was being kicked out.”

Milton didn’t know whose side to take, and Jonas let him suffer for a while. They made up a story to save face: Jonas was having a problem with his larynx and had asked to be replaced. He had even gone to Bahia to “help bring João Gilberto here.” This way, he wouldn’t be pegged by other vocal ensembles as having been replaced because of a personal limitation. In fact, what was truly hurting him was not his larynx, but the stab in his back. Financially, he saw little problem in leaving the group. There were other groups, and at twenty-one, he was beginning to discover his vocation for business—the record business. His job at the Lojas Murray guaranteed him a monthly salary and, given that he was becoming an authority on American popular music, he would be indispensable to the store when customers were trying to decide what to buy.

Any self-respecting shopkeeper would know to order, for example, one hundred copies of “I’m Looking over a Four-Leaf Clover” by Russ Morgan, the big hit of the year, but who would also dare to order ten copies of “You Never Say ‘Never’ Again” by a group called The Axidentals, or “Hawaiian War Chant” by the Merry-Macs? Jonas knew that these vocal ensembles were good and that by selling two or three records, the news would spread by word of mouth at the Murray and there would not be even so much as one surplus record left over. It had worked so far. But his plan included not staying too much longer at the Murray because in the future he would have his own record store.

So Jonas continued to treat his ex-colleagues from Os Garotos da Lua like brothers; he continued to live with Milton, Acyr, and Toninho in the same house at Bairro da Fátima, he continued to work with Acyr at the Murray, and he welcomed João Gilberto as he would have liked to have been welcomed when he arrived in Rio three years earlier. João Gilberto went to stay with Alvinho in Tijuca while he looked for a place to live.

Os Garotos were energized by the newcomer’s enthusiasm. Antônio Maria stopped persecuting them at Tupi, and at a time when not all of radio’s billed stars recorded on a regular basis, Os Garotos da Lua released two 78s (4 sides) with the recording label Todamérica, in 1951: “Quando você recordar” (When You Remember) / “Amar é bom” (Loving Is Good) and “Anjo cruel” (Cruel Angel) / “Sem ela” (Without Her). Neither of these releases broke any records, but that wasn’t what was expected of them. Despite (or because of) their musical talent, vocal ensembles were admired more by other musicians than by the public, who tended to regard them as a type of counterbalance to romantic singers.

For this reason, a crooner who stood out above the rest would soon leave to pursue a solo career, believing that not having to carry the other members of the group would lead to a faster road to stardom. (Some of these crooners, having left to experience the outside world, would realize that it was actually they who were carried by the others, and would come running back to the group.) Few groups managed to stay together like Os Cariocas—perhaps because they did not have a leader like Ismael Netto. Other times, when a singer left the group there was an uproar: it could mean the end of the group, especially if the singer was also the leader, like Lúcio Alves with Os Namorados da Lua.

A year and a half after having joined Os Garotos da Lua, it became clear that João Gilberto had extremely high aspirations and that he would quickly escape to pursue a solo career. Surprisingly, his companions didn’t lose a minute’s sleep over this, for two reasons: the group was prepared to survive without him; and it was Os Garotos da Lua who fired João Gilberto.

The letter of recommendation written by Uncle Walter to another uncle, the Bahian representative Rui Santos, who was married to one of his mother’s sisters, landed João Gilberto a paid position as a clerk in the latter’s office in the Federal District’s House of Representatives downtown—a few meters from the temptations of the Lojas Murray. He was hired, but the letter had neglected to mention that the new employee would not be obliged to show up for work. João forgot to fulfill even the most basic of tasks expected from a model employee: hanging his jacket on the coatrack, going about his business, and returning to collect it at the end of each working day. A year after being hired, after the absence of his jacket on the coatrack had begun to be excessively conspicuous in the Palácio Tiradentes (the Rio House of Representatives), they had to fire him.

His participation in Os Garotos da Lua was not much more diligent. Following the first few months of euphoria, his colleagues began to complain about his tardiness and absences at rehearsals and performances. The arrangements of the group were written by Milton in such a way that, in the event that the crooner didn’t show up, he could be replaced by whoever happened to be around, even at the last minute. All the substitute had to do was learn the music. Thus, João’s absences were covered by other artists under contract with Tupi, such as Doris Monteiro and even the great Lúcio Alves, a friend of theirs. During another of his absences, he was substituted by none other than his predecessor in the group, Jonas Silva, proof that Jonas did not harbor any hard feelings. Things began to get complicated for João Gilberto when Rádio Tupi again started scrutinizing the group, this time in the name of discipline: either they got into line, or they were out.

The rest of the group transferred this scrutiny to João Gilberto, to whom the radio station had already given the thumbs down. Os Garotos da Lua did not want to run the risk of getting fired, because they lived for the moment when their crescent moon might truly shine. In January 1951, TV Tupi began transmission in Rio, and for its inaugural program, hosted by Antônio Maria, it organized a lineup of its main radio stars, among which were Os Garotos da Lua, complete with João Gilberto. TV Tupi in São Paulo had also been launched four months before, and by virtue of belonging to the cast of Associated Networks, the group would have an open forum for work ahead of them in television.

Things were also improving in the record department. In May and September, respectively, Os Garotas da Lua recorded the aforementioned two 78s with Todamérica, both very extravagant productions. In the first, they were accompanied by the swinging orchestra of the young and ambitious conductor Cipó; in the second, which was released in time for Carnival 1952, they were backed by the female singing group, As Três Marias (The Three Marias). The two records were perfect, and João was sensational on all four tracks. Invitations for them to perform in clubs came pouring in. After that, nothing could stop Os Garotos da Lua.

Except, perhaps, a crooner who might as well have been on the moon.

One more or one less show at the Madureira Tennis Club would not have signified either the peak or the end of their careers, but when Norival Reis, an influential sound technician with the recording company Continental and the social director of the club, invited them to perform there, they could not refuse. And besides, they owed him several favors. Norival sent a taxi to pick them up at Café Atlântida, at Cinelândia. When the car arrived, there was one Garoto da Lua missing: João Gilberto. They waited for him for more than an hour, over furious gulps of coffee and áraque. Once they realized that João wasn’t coming, they cursed him to hell and went without him, but it was beginning to become an irritating habit. Fifty minutes later, they arrived at Madureira, which was somewhat far away. The lights in the club had already been turned off. Everyone had gone home, and the only person waiting for them was Norival, who was highly embarrassed and apoplectic with rage. On the return journey to the city, they decided that that would be the last time.

The following day, João turned up at the Lojas Murray, humming “Tangerine,” with his girlfriend, Sylvinha. Acyr saw him come in and, from the other side of the counter, without bothering to lower his voice, shouted across the crowded store, “Hell, João, this can’t go on. Either you stop being so irresponsible, or you leave Os Garotos da Lua. We’re professionals.”

João Gilberto tried to explain, saying that he “wasn’t able to make it,” but Acyr didn’t want to hear it. The entire Murray, where everyone knew them, heard Acyr shouting. João Gilberto turned the color of a tomato at being reprimanded in front of his friends and his girlfriend. He tried to have the last word: “Well, if it’s like that, tell the others I’m not coming back.”

He wasn’t expecting Acyr’s final retort: “Great. We’ll find someone else that we can count on.”

Outside, on the way back to the Café Atlântida with Sylvinha, João didn’t seem too worried. When Milton found out what had happened, he went to tell João that Acyr had been crazy and that, regarding his absence the night before, everything was OK. After all, Acyr wasn’t the leader of Os Garotos da Lua, Milton was. However, the group had stopped being so important for João’s career. He had decided that he would shortly go solo. He knew that his tardiness and absences were causing problems with the radio station, and that he would have to leave sooner or later. But just like Jonas two years earlier, João Gilberto was not given the opportunity to leave the group at his convenience. They wanted him out first.

Milton and the others supported Acyr’s point of view. While they looked for a replacement, the crooner’s part could be sung by Toninho Botelho, a passable tenor. But they wasted no time in finding a singer named Edgardo Luís, who fit perfectly into João’s tuxedo and who, for their peace of mind, wore a watch to keep track of the time.

If João Gilberto had hit the ground with a thud upon learning that he was fired, he managed to break his fall with a spring mattress. He didn’t blame them for their actions. And as had happened with Jonas, he remained friends with Os Garotos. (Except for Acyr, whom he only spoke to again five years later.) In addition, he had just moved out of Alvinho’s apartment in Tijuca to stay with the others in the Bairro da Fátima—again, until he found a place to live. His unemployed status was now twofold: he had been fired from the House of Representatives and also from the group. But in his mind and in his heart, he believed that the situation was just temporary.

One thing is certain: his departure from Os Garotos da Lua was the last time he was fired. It was also the last time in his life that he would have regular work.

His relationship with Sylvinha was just one of the things that distracted João Gilberto from the rigors of professional life, and it was certainly the sweetest. She was eighteen years old, studied at the Colégio Sacré-Cœur de Marie, and was the younger sister of Mário Telles, his best friend. Mário worked in his family’s textile business when he wasn’t spending time with Os Garotos da Lua. He was almost like the sixth member of the group, although he didn’t sing and hadn’t even dreamed of becoming a lyricist. João met him at the Murray and the two became so close that when one showed up without the other, people would ask, “Hey, where’s the other side of the record?”

Mário and Sylvinha Telles lived with their parents in Rua Farani, in Botafogo, and their house was a meeting place for vocal ensembles, despite all the strict rules. Their father, Mr. Paulo, could not abide alcohol, and the boys had to make do with the soda guaraná. But Sylvinha and Mário’s mother, Dona Maria, was French and a fantastic cook. Her baked sea bass with avocado sauce generated cries of approval from among those youngsters who frequently did not even have the money for a steak and eggs at the Hanseática, a restaurant in Praça Mauá behind Rádio Nacional. João became very close to the family and fell in love with Sylvinha.

Among other things, she confided in him her adolescent dream: she wanted to be a ballet dancer. She studied dance with instructor Madeleine Rosay of the Teatro Municipal Corps de Ballet. She also studied piano and loved to sing, and João would spend hours accompanying Sylvinha in “Duas contas” (Two Beads), which the composer Garoto had recorded with Trio Surdina. It was clear that Sylvinha would have a brilliant future at the microphone if her family—or rather, her father—would allow it. There would have been much more sea bass with avocado sauce had João and Sylvinha’s relationship not progressed to the point of dangerously resembling courtship, and Mário did not like it. According to social etiquette of the time, a friend’s sister was off-limits, and to try and court her was anathema.

João wasn’t concerned about etiquette, mainly because it appeared that Sylvinha returned his feelings, and they began a passionate affair. Mário broke off his friendship with him, and at this, João and Sylvinha glimpsed a clear road ahead. She began to accompany him everywhere, sometimes wearing her public school uniform, and witnessed the quarrel with Acyr at the Murray that caused his departure from Os Garotos da Lua.

However, although Mário was unable to put a stop to the forbidden relationship, old man Paulo broke it up a few months later, with the weight of his paternal authority, when João had the temerity to announce that he wanted to marry his daughter. As he suspected that he would be shown the door, João did not go to Rua Farani to ask for Sylvinha’s hand in person, he sent another frequent visitor to the house, the broadcaster Macedo Neto, in his place. Macedo listened to Mr. Paulo’s refusal and his invectives against João Gilberto, and even became the target of a few insults himself. Mr. Paulo would not allow his daughter to marry a down-and-out from Bahia, who was incapable of repaying even the smallest loan and who lived his life sponging off others. Sylvinha was forbidden to continue her relationship with that “good-for-nothing,” and Mário took it upon himself to ensure that it remained that way.

Sylvinha knew that João Gilberto was trying to become someone. The two were still dating in August 1952, when the opportunity arose for João to record his first solo track. It would be with the new recording company Copacabana, and he was given the luxury of having a string section sweeten the harmonies of the group that was to back him. The group, in turn, featured the sensational Jorginho on alto sax, as well as the pianist Britinho and the accordionist Orlando Silveira, the composer of the arrangements. He could not complain.

For his grand debut, João Gilberto picked two samba-canções which were hot off the press: “Quando ela sai” (When She Leaves) by Alberto Jesus and Roberto Penteado, and “Meia Luz” (Half Light) by Hianto de Almeida and João Luiz. All the songs’ composers were young and frequented the Murray. The recording was done in an atmosphere of celestial peace—almost on the first try, without hesitations, mistakes, or repetitions. Those who attended would never have suspected that it was João Gilberto’s first recording without the support of a vocal ensemble. It was as if he had spent his entire life preparing himself for that moment, and when the moment arrived, his heart barely skipped a beat.

Unless the doctor’s watch had stopped. Listening to this João Gilberto recording, one encountered confidence personified. His calm superiority when singing reminded one of Orlando Silva in his heyday, when not even a fly in the studio would disturb the “singer of the multitudes.” But it wasn’t just that. Everything about these two tracks reminded one of Orlando Silva: the easy projection of his voice, the variance, the vibratos, his manner of emphasizing certain words, the “sentiment,” and, at certain times, even his voice itself—including Orlando’s smooth and rounded rrs. It was as if the older singer, who was at the time going through his worst personal and professional hell—no voice, no success and no acclaim—had finally found his double in a Bahian native from Juazeiro.

João Gilberto’s discographies, which usually start their listings with the 78 r.p.m.s containing “Chega de saudade” (No More Blues) and “Bim-bom,” recorded six years later, tend to omit this first record. This is understandable: few researchers are aware of its existence, and even fewer have heard it. Not that it was released and then withdrawn. João Gilberto recorded it, it was released, and, quite simply, nothing happened. It was barely given any airtime on the radio, few people showed interest in buying it, and neither of the two songs inspired much enthusiasm in the radio stations where he promoted them live. It wasn’t a total fiasco, probably because not even the recording company thought things would be any different. The only person who saw the whole thing as a failure was João Gilberto.

The disdain with which his debut record was received is almost incomprehensible when one realizes that, under different circumstances, he could have been the greatest romantic singer in Brazil. Maybe this was the problem: in “Quando ela sai” (When She Leaves) and “Meia Luz” (Half Light), João Gilberto stepped back years in time, in the style of Orlando Silva, during an era when people only wanted to hear the nonchalant spirit of Dick Farney and Lúcio Alves. It was an “outdated” way of singing which in those days wasn’t even paying the rent of Orlando Silva himself. For those listening to the record today who are unable to recognize João Gilberto as the singer he would later become, there is a marked absence of something on the two tracks: his guitar. There is no point in searching for it because Britinho’s piano is heard in its place. Today it seems ridiculous, but at the time, no one particularly missed it, because João Gilberto was not yet especially well known for playing that instrument. (In Os Garotos da Lua, Milton was the guitarist.) But even though it’s perfectly normal that there isn’t the merest hint of the future bossa nova beat in that record, it’s remarkable that no vestiges of his hero, Lúcio Alves, have remained. During the recording session, João Gilberto allowed himself to be completely taken over by the spirit of the young Orlando Silva.

Lúcio Alves was one of the first people that João wanted to meet when he arrived in Rio. Cravinho was a mutual friend and made the introductions. The ex-Namorado da Lua, only four years older than João Gilberto, was already a big star and had almost sung with Tex Beneke’s band. And that’s not all: he was finally now starting to savor the bright side of the moon. He was the singer to whom all other singers took off their hats. With his ear finely tuned to listening for mistakes, Lúcio understood the potential that the boy from Bahia possessed and immediately decided to help him. He had many opportunities to do so—whenever Os Garotos da Lua were about to go on air, for example, and João Gilberto was nowhere to be seen at the Tupi studios.

When João and Os Garotos broke up, and it became uncomfortable for him to continue living with them, Lúcio invited him to stay at his apartment in Rua Raul Pompéia, in Copacabana—until he found another place. By all accounts, it wasn’t very easy, and João had a habit of staying indefinitely wherever someone put him up. Some months later, Rádio Nacional wanted to include the song “Just One More Chance,” written by Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnson, and made a hit by Les Paul and Mary Ford, in one of their soap operas, and asked Haroldo Barbosa to write a Portuguese version of it. Within a short time, Barbosa had changed it to “Um minuto só” (Just One Minute) and asked Lúcio Alves to record the acetate. But singing versions of American songs gave Lúcio hives. He declared that he was not available and suggested João Gilberto in his place. João recorded the acetate in a perfect imitation of Lúcio Alves. Except for the lowest tones of Lúcio’s voice, which he was unable to duplicate, he copied all of his idol’s mannerisms and sang in such a way that those who did not know better would swear they were listening to Lúcio Alves. For João, it was an homage to his friend. Lúcio thanked him and accepted the compliment, but in truth, it became a thorn in his side. Perhaps he realized, for the first time, that João might pose a threat.

João Gilberto had shown that, if he wanted, he could be the next Lúcio Alves. His record would prove that he could also be the next Orlando Silva. What would happen when he decided to become himself—João Gilberto?

In Rio’s Lapa neighborhood in 1951, marijuana could be purchased almost openly. One of the dealing spots was the sidewalk outside the Primor bar and the Colonial cinema, in the Largo da Lapa, opposite the streetcar depot. The suppliers were the boys who sold cigarettes on wooden trays. On those trays, in amongst the innocent Lincoln, Caporal Douradinho, Liberty Ovais, and other commercial brands, one could select cigarettes that came rolled in three different sizes and prices: fino, dólar, and the thickest, charo. There is no record of the prices at that time, but apparently they were cheap, considering their exceptional quality—without a doubt, in order to lure customers. In close company, marijuana was called mato, “herb,” or, by the initiated, Rafa—an abbreviation of the expression “Is Rafael there?,” used to inquire if there was any reefer available.

No one ran a significant risk by smoking it in public places. Although it wasn’t exactly a crime, it was advisable not to do it around the police because it might give them ideas. Passersby weren’t a problem: few people knew how to identify it by its smell. As almost no one really knew what sort of effect it would have, the worst thing that could happen to someone who was caught smoking it was to acquire a reputation as a “screwball.” That is, nothing that would really contribute to further tainting the image that musicians and singers already had.

Despite the apparent liberalism, few white musicians and singers had that reputation in the early fifties. The sambistas on the hill always had marijuana at their disposal, but it took a long time to come down into the city; and when this happened, shortly after World War II, it was on a small-scale basis. At first, its main consumers were American soldiers on leave in Rio, who were already stoned when they disembarked at the pier in Praça Mauá. There they would make contact with Cuban sailors, who were always ahead of the game when it came to matters like this and would resolve their problem. Many of those soldiers became friends with the Rádio Nacional musicians, whose hangout was Zica’s Bar in Praça Mauá, almost right next to the radio station. Zica’s was not really a spot for drug dealing, restricting itself to a profitable trade of contraband whiskey and the sale of dollars. But between the comings and goings of the marines, Cubans, and musicians, there was an awakening interest in the product even among those who didn’t smoke commercial cigarettes. Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra came to Rio that year and introduced the Rádio Tupi gang to the product’s wide variety of uses.

Almost everyone in Os Garotos da Lua smoked Rafa, and when they first offered it to João Gilberto, in the Bairro de Fátima apartment, he discovered qualities in it that normal cigarettes, which he tried to smoke despite a certain amount of nausea it caused, decidedly did not have. It gave him the impression of sharpening his senses, allowing him to perceive sounds and colors of which he had previously been unaware. It also appeared to awaken a semi-inexplicable mysticism which until then, at the age of twenty, he had unconsciously repressed. It was an easy conquest. From that moment on, he never smoked Lincoln, Caporal Douradinho, or Liberty Ovais again.

João Gilberto had only recently arrived from Bahia when he came across João Donato at Rádio Tupi. Neither of them had ever seen the other in his life. They stared at one another for a moment and João Gilberto exclaimed:

“It’s true!”

And Donato knew exactly what he meant.

In Salvador, a few months before, Alvinho, of Os Garotos da Lua, had told João Gilberto that when he got to Rio he would meet an accordionist who could be his twin. In Rio, they said the same thing to Donato about the singer they were bringing in from Bahia. When João Gilberto and Donato met at the Tupi, they discovered that Alvinho was right.

They also discovered that they were alike in other, more important ways. Musically, the two insisted on an all-out effort from others and a little more from themselves, which made it hard to play with them in a group: apparently no one was good or proficient enough to play with them. But this list of demands did not include a strong attachment to discipline, and this wasn’t always very well understood by their employers. With so many things in common, it was normal for them to be hand-in-glove with each other during those first uncertain years of the 1950s. In front of others, they communicated in an inconvenient code, comprising more silence than actual words, just beyond the understanding of mere mortals. This afforded them the reputation of being eccentric, which they were never able to shake. And with good reason: they were eccentric. Why else would they visit the Instituto Pinel, a psychiatric hospital in Botafogo, if they didn’t know anyone who had been committed? (Running the additional risk that they would not be allowed to leave.)

Nevertheless, the fact that they were together from sunrise to sunset did not, initially, result in any collaborations, except during shopping sprees in Lapa. The two of them weren’t even developing musically at the same speed; Donato was leagues ahead of João Gilberto. In June 1953, while Donato was recording that extremely modern version of “Eu quero um samba” (I Want a Samba) at Sinter with Os Namorados, João Gilberto was leaping up and down with excitement at having recorded the first song he had written: a colorless samba-canção in partnership with Russo do Pandeiro, called “Você esteve com meu bem?” (Have You Been with My Sweetheart?)—which was OK for the era; but even without the shaking rhythm of the afoxê on the recording, it would not have taken offense at being called a bolero.

Russo do Pandeiro was a veteran of Carmen Miranda’s entourage in Rio and Hollywood. Living in the United States, Russo appeared in several American comedies that were set in “Brazil,” starring Groucho Marx, Esther Williams, and the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope/Dorothy Lamour trio. He also had a band called Russo and the Samba Kings. He was never nominated for an Oscar, but earned enough money to carry out his greatest cinematic achievement: buying Rudolph Valentino’s former home in Beverly Hills. Upon his return to Rio in 1950, he sold Valentino’s house and built a “jingles” recording studio in Rua Santa Luzia. The beloved Russo didn’t even contribute so much as a comma in the partnership that produced “Você esteve com meu bem?,” but it was due to his contacts at RCA Victor that the song was recorded, by a starlet: Mariza, the future Gata Mansa, João Gilberto’s new girlfriend.

In 1953 João was still nursing his wounds from the breakup of his romance with Sylvinha Telles when he met Mariza, who was nineteen, at a party in Tijuca, where she lived. He thought she was a drop-dead gorgeous brunette (which didn’t really take great powers of observation), and when he found out that she liked to sing, he wasted no time in getting out his guitar to accompany her. Mariza sang “Sandália de prata” (Silver Sandal) by Alcyr Pires Vermelho and Pedro Caetano. João was so incredibly impressed that he was unable to resist asking her the usual question, if she had plans to become a singer for real. Mariza said she was happy with her job as a shop assistant at a department store. He guaranteed that he would make her a professional. In fact, what he wanted was to make her his girlfriend (in which he succeeded), but he also made her a singer. And it was a good thing that it did in fact happen, because after he had promised her bright lights and applause, Mariza gave her notice at the store.

“Você esteve com meu bem?,” in which she was accompanied by the conductor Gaya’s orchestra, with João Gilberto playing a heavenly but traditional guitar, won Mariza a series of performances at nightclubs and, some time later, an extended contract in the Golden Room at the Copacabana Palace—so long, in fact, that for years there were people who thought she always sang there. João managed to do for Mariza what he failed to do for himself. But for him, that record was just one more disappointment. The song raised no eyebrows and no one even noticed his guitar. The situation began to get worrisome. By then, he had already been out of work for a year, and the jingles he had begun to record in Russo de Padeiro’s studio barely paid his streetcar fare. Besides, he hadn’t come all the way from Bahia to be a jingles singer.

And the jingles! The lyrics to the Toddy Cocoa one, for example, which he recorded with Mariza and Os Cariocas, went: “I was a skinny guy / Very ugly and yellow.// ‘He drank Toddy every day / Gained weight and his looks improved / He became strong.’// The girls now say I’m handsome / I am the champion at sports.” He recorded others that were worse, but that one made him suffer the most because up until then, he actually liked Toddy.

Less disagreeable, but to a certain extent even more degrading, were the society parties at which he was invited to play. His payment was free access to the buffet table and the waiters’ drink trays, but he had to come and go through the servants’ entrance. This is what it was like to play for his meals. He took Mariza to one of these parties, held at the home of the rich Serzedelo Machado family. One of the guests was the Brazilian ex-president, Eurico Gaspar Dutra, who appeared to chew invisible gum as he dozed in his chair. There were other musicians there, some of whom had hit the skids when Dutra had closed the casinos. And they had to play for the old guy.

In Juazeiro and Salvador, if João Gilberto’s family had thrown parties like this, he would have been the host, not a musician who had to come in the back door. But how could he host anything in Rio if, once again, he had nowhere to live? Lúcio Alves had made it clear that he wanted to go back to living alone, and João had to leave his friend’s apartment. Who, unfortunately, was no longer his friend; after all, a friend wouldn’t be hurt by an innocent game like being imitated in a recording. João Gilberto spoke to Chico, Donato’s colleague in Os Namorados, and he agreed to let him stay for a while in his matchbox-sized apartment in Copacabana—again, until he found somewhere else.

João wasn’t a complete nuisance as a guest, but only because he would occasionally disappear from the house where he was staying only to resurface days later. This meant he had gone to visit a friend and had stayed there, forgetting about the time and his tasks. One of his favorite refuges was the downtown apartment of the Bahian artisan and composer Clóvis Santos, in Rua Alcindo Guanabara. Clóvis wrote “Grande mágoa” (Great Sorrow), which Mariza recorded on side B of “Você esteve com meu bem?” and would later be one of the principal moving spirits of the Conservatória musical community in the state of Rio. Two things attracted João to the Santos house: the delicious okra stew that his wife, Iola, would prepare almost daily at his request, and the marijuana seedling that he had planted in a little pot and liked to watch grow. Mariza, who would accompany him to Clóvis’s house, didn’t know what it was and was delighted by her boyfriend’s sudden interest in botany.

Growing weed was perhaps a solution to João’s financial situation. His finances were becoming more and more unstable. His prospects of work were zero. He could not write home to ask for money, and his pride was trampled on when a friend like Clóvis (or the composer Britinho, his pianist on “Quando ela sai” [When She Leaves] and “Meia luz” [Half Light]) offered him a little money to tide him over. His nighttime circuit of the clubs wasn’t earning him anything, either. True, as almost all the musicians at the clubs were his friends, he didn’t have to pay a cover charge to get in, but he was rarely invited to play anything. Sometimes he preferred to stay by the door without going in, waiting for one of them to come outside for a breath of fresh air, and chat.

One of the hangouts was the Plaza Hotel nightclub, in Avenida Princesa Isabel in Copacabana, where his friend Johnny Alf was performing. Everyone went to see him. Another was a bar called Tudo Azul (All Blue), in Rua Domingos Ferreira, where the house pianist, a guy named Jobim, introduced him to the poet Vinícius de Moraes. And João Donato was playing accordion with Copinha’s orchestra at the Copacabana Palace. Donato had a forty-minute break between the orchestra’s two performances, and João Gilberto used to wait for him on the sidewalk in front of the sea. But Donato was frequently late or would stand him up altogether, and João would sit there alone, on a bench, contemplating the sea. Nothing very exciting was happening.

And it didn’t look as if it would happen any time soon. In January 1954, when his stomach began to twitch with the frequency of a flashing yellow traffic light, he felt he had to do something. He needed regular work that would allow him to get by for at least a few months. Once again he asked Russo do Pandeiro for help, and he had the solution: the impresario and producer Carlos Machado, the “King of the Night.”

Many people, including Russo, owed the launch of their careers to Carlos Machado, in places like the Urca Casino, the Quitandinha Hotel, or the Night and Day nightclub. They included Dick Farney, Laurindo de Almeida, the Quitandinha Serenaders, Fafá Lemos, Mary Gonçalves, Angela Maria, Emilinha Borba and, of course, Virgínia Lane. His shows were a riot of plumes, good music, risqué jokes, and, most of all, a stunning chorus line of girls. The girls, after doing well for themselves, would leave to pursue international careers or wealthy marriages. In 1954, the girl Machado was grooming to become his next star was called Norma Bengell. João Gilberto had nothing to lose by going to work with him, said Russo. The worst thing that could happen to him would be to make an international career or a wealthy marriage.

At that time, Machado was preparing another of his super-productions: the show Esta vida é um carnaval (This Life Is a Carnival), which would be performed at the Casablanca nightclub in Urca. The star was the actor Grande Otelo and the cast was somewhat over-the-top, even for Machado’s sponsors: the mulatta Déo Maia, Ataulpho Alves e Suas Pastoras (Ataulpho Alves and His Shepherdesses), Teresa Austregésilo, Russo himself, the whole chorus line of girls, and the entire percussion section of the Imperio Serrano Samba School. Despite already having so many people on stage, Machado managed to fulfill Russo’s request and find a place for João Gilberto, and not just for him but for Mariza as well. And to prove that he had the noblest of intentions, he saved four small walk-on parts in the show for João Gilberto. João only sang during the last two.

At his first entrance, João played a composer on the terrace of the Café Nice. He exited the stage, changed his costume at the speed of light, and reappeared as a marine in Lapa. Another change of clothes, and he came back on stage in “black face,” as one of the inmates of a slave house, singing in a chorus with the others. And finally, he entered the enclosure dressed as a clown, to sing Sinhô’s samba, “Recordar é viver” (Remembering Is Living), with the whole cast.

It wasn’t easy: four costume changes in an hour and twenty minutes of performance, without grumbling or delays, without missing one’s entrance cues, and having to fit in with up to fifty people on stage. Only a professional, even an inexperienced one, could take on such a responsibility. But João Gilberto continued to take part until the end of the season, in March, without giving Machado reason to complain.

The producer could not say the same of Mariza. In all her entrances, like all of Machado’s other girls, she had to appear in a bikini or, at the very least, in one of those dresses that were split up the leg, revealing the thigh. Mariza rebelled against that kind of exposure, which she considered indecent, and only stayed for the first two weeks because João Gilberto talked her into it. When she decided to leave, the two of them had a fight. “Don’t ruin your career over something so silly,” urged João.

“I’ll be damned if I don’t,” replied Mariza. “I came here to sing, not to exhibit my body.”

“If you leave, it’s over between us,” insisted João.

“Goodbye, then,” she said. “You may not mind singing dressed up as a marine, but I do mind singing stark naked.”

When Mariza left the show, João Gilberto should have been surprised at his sense of duty in trying to make her sing decked out in costume—as he was, unbelievably, doing. Of course he had no choice, and he hated himself each time he had to strut out on stage in those ridiculous clothes. But there were always so many people on stage that perhaps no one could really see him.

His agony was brief, despite Esta vida é um carnaval’s success with the critics. Rubem Braga called it “exciting”; Antônio Maria defined it as “a show that thrilled the audience through and through”—and, luckily for him, neither one of them noticed his presence on stage. It was also a success with the audience, but Carlos Machado had to close the show after two months. His contract with the Monte Carlo nightclub in Gávea had expired and he was forced to transfer to the Casablanca the show that was being performed there, Satã dirige o espetáculo (Satan Directs the Show). This signaled the end of João’s theatrical career, because there was no room for him in the Satã cast.

The outcome of his participation in Esta vida é um carnaval was gloomy: he had had to sing dressed as a clown, he had not managed to launch an international career, he had not made a wealthy marriage, and, to cap it all, he no longer had a girlfriend.

Coincidentally, a few months later, he was literally adopted by a vocal ensemble that also began its career with Carlos Machado: the Quitandinha Serenaders. Machado had given them this name when they sang with his orchestra at the famous Hotel Quitandinha, in Petrópolis, in the days when the latter was a casino. With the ban on gambling in 1946, the hotel returned to its primary function of merely hosting guests, but it had gotten out of practice and rapidly declined. The group descended the mountain in the direction of the Rio nightclubs and radio stations, but kept the name, which did not inspire laughter when it was announced.

The Quitandinha Serenaders were the gauchos Luís Telles, Alberto Ruschel, and Francisco Pacheco, and the Rio native, Luiz Bonfá. Every one of them wore a pair of chaps. Their forte was the folk songs of Rio Grande do Sul but, little by little, they were beginning to incorporate more urban, though mournful, themes, such as “Felicidade” (Happiness) by their fellow countryman Lupicínio Rodrigues. Sometimes they slipped into the exotic, with songs like “Clair de Lune” and “Malagueña Salerosa.” Along with their accent, which was infused with an air of green southern pastures, they had an easily recognizable style. They were never a smash hit, but they were much loved.

In this aspect at least, the Quitandinha were a reflection of their leader, the veteran Luís Telles, a man known for his kindness. He would later own a huge rose plantation in the South, the harvest of which he agreed to sell for all purposes other than for use in cemeteries. On meeting João Gilberto in 1953, Luís Telles was overcome with an admiration he had never previously experienced for any other singer. He was immediately delighted with this person, and being sixteen years older, embraced him as the son he didn’t have. He even called him “Joãozinho.” Telles and Ruschel took João Gilberto under their gaucho capes and warmed his heart. Through Ruschel, who in addition to being a singer was a leading man in the national film industry (he starred in Lima Barreto’s O cangaceiro [The Bandit]), João met one of his heroes, Assis Valente, the composer of “Brasil pandeiro” (Brazilian Tambourine). Valente was going to compose the music for one of Barreto’s next films—one which he was, as always, in the process of dreaming up. The film was never made, but at least an important development occurred as a result of that meeting—in João Gilberto’s teeth.

In the first difficult three years he spent in Rio, João Gilberto’s mouth became an anthology of cavities. Assis Valente (whose career had begun to decline after he jumped off the Corcovado because of Carmen Miranda and didn’t die) decided to dedicate himself more to his prosthetic denture practice, and offered João Gilberto free treatment at his clinic. It was a generous gesture on his part, but Valente was a better sambista than prosthodontist, and it’s not completely unlikely that he was using the singer to test his dental tools. João spent months with his mouth under repair, but the implants that Assis inserted in the place of the teeth he extracted were not very good.

Contrary to popular belief, João Gilberto never did become one of the Quitandinha Serenaders. But he hung out with them so much he might as well have. When, in 1953, Bonfá left the group to work alone, João was the natural choice to replace him. He rehearsed regularly with the group, but the other three had a feeling that things would not work out: João did not like their grape-motif shirts, nor their repertoire. He criticized the arrangements, the harmonies, the rhythm and, when the others were about to strangle him, Luís Telles would come running in with extra cups of hot beverages to reestablish the peace. João only made the odd sporadic appearance with the Quitandinhas, and the person who in fact ended up replacing Bonfá was Paulo Ruschel, Alberto’s brother.

Luís Telles never allowed those problems to interfere with his admiration and paternal affection for João. Among the different attentions he showered on his protégé, he made him drink guaraná with garlic to cure or prevent colds—and to keep people away from him for several hours afterward.

But his participation in João Gilberto’s immediate future would be far more radical.

4

The Mountains, the Sun, and the Sea

Os Cariocas (Waldir, Ismael, Severino, Badeco, and Quartera) rehearse “Rio de Janeiro Symphony” with a young Jobim, 1954

Badeco collection

In retrospect, Copacabana in the early 1950s seems very romantic. And for those who lived there at that time, it must have been. But in the eyes of journalist and sometime composer Antônio Maria—who practically only saw it at night, and almost always from inside a nightclub—it also had the “somber atmosphere of Le jour se lève,” a classic French film with Jean Gabin. Antônio Maria believed that the lyricist Alberto Ribeiro thought of it as the “little princess of the sea,” and said that “in the morning, it was a life in full song,” because “he lived far from there, in the Zona Norte, and can’t have been very well informed.” Experienced up close and personal, Maria said in newspaper column at the time that the Copacabana night was a catwalk filled with “independent prostitutes, pederasts, lesbians, marijuana dealers, cocaine addicts, and ruffians of the worst kind.” Wow!

It might have been possible to live in Copacabana and not encounter any of that, but Antônio Maria would go to the liveliest places in the neighborhood at the dead of night. Besides, that’s what they paid him for. In his description, “men urinated unhurriedly in the doorways of bars and delinquents would harass defenseless passersby, just a few meters away from policemen who, instead of intervening, would pick their teeth and guffaw rudely.” Every building had “an average of fifty windows,” behind which were concealed, according to his accounts, “three instances of adultery, five of ‘love by the hour,’ six of unmarried sex, and only two of couples who had been married before God or a judge.” It appeared that nothing was happening behind the other thirty-four windows, but “it was only a matter of waiting for the evening papers: they would describe shootings, murders, burglaries, divorces, and suicides.” And if that weren’t enough, there was always a water shortage.

From 1948 to 1964, Antônio Maria wrote a very popular column in several Rio newspapers (Diário Carioca, O Jornal, Última Hora, and O Globo). In his daily update on the Zona Sul nightlife (or that of Copacabana, given that Ipanema had been practically annexed by it, and the nightlife in Leblon was so dead that there were doubts of its existence), Maria described a suffocating and claustrophobic noir environment, where love lives were like the lyrics to a tango with a samba-canção beat. He must have known what he was talking about because if you were to summarize the content of his own songs, you would soon be convinced that nobody loved anybody else, and that if Maria were to die tomorrow, no one would miss him. People felt like dregs that others tossed out, and you could be sure that if Maria quarreled with a woman at five past three in the morning, just five minutes later it would already be too late for reconciliation. That’s life. At least, that’s what his lyrics said.

But, after all, it can’t have been that bad because Antônio Maria, a Pernambuco native, lived in Copacabana for practically the entire time he was in Rio. And he spent a large part of that time inside bars, nightclubs, and restaurants, from Leme to Posto 6, and became somewhat of a legend in many of them. He had an open, witty, and generous character, but he could also be rowdy, tempestuous, and difficult—especially after his tenth whiskey. Not everyone liked him, but most people wouldn’t dare confront him face-to-face. This was hardly surprising: Maria was six feet two inches tall, and carried a very stout 285-pound frame of muscle and fat. But his presence on the radio and the power of his column were far more intimidating, being capable of creating or destroying reputations. There was a time when his disapproval of an artist or show inevitably signified its untimely death.

The first half of the 1950s in Rio were the Antônio Maria years. His presence was reflected in the lives of the people, even when he didn’t know what he was doing, which wasn’t unusual. He gave the impression that, if he were on board a ship and leaned to one side to scratch his back, the entire vessel would tip over. He did this when he hinted about Jonas Silva’s situation with Os Garotos da Lua and they had to send for João Gilberto, who would soon change the course of all popular music.

At Rádio Tupi, Maria wasn’t just the director of the Production Department. He also provided soccer commentary, wrote comedy programs, produced daily chronicles, and wrote the music and lyrics for advertising jingles. When television began, he soon conquered the screen with his great height and weight, barely leaving any room onscreen for others. In 1951, he was the focus of the most expensive transaction in Brazilian radio up until then, when he left Rádio Tupi and went to Rádio Mayrink Veiga for fifty thousand cruzeiros a month, an unheard-of amount. No singer, not even Francisco Alves, earned a salary like that, and Francisco Alves had a much better voice.

As he also controlled the newspapers, Antônio Maria could dictate the tastes of the era at will. Naturally, to the will of his own tastes. And that was for the rhythm that was created when samba and ballad were caught in bed together; the samba-canção, although there were suspicions that the child’s father was the bolero and conception had occurred at a moment when samba had been otherwise occupied. Maria did not invent the samba-canção, which had already been fighting for a spot in the limelight since the beginning of the forties. But he championed its cause, especially when he started to produce examples of it as a composer. He had the good fortune to burst onto the scene at the beginning, in 1952, with “Ninguém me ama” (Nobody Loves Me), for which he did everything: he wrote the music and lyrics, did the promotion, chose the singer, and even gave his friend Fernando Lobo a partnership in the whole deal.

“Ninguém me ama” did a lot for a number of people. It launched Antônio Maria as a composer. For Nora Ney, who sang the song, it started her career. Recently departed from the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club, Nora had done very well in heeding Dick Farney’s advice to change her name (Iracema Ferreira) to something more artistic. It gave young evening piano players, like Tom (Antonio Carlos) Jobim and Newton Mendonça, a path to follow when they became composers. And for an even younger generation—that of Carlinhos Lyra, Roberto Menescal, and other fifteen-year-olds in 1952—it was also important for providing contrast. For them, “Ninguém me ama” was what they didn’t want to do.

Although the song’s success kept him in whiskey for several years, even Antônio Maria got fed up with it, because he could no longer go into nightclubs without the resident crooners starting to sing it, in an effort to ingratiate themselves with him. At one of these clubs, The Michel, when the pianist, on catching sight of him, started playing the opening bars, Maria jumped in ahead of the singer and parodied his own lyrics, singing: “Nobody loves me / Nobody cares / Nobody calls me / Baudelaire.”

The omnipresent quality of Antônio Maria’s music gave one the impression that he composed a great deal. In fact, he produced very little: around sixty songs, even if you count the frevos, dobrados, and maxixes that his friends charitably raved about. But when Maria got it right, he did it in style, which is what almost always happened in his partnerships with Ismael Netto, the leader of Os Cariocas. Maria and Ismael made ten songs together, of which “Canção da volta” (Returning Song) and “Valsa de uma cidade” (City Waltz) were more than enough to carve their names in bronze. In the latter, reporter-turned-lyricist Antônio Maria used a documentary style, which would later be adopted in bossa nova by his future nemesis Ronaldo Bôscoli.

By a cruel twist of fate, these and other songs were dubbed, for posterity, “the music of Antônio Maria,” when they were clearly written by Ismael Netto, with Maria providing the lyrics. The importance of Ismael’s contribution to Brazilian popular music as a harmonizer has yet to be recognized, but in his time he was a prodigy. In 1948, when Os Cariocas exploded with the constellation of voices in “Adeus, América” (Goodbye, America) and left other vocal ensembles open-mouthed with astonishment, Ismael was twenty-three years old. No one believed that he hadn’t received any formal music training. But he hadn’t, and from that point on, he certainly didn’t need it. Nor would he have time for it, because he died in 1956 at the age of thirty-one.

He soon became a legend at Rádio Nacional when it was realized that he could re-create with his voice, for conductor Radamés Gnatalli, the instrumental breaks that the orchestra played to accompany Os Cariocas on one of the programs for Um milhão de melodies: “The trombones go like this, the string section like that.” No one doubted that Ismael was capable of this, but what was unheard of was the amount of trust Radamés put in the young man. Another of his practices, which completely astonished Nacional’s composers, was the ease with which he could dissect a complicated vocal arrangement of some popular American group, like the Pied Pipers, and distribute the voices of Os Cariocas to reproduce exactly the same sound—merely to show that if he wanted to, he could do it.

Os Cariocas owed a large part of the quality of their music to the musical discipline of the group, which was enforced by Ismael, although he could have been a poster boy for the undisciplined. He liked to hit the bottle in a big way, and it was often a miracle that Ismael and his English metallic-blue Jaguar made it in one piece to Avenida Prado Júnior, where he lived.

His sheer size, which reminded one of the old cartoon character Alley Oop, might have explained his resistance, but it wouldn’t allow him to live forever. At the end of 1955, he had barely recovered from hepatitis when he went straight to Zica’s Bar and sank several beers with gin chasers, apparently indifferent to the fact that his liver was sending him a letter of resignation. To everyone’s surprise, it wasn’t liver failure that killed him. The following year, he caught pneumonia and fell into a coma in the hospital, dying within half an hour. Ismael had been unaware that he was diabetic.

The great specter in Antonio Carlos Jobim’s life, after the payment of his rent, was his fear of contracting tuberculosis. According to his family, all musicians ended up like that, especially late evening pianists. There could have been many causes for this, but the main ones must have been the continual opening and closing of nightclub doors, the starch from dress shirts in contact with one’s chest, the content of the glasses on top of the piano, the packs of cigarettes smoked while playing “Tea for Two,” the chatter of people who frequented those places, the completely miserable pay that one received for one’s work, and the fact that the schedule completely threw off one’s body clock, preventing one from going to the beach and from arranging to have lunch and dinner with people who worked from nine to six.

There was a great deal of myth surrounding TB among pianists, but in actuality, people only remembered the singer Vassourinha and the composers Noel Rosa, Jorge Faraj, and Newton Bastos as victims of the nocturnal plague—and none of them played the piano. Be that as it may, it was not for the purpose of taking such risks that Jobim had invested the cream of his youth hunched over Villa-Lobos, Debussy, Ravel, Chopin, Bach, Beethoven, and Custódio Mesquita. And besides, he was already becoming tired of staring at his plate of steak and eggs at the Far West Bar, in Posto 6, where he would see the sun rise daily, after finishing work at the club.

All nightclub pianists would suffer more or less the same torment, but Tom (as everybody called him) felt especially close to one colleague: his childhood friend Newton Mendonça. The two had known each other since Tom’s family had moved from Tijuca to Ipanema in 1927, before he had even blown out the candle on his first birthday cake. When Tom arrived in Ipanema, Newton was already there. He was born in Rua Nascimento Silva, exactly seventeen days after Tom. Since they had become friends, wearing the same little sailor outfits and catching measles at the same time, the two had lived almost parallel lives. Together with a few other friends, they even formed a harmonica group.

Being neighbors, they were the beach bums of Rua Joana Angélica and fishing partners at the Rodrigo de Freitas lake, hanging out catching birds on Cantagalo hill. Both studied piano as children. And both had absent fathers: Tom’s father, a poet and employee of the Palácio do Itamaraty (the Brazilian Foreign Affairs Ministry), left home shortly after his birth and died when Tom was eight years old; Newton’s father, an Army captain and a French and English teacher, conspired against the dictator Getúlio Vargas and was imprisoned by the police. (Newton studied at the Military College and received his high school diploma in 1945 as the “orphan of a living father,” which is what they called the children of imprisoned military personnel who had been incarcerated for political reasons.) When Getúlio was deposed that year, Newton’s father was freed and then died shortly after of a heart attack, and his family lost what they had.

Like Tom, who dropped out of his architecture course before it even began, Newton abandoned his studies and went to work. His sister became a manicurist. Newton started as an interpreter in Galeão airport (he spoke French and a little English). Afterward, following in Tom’s footsteps, he became an evening pianist. Between all the bars, nightclubs, and slightly disguised whorehouses, they played at practically every address in the Zona Sul in the early fifties: Mocambo, Tudo Azul, Clube da Chave, Acapulco, Farolito, Mandarim, La Bohème, Dominó, Vogue, Michel, French Can-Can, Posto 5, Ma Griffe, and Caroussel. The two of them hadn’t played every single one of these clubs, but at many of them Newton would go in Tom’s place, or Tom would go in Newton’s. The symmetry by which they had lived their lives was broken during one of these rotations. In 1952, Tom decided he needed to switch from working nights to working days—that is, to find a job that still allowed him to continue working with music, but in some sort of downtown office, for which he would have to carry a briefcase and put in a standard commercial work day.

Preferably, he wanted a job where he wouldn’t have to accompany crooners who were incapable of singing a single note that wasn’t off-key. It was because of this that Tom would sometimes grab the nightclub microphone and sing out of tune himself. But mainly, he wanted a job where he wouldn’t be obliged to continually please singers.

“Ivon, do you think I’m good?,” he asked the then-famous singer Ivon Curi at the Michel nightclub, where he played.

“But of course, Tom. You’re great,” Ivon replied.

“But do you really think so?”

“Sure—what’s the problem?”

“Then tell that to Madame Fifi, to see if she’ll give me a raise.” Madame Fifi was the owner of the Michel, the nightclub on Rua Fernando Mendes.

Tom became the arranger for the recording company Continental and only sporadically returned to working at night, and only when the landlord was snapping at his heels, demanding an increase in his rent. At Continental, copying onto score sheets the samba music that the primitive sambistas composed on matchboxes, he decided to try his hand at composing, too. And he kept constant company with the man that every musician wanted to have at their side for at least five minutes: Radamés Gnatalli, who was also a conductor at Continental. (What was impressive was not the number of jobs that Radamés had, but the fact that he really worked at each and every one.)

That same year, 1952, his friend Newton Mendonça also decided he needed to change his life. And he did, but not significantly. He passed an exam and became an employee of the Civil Servants’ Hospital (by chance, in the Finance Department), where he only ever turned up to collect his paycheck, and he continued to play the piano at night. The theory is worthy of discussion, but this break in the symmetry between Tom and Newton might perhaps explain why, between those two boys of similar talents, Tom Jobim became Tom Jobim—and why Newton Mendonça did not become Tom Jobim.

Although the future would take them down very different roads, it’s likely that, had it been possible, either one of them would have traded places at the time with a man who was doing everything they loved with the piano: Johnny Alf.

Alf was the pianist at the Hotel Plaza nightclub, in Avenida Princesa Isabel, in Copacabana. He played his own compositions, like “Rapaz de bem” (Nice Guy), “Céu e mar” (Sky and Sea), “O que é amar” (What It Is to Love), “Estamos sós” (We’re Alone), and “É só olhar” (Just look), which he had written some time before and which would be the precursors to bossa nova. Alf also played all sorts of jazz themes stamped with the imprimatur of George Shearing or Lennie Tristano; and occasional songs by other singers and musicians who would make pilgrimages to hear him play: Tom Jobim, João Donato, João Gilberto, Lúcio Alves, Dick Farney, Dolores Duran, Ed Lincoln, Paulo Moura, Baden Powell, and a group of young people who were barely old enough to frequent clubs, like Luizinho Eça, Carlinhos Lyra, Sylvinha Telles, Candinho, Durval Ferreira, and Maurício Einhorn.

Does that mean then that Johnny Alf was a success? No. The Plaza had the reputation of being bad luck and hardly anyone went there. But, for the modern musicians of 1954, it was the place because the lack of customers meant that they could play whatever they wanted. Almost all the regulars had been followers of Alf’s career since he made his first professional appearance in 1952 at César de Alencar’s recently inaugurated Cantina do César (Caesar’s Canteen). Alencar needed a pianist to aid the digestion of the guests who ate at his restaurant, and young Johnny Alf was recommended to him by Dick Farney and Nora Ney, his friends from the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club. César de Alencar had such protruding ears that his nickname in some circles was “Dumbo,” but it appeared he also used them to listen. When the Cantina food proved indigestible, he converted the restaurant into an inferninho (little hell) and permitted Alf to play whatever he wanted.

The first to go and see him at the Cantina were João Donato and Dolores Duran, his neighbors in Tijuca, and they took others with them. Dolores, during her breaks from the Clube da Chave, would sometimes grant the favor of an impromptu performance, accompanied by a young pianist named Ribamar; or sometimes Alf himself would accompany João Gilberto, who would restrict himself to singing, without his guitar, in the darkest corner of the nightclub. The repertoire was always the same: lúcios and dicks by the dozen, that is, samba-canções and some foxtrots. People felt as if they were on New York’s 52nd Street when Alf and Donato revealed their knowledge of jazz; and Alf, as a singer, could almost be mistaken for Sarah Vaughan, even singing in Portuguese.

A Sinter producer, Ramalho Neto, convinced his recording company to make a 78 r.p.m. with Alf, even if it was just an instrumental. Alf sat down at the piano and formed a Nat “King” Cole–style trio with Garoto on guitar and Vidal on double bass. They recorded “Falseta” (Deceit) by Alf and “De cigarro em cigarro” (From Cigarette to Cigarette) by Luiz Bonfá. Nobody expected the record to top the charts or to be danced to, but it received such an indifferent response that Paulo Serrano did not want to persist with Alf, the opposite of what he would do almost immediately with Donato. In the sixties, those two tracks (which few people heard) would be readily described as “already being bossa nova.” This is an exaggeration. In fact, they’re samba-canções with jazz improvisations (Alf inserted a small interval from “Jeepers Creepers” into “Falseta” [Deceit]), and an extreme richness of harmony, but there was nothing new in the rhythm. Alone and more independent, he would be much better, which would explain why those boys followed him like rats followed the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

During the next two years, the group tried to follow Johnny Alf as he moved from nightclub to nightclub, but sometimes he was hired to play at places that were a little too expensive for the gang’s pockets, like the Monte Carlo in Gávea, or the Clube da Chave itself. Then Alf returned to Leme, starting at the Mandarim, in Rua Gustavo Sampaio; then the Drink, in Avenida Princesa Isabel; and finally he crossed the street and established himself at the Plaza in 1954. With so much young talent gathered together, almost all the bold rhythms and harmonics that gave rise to bossa nova were developed in the early hours when the nightclub was empty. Drummer Milton Banana, who played dance music at the Drink with organist Djalma Ferreira, on the other side of the street, would take advantage of his breaks and go and participate in the jams.

One memorable moment, according to Carlinhos Lyra, was when an impromptu vocal quartet composed of Carlinhos himself, Alf, Donato, and João Gilberto—who, according to Carlinhos, was nicknamed Zé Maconha (“Reefer Joe”)—was formed under the light of the street lamp in the Plaza doorway. Carlinhos also described João’s appearance as invariable—a blue square jacket, a white shirt, and high-water trousers—and he doesn’t remember hearing him play guitar at that time.

Not all of Johnny’s fans crossed paths at the Plaza. Tom Jobim and Carlinhos Lyra, for example, would often go and never saw each other there. But for more than a year, until the middle of 1955, experiences were being cooked up that would soon result in something. And just as the dish was about to be served, Johnny Alf accepted an offer from a show-business agent from São Paulo named Heraldo Funaro, and moved there to inaugurate a place called Baiúca.

His young Rio disciples suddenly felt like orphans because São Paulo, at that time, seemed further away than the Belgian Congo. But people were already earning higher salaries in São Paulo than in Rio. Certain that Alf would not return, the boys had to make their own musical revolution.

In Billy Blanco’s version of events, “Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro” (Rio de Janeiro Symphony) was conceived on board a bus in the summer of 1954, when he was going from Praça Mauá to his home in Ipanema. The bus took a turn onto Avenida Princesa Isabel, and when it reached gorgeous Avenida Atlàntica, the mountain, sun, and sea of Copacabana would suddenly open up in the distance, in cinemascope. As if Billy had not passed this area every day for years, the panorama he viewed from the window struck him as a divine revelation, and a musical phrase, complete with lyrics, filled his head:

“Rio de Janeiro, that I shall always love / Rio de Janeiro, the mountain, sun and sea.”

Billy went into ecstasy, and then immediately panicked. It was too good an idea to lose, and he was concerned that he would forget a melodic line he had just composed before he reached home. He sang over and over to himself:

“Rio de Janeiro, that I have always loved / Rio de Janeiro, the mountain, sun and sea.”

He couldn’t stand it any longer, and in the middle of the journey indicated that he wished to get off the bus. The bus stopped and he jumped off, running in search of a phone. There were no public telephones in 1954, and if you wanted to make a call from the street, you had to call from a bar. He went into the first one he came across, in Rua República do Peru, and told the Portuguese cashier that it was an emergency. (And in a way, it was.) The cashier reluctantly agreed, and Billy called Tom Jobim:

“Tom, listen to this: ‘Rio de Janeiro, that I have always loved / Rio de Janeiro, the mountain, sun and sea.’”

But telephone connections then were much worse than today, and the bar was crammed with its regular vagrants in Bermuda shorts and thong sandals, discussing soccer. And there was the noise from the hellish traffic. Billy had to repeat the musical phrase several times, shouting at the top of his lungs, causing every pair of ears and eyes in the bar to flash in his direction like arrows:

“‘Rio de Janeiro, that I have always loved / Rio de Janeiro, the mountain, sun and sea.’” Tom, write this down before I forget it! I’m on my way there!”

And thus, without much ado, the first few chords of the beautiful “Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro” by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Billy Blanco were created.

Regardless of where it was conceived, on board a bus or on a piano in Rua Nascimento Silva, “Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro” was completed at the beginning of 1954, but was not recorded until the end of that year. Paulo Serrano, of Sinter, managed to get Billy and Jobim to sign a contract giving priority to his record label. But the record was expensive to produce; after being orchestrated and arranged for the several voices that Tom and Billy had in mind, “Sinfonia” ended up being at least fifteen minutes long and had to be recorded on a long-play. Long-plays (people had not yet become familiar enough with them to call them LPs), even the small ten-inch ones, were luxury items in Brazil, so much so that only music that was guaranteed a good return was recorded on them. And nothing guaranteed that “Sinfonia” would be a huge success with the masses. Serrano left the musical scores in a drawer, waiting for better days, and it was likely that they would have stayed there for a good long while if João de Barro (the eclectic composer of “Copacabana” and “Chiquita bacana” and at the time the A&R man of Continental) had not heard it played by Tom—who was, by the way, his employee at the recording company.

The cast of Continental was also eclectic. It included radio idols, like Emilinha Borba and Jorge Goulart, and even classy acts like Dick Farney, Lúcio Alves, Gilberto Milfont, Nora Ney, Doris Monteiro, and Os Cariocas. With a team like that and Radamés Gnatalli’s arrangements, it was possible to make “Sinfonia” a great record, one that would even be profitable. João de Barro negotiated with Serrano to be awarded the project. Serrano said it wouldn’t be a problem, if Continental would loan them Lúcio Alves for one record with Sinter. João de Barro agreed, “Sinfonia” was recorded at Continental, and Lúcio Alves made a record at Sinter, without knowing that he had been used as the bargaining chip in a transaction.

The original ten-inch LP of “Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro” is today an almost priceless collector’s item, mainly because it was a resounding failure. Continental only cut one thousand copies and still had to face the annoyance of a surplus. The entire symphony, with the vocals from that cast, took up the whole of side A; side B bore an instrumental version of the piece, with Gnatalli’s quintet. It was truly a great record, but none of the songs (“Arpoador,” “Noites do Rio” [Rio Nights], “O samba de amanhã” [Tomorrow’s Samba], “Hino ao sol” [Ode to the Sun] and “Descendo o morro” [Descending the Hill]) were successes or even survived independently, except in local gatherings, where small amateur groups (like that of the Castro-Neves brothers, in Laranjeiras) used them as jazz themes.

OK, it wasn’t an easy record, but nobody could have anticipated such a huge fiasco because in July of that same year, 1954, while “Sinfonia” was still being put together, Jobim and Billy had just entered the history books—or rather, the fan club history books—with a song entitled “Teresa da praia” (Teresa of the Beach).

The Sinatra-Farney Fan Club and the Dick Haymes–Lúcio Alves Fan Clubs had already closed their doors four years earlier, but it appeared as if Dick and Lúcio’s fans were not aware of this. The rivalry continued in the same spirit as the competition between Flamengo and Fluminense, the two most famous soccer teams in Rio. Each time either one had a hit record, the respective groups would threaten to smash the 78s over one another’s heads, and there was genuine concern that this would actually happen one day in the middle of the Murray store. Pretexts for provocation abounded. Farney’s fans could tout the superiority of their favorite singer because within a few years, Dick had recorded “Nick Bar,” “Uma loura” (A Blonde), “Alguém como tu” (Someone Like You), “Sem esse céu” (Without This Sky), and “Ranchinho de palha” (Little Straw Hut) and Dave Brubeck himself had announced that he admired him.

But Lúcio’s fans also had equally, if not more, valid arguments, because during the same era, he released “Sábado em Copacabana” (Saturday in Copacabana), “Manias” (Whims), “Valsa de uma cidade” (City Waltz), “Se o tempo entendesse” (If Time Understood), and “Na paz do Senhor” (In the Lord’s Peace). They were all successful songs, and if that weren’t enough, Dick Farney himself professed to be a fan of his. Dick’s fans were certainly not pleased about the fact that Lúcio had been the first to sing “Copacabana” on Rádio Nacional’s program, Um milhão de melodies, before Dick recorded it and made it a hit.

During that same July of 1954, the two of them were at the height of their fame. And although the fans did not want to believe it, they were also at the peak of their friendship. Lúcio lived in Posto 6 and Dick in Urca, which didn’t exactly make them neighbors, but they had common ground: the nightlife in which they worked and continually bumped into one another. Their friendship wasn’t exactly a secret, but since the gathering at the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club headquarters four years earlier, neither one had made renewed efforts to end the ridiculous rivalry between their fans.

Then Dick had the idea of making a record with Lúcio—the two of them singing a duet—at Continental. It was a risky idea, because the record could just as well have enormous commercial appeal for the two stars, as have none whatsoever for either of them, due to the presence of one or the other. What was irresistible was that all of the recipe’s ingredients were already at hand: Dick and Lúcio both recorded for Continental; the recording company had a young “in-house composer,” Tom Jobim, who knew how to write music in the style they liked; besides, Dick had just recorded a sam-bacanção by Tom, “Outra vez” (One More Time); and Billy Blanco, who had surfaced a few months before with “Estatutos de gafieira” (Honky-Tonk Rules), seemed to be an expert at writing lyrics with an amusing story line. It couldn’t fail.

And it didn’t. Tom and Billy took the rivalry between the two singers and wove it into a dispute over a brunette named Teresa (“with slanting green eyes”) that they had both met at Leblon beach. The aforementioned beach was not only included in the song to rhyme with the line amar é tão bom (loving is so good) but also because, in the fifties, referring to Leblon carried an inevitably risqué connotation. The neighborhood had not been completely built up, and at night, Leblon beach became the Rio paradise for rather sandy sex.

“Teresa da praia,” released during that particularly sinister month of August in Brazil, was one of the most surprising successes of 1954, because the only news of the moment seemed to be journalist Carlos Lacerda’s personal war against president Getúlio Vargas’s “sea of dirt.” Be that as it may, the battle ended with Vargas’s suicide on August 24, and with a tie between Dick and Lúcio on the record, because each of them had toned down their vocal capabilities so as not to overshadow the other.

A few years later, when bossa nova came onto the scene, there was no reason for the rivalry to continue. Dick and Lúcio could not know it at the moment, but they had reached the zenith of their popularity with “Teresa da praia.” From that point on, there would be a new musical order, largely inspired by them, but in which they would have no place.

5

Torchy Copacabana

Portrait of the artist as a young man: Poet-lyricist Vinícius de Moraes

Manchete Press

For the Brazilian “respectable” families of the 1950s, singing and playing the guitar were activities they associated with the decadent carousing lifestyle of the old Lapa neighborhood, knife fights between delinquents in filthy bars, cachaça, poverty, and prostitution. The passport to this underworld was, in the opinion of these families, the radio, something to keep well-brought-up young women like Sylvinha Telles as far away from as possible. But for other families, who didn’t care for the surrounding stigma, singing and playing guitar were activities reminiscent of former elegant soireés, at which relatives and friends would gather, in homes surrounded by high walls, around liqueurs and appetizers and a particularly talented daughter, who would entertain the assembled company with her own compositions and the occasional rendition in English or French—like Maysa. And for yet other families, singing and playing the guitar, when remunerated, was a way out of poverty—like it was for Dolores Duran.

Dolores Duran, Maysa, and Sylvinha Telles were the most influential female singers of the fifties, and their lovesick songs were the closest thing to a kind of Brazilian blues or torch songs. The three of them came from completely different backgrounds and ultimately met at night in Copacabana, where they forgot their upbringing and threw themselves into the demands of their huge talents and personalities. All three believed in the lyrics that they sang and, in the case of Dolores and Maysa, were perhaps a little too sincere, given that they wrote them. They all got into tremendous romantic entanglements, suffered “for love” far more than they should have, drank as if the planet’s alcohol reserves would be depleted the following day, and died very young: Dolores at twenty-nine, in 1959; Sylvinha at thirty-two, in 1966; and Maysa at forty-one, in 1977.

Dolores Duran made the longest journey; she came from Irajá, a remote suburb of Rio. Her father was a Navy sergeant, which meant that she and her three brothers had to start earning a living at a young age. Younger, in fact, than they had anticipated, because their father died in 1942, when Dolores was just twelve years old. A short time prior to his death, Dolores, whose real name was Adiléa, and who loved to sing, won an amateur contest on Ary Barroso’s show at Rádio Tupi, Calouros em desfile (Amateur Parade). Thus her mother saw a way for her to get started, she introduced the girl behind the scenes in nightclubs and radio stations so that she might become a singer.

It was normal for many of those back-door entrances to lead to the director’s bed, rather than the microphone. But in 1946, Adiléa made it to the microphone at the Vogue nightclub and, shortly afterward, to César de Alencar’s show at Rádio Nacional. By then, she had already begun calling herself Dolores Duran—a much more suitable name than Adiléa, mainly because she had an aptitude for languages and a flair for singing boleros and ballads in Spanish, French, English, and even Esperanto. And in any case, the name Dolores was much better than the nickname she had been given, “Bochecha” (Chubby Cheeks), which could have destroyed her career before it had even begun.

From her stint at Rádio Nacional to her ascent to fame as Copacabana’s carousing cult goddess, a large part of Adiléa’s metamorphosis into Dolores was due to all those vocal jams with João Donato and João Gilberto around Johnny Alf’s piano at the Plaza. But while the others hung out under the hot street lamp at the Plaza, Dolores was already being seduced and adopted by another gang, who discovered her at the Clube da Chave: that of the nightlife journalists. Her new late-night companions became Antônio Maria, Fernando Lobo, Sérgio Porto, Mister Eco, Lúcio Rangel, and Nestor de Holanda, the latter a walking scandal for having coined the extremely offensive phrase “female theater monkeys,” referring to the predominant skin color of César de Alencar’s audience.

Hanging out with those journalists, who were more bitter than witty, made Dolores more sophisticated. They polished her up, taught her to appreciate songs that “said something” and, in a way, extracted from the happy and playful woman that she was the gutsy Dolores who became her public persona. All the lyrics they gave her to sing were along these lines—”Canção da volta” (Returning Song), “Bom é querer bem” (It’s Good to Love Well), “Quem foi?” (Who Was It?)—a veritable lineup of tortured souls.

When Dolores herself began to compose, in 1955, she incorporated that tragic mask that they had molded for her full-moon face. Thus, small day-today dramas—the end of love affairs, broken hearts, and painful solitude—became her specialties. For those who knew her then, hanging out with her friends at four in the morning on Avenida Atlântica and jokingly singing, at the top of her lungs, an aria from “Tannhäuser” by Wagner, it was as if Dolores, when it came to writing her lyrics, cried “Shazam!” backward. (Not that she really was permanently euphoric. There are those who believe that, following a series of disastrous love affairs, Dolores began to believe too much in her own lyrics.)

Her first song, “Se é por falta de adeus” (If It’s Because We Haven’t Said Goodbye), in partnership with fellow novice Tom Jobim, was a mere drop in the ocean of tears that she would shed in future songs: Se é por falta de adeus / Vá-se embora desde já (If it’s because we haven’t said goodbye / Leave me now). Young Jobim, happily married to Teresa, his first and only childhood love, did not have the sort of romantic past that would allow him a basic understanding of those problems. (As we know, his only preoccupation was paying his rent.) By way of compensating, he was able to find solutions to everything on his piano. Years later, in 1957, Dolores wrote the lyrics to two other songs by Jobim. One of them, “Estrada do Sol” (Road to the Sun) tells the story of such a joyous “morning after” between two lovers that those who were used to Dolores’s somber lyrics must have been somewhat taken aback. The other, “Por causa de você” (Because of You) gave rise to one of the most often-repeated stories about Dolores: that she had written the famous line (“Ah, if you could only see / The way in which you left me / And everything was left …”) in one fell swoop, with an eyebrow pencil, on the lid of the piano where Jobim played the tune to her at Rádio Nacional.

It’s a good story, but it seems more like a scene from an MGM musical than real life. The two of them had met by chance at Rádio Nacional, and Jobim had shown her the song, which didn’t yet have any lyrics—Vinícius de Moraes was supposed to be taking care of that. When Dolores heard the music, she took her eyebrow pencil out of her pocket, rapidly scribbled a few lines on a paper napkin, and showed them to Jobim. He liked them, and sighed:

“What do you think this music would sound like with Sinatra?”

Then he slapped his forehead and said: “Oops! What about Vinícius?” So Dolores wrote on the back of the paper napkin: “Vinícius, these are my suggested lyrics for this music. If you don’t like them, it’s a shame.” At which, days later, Vinícius gallantly withdrew his own lyrics.

Everything was perfect, except for a few things here and there. It would have been difficult for Dolores (or any lyricist who was not familiar with music) to write the lyrics to “Por causa de você” (Because of You) on her first try, in such a way as to make them fit so perfectly into the melody, much less to do so in the middle of the confusion at Rádio Nacional, over the clamor of the “female monkeys.” And much less still with an eyebrow pencil on a paper napkin. Try it. In fact, Jobim had to play the tune a few times, and repeat several bars, in order for Dolores to fit lyrics and music together. Thus, they formed an occasional but categorical partnership, which Jobim could allow to happen at that time because Vinícius lived outside Brazil and did not yet feel that he alone had exclusive rights to him. As far as Jobim’s fantasy was concerned (“What do you think this music would sound like with Sinatra?”), it did eventually happen—twelve years later, in 1969, when Sinatra recorded “Por causa de você” (Because of You) under the title “Don’t Ever Go Away,” on the second of the two records that the two of them made together.

Jobim and Dolores would have produced more songs in partnership if Vinícius de Moraes hadn’t from the moment that he first “discovered” Tom safeguarded his talents so jealously. In his gently implacable manner, he kept Jobim so busy that the latter drifted away from former associates like João Stockler, Alcides Fernandes, Roberto Mazoier, and even their old mutual friend, Paulinho Soledade. Not to mention Billy Blanco. From the Vinícius era on, Tom could only compose songs with others when Vinícius wasn’t looking, as he did in 1958 with Marino Pinto (“Aula de matemática” [Math Class]) and in 1959 with Aloysio de Oliveira (“Dindi,” “De você eu gosto” [I Like You], “Demais” [Too Much], and “Eu preciso de você” [I Need You]). Ronaldo Bôscoli always complained that Vinícius threatened to break up with Tom if he collaborated on a song with Ronaldo, with whom Vinícius, by the way, was great friends.

The only colleague that Vinícius did not object to was Newton Mendonça. Not because Jobim and Mendonça were childhood friends, but because Mendonça was more of a musician than a lyricist, and when the two of them opened up the piano, sevenths and ninths were more important to them than “the feathers that the wind carried through the air” (from “A felicidade” [Happiness]). Perhaps it was because of this that Vinícius did not consider him a threat—as Bôscoli would undoubtedly be, and Dolores certainly was.

However, in the light of what Jobim and Vinícius accomplished, we can’t really complain. And Dolores proved herself to be surprisingly capable of writing music and lyrics on her own, in “Fim de caso” (The End of the Love Affair), “Solidão” (Solitude), “Castigo” (Punishment), and, of course, “A noite do meu bem” (My Sweetheart’s Night).

Maysa Figueira Monjardim already had those eyes when she, like Sylvinha Telles in Rio, was a student at the Sacré-Cœur school in São Paulo. However, unlike Sylvinha, she left boarding school in 1954, at the age of eighteen, and went straight into a wealthy marriage: to the austere André Matarazzo, nephew of the extremely rich Count Francisco Matarazzo, who was twenty years older than her and whose family coat of arms bore the inscription Honor, fides, labor (honor, faith, work). Despite the coat of arms, the Matarazzo did not prevent Maysa from singing, provided that she restrict her performances to aristocratic São Paulo soireés. But Maysa’s father, the Federal Revenue agent Alcebíades Monjardim, had other plans.

According to Ronaldo Bôscoli, Alcebíades was admired in São Paulo for being one of the few people capable of getting drunk three times a day: at eleven in the morning, he was already well into his first binge; at three in the afternoon, he was fresh and ready for the second; and at nine at night, cool as a cucumber, he prepared to start the third. However, from that point on, one could no longer vouch for his sobriety. One night in 1955 he was in the Oásis nightclub, in the Praça da República, with his old friend Zé Carioca, one of Carmen Miranda’s orphans from Bando da Lua, and Roberto Corte Real, a broadcaster with links to the Columbia recording company. Alcebíades spoke to them about his daughter: a singer that the world was missing out on due to a marriage of convenience, a talent just waiting to be discovered, a young woman who could be the Brazilian Edith Piaf.

His two companions dismissed his enthusiasm as paternal pride, but they remained curious enough to hear the girl sing. A meeting was arranged for the following day at Alcebíades’s house, far from the eyes and ears of any member of the Matarazzo family.

Going by her father’s description, Corte Real and Zé Carioca expected to find a timid girl hiding behind the curtains. They certainly weren’t expecting the feisty woman of nineteen who was waiting for them: full bleached-blond hair; an extremely pretty face, dominated by a sensual mouth (with twisted lips that were surprisingly like those of Elvis Presley) and a pair of eyes veritably floodlit with green (sometimes blue) beneath full eyebrows; a husky, “deep” voice that Piaf would have liked to have had when young; a whiskey in one hand, a cigarette in the other; and—why hadn’t Monjardim warned them?—unmistakably pregnant.

Maysa looked sensational despite her pregnancy, and she further impressed her guests when she sang a few American songs—”The Lady Is a Tramp” and “Round Midnight.” It was enough to awake enthusiasm in Corte Real, who was proud to correspond with Dick Haymes and considered himself a personal friend of Cole Porter himself. But what really made her shine was when Maysa’s mother, Dona Iná, as beautiful as her daughter, suggested she sing some of her own compositions.

Maysa picked up her guitar and, as if she were tearing the most bitter of sentiments from the depths of her cleavage, sang “Marcada” (Marked Woman), “Adeus” (Goodbye), “Agonia” (Agony), and “Rindo de Mim” (Laughing at Me). Corte Real couldn’t believe his ears. There was a girl, who composed and sang like a goddess, with the demeanor of a mature woman who had truly lived the experiences she sang about. And (not that this small detail was pitiable) the fact that she was the wife of a man who was prominent in São Paulo high society would have tremendous commercial appeal.

Corte Real wanted to immediately take her to Columbia to do some recording, but at the time, Maysa knew her priorities. First she would have her child. Then she would try to convince her husband and his family to allow her to make a record. This was unthinkable in 1956. People from good families did not mix with musicians and singers, except to hire them to play at their parties—in which case they arrived and left via the servants’ entrance—much less record songs and perform as professionals. Besides, they didn’t do anything as professionals that wasn’t directly linked to managing their fortunes. If they had, they wouldn’t have been rich. Maysa would be different, and her husband’s family knew that her parents were in another mindset. A few months later, Maysa gave birth to her son (later, the famous TV director Jayme Monjardim) and managed to overcome her husband’s family’s opposition. The Matarazzos agreed to allow her to record her songs, provided that the net revenue from the sale of her records, once recording costs had been deducted, be donated to Dona Carmen Prudente’s Fight Against Cancer campaign—a discreet way to pretend Maysa was retaining her amateur status, and singing only for charity.

But, to Corte Real’s surprise, Columbia rejected Maysa before even listening to her sing. Its directors did not allow themselves to be swayed by the exhortations of her discoverer, and one of them wanted to know “how many records her husband would buy.” This is mere speculation, but it wasn’t improbable that the then-powerful Matarazzo family had expressed their “disapproval” of the idea that the recording company sign Maysa as a singer. Corte Real didn’t hesitate. He took Maysa to his friend José Scatena, who was a member of a publicity jingles recording studio in São Paulo, RGE, and in return for making the record, proposed making RGE a music recording label. Scatena agreed. There was no outside interference, and what would be the first “Convite para ouvir Maysa” (Invitation to Listen to Maysa) was made, a ten-inch record with eight songs, all written by her.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened at first. They cut a mere five hundred copies, Andre Matarazzo did not buy the entire stock, and a surplus seemed inevitable. Dependent on Maysa’s contributions, the cancer that Dona Carmen Prudente was fighting would continue to run amuck. That is, until the record was discovered in Rio, after an article about it by Henrique Pongetti was published in Manchete, a news magazine. Radio stations began to play it, RGE had to cut several thousand more copies, and Maysa became a national sensation. No singer could be more modern or sophisticated. So when TV Record offered her one hundred thousand cruzeiros (then almost two thousand dollars) per month to host a weekly show, her parents, standing up to the Matarazzos, would not allow her to refuse.

The “society” to which Maysa belonged by virtue of her marriage started a campaign against her, insinuating that one of its most beloved daughters had taken a downward slide into shame. André Matarazzo tried hard to save face, accompanying her to all the radio programs and interviews at which she now had to appear. It was as if he were putting his seal of approval on his wife’s work, but in fact all he really wanted was to chaperone Maysa to ensure that she did not commit any serious social blunders—and he was unable to hide his displeasure for the people who had begun to surround her. Maysa must have known what he was doing, because she wasn’t able to hold up for long. Reporters would go to her house to interview her, and she would serve them coffee in the living room, while drinking booze under the table in the kitchen. At the end of each show, she would invite the entire television crew back to her house, on Rua Traipu, in Perdizes, with predictable results. At first, they were merely merry gatherings, at which she attempted to maintain a minimum level of sobriety in front of her husband. But soon the gatherings became drinking sprees with Maysa out of control, allowing one or other of the couples she had invited to disappear into one of the bedrooms.

The record’s success freed her from the compromises she had made to the conventions of the Sacré-Cœur school and Matarazzo family. It allowed her to publicly assume the tragic façade that she exhibited when singing and that was perhaps the true side of her character: that of a single woman, for whom it did not matter whom she was going out with, or whether or not she was going out with someone.

It quickly became obvious that if Maysa was actually going out with someone, that someone was not André Matarazzo. The marriage ended less than a year after her debut as a singer, and without the protection of her husband’s last name, Maysa was left at the mercy of everyone’s judgment. The press stopped calling her “Mrs. Maysa Matarazzo” and referred to her simply as Maysa—which, all things considered, suited her better. The respectable poet Manuel Bandeira, at the peak of his eighty years, got a hard-on for Maysa and published a poem in a literary supplement, in which, after eulogizing her details from top to toe, he tempered his sonorous pass at her with a pretty verse: “Maysa’s eyes are two non-Pacific [turbulent] oceans.”

Sylvinha Telles, like Maysa, also had to break down the door of her house from the inside. After her affair with João Gilberto in 1952, when she was nineteen years old, nothing could be that serious in the eyes of her father. Even so, it was without his knowledge—but with the complicity of her family—that Sylvinha appeared on Ary Barroso’s show at Rádio Tupi, Calouros em desfile. Her brother Mário Telles “casually” encouraged their father to listen to the show on the radio in his car, and when he realized that the singer he liked was Sylvinha, he could no longer prevent her from joining that forbidden world. Especially as the first job the girl was offered was as an ingénue, assistant to the clown Carequinha on his program O Circo do Carequinha (Carequinha’s Circus), on TV Tupi.

However, she soon started receiving more adult offers. At the beginning of 1955, at the age of twenty-one, Sylvinha was dating Candinho, whose real name was José Cândido de Mello Mattos. A year younger than she, he studied law and had all the qualities attributable to someone who played the guitar: he was a lovely lush. Candinho used to go to the Alcazar bar in Avenida Atlântica, famous for chicken soup in the early morning and guitar jam sessions that he and Carlinhos Lyra used to participate in. The two of them were pupils of the famous guitarist Garoto, and loved to show off what they had learned that evening. Sylvinha sang at one of those jam sessions and was heard by the mocking Colé, a revue theater star, who was sitting at a side table.

Colé behaved himself according to the script. He invited her to participate in a show that he was producing in the disreputable Follies theater, in the Alaska gallery. The invitation was about as insolent as asking Father Helder Câmara, Rio’s pious Archbishop, to ride in a horse race at the ultra-chic Jockey Club. To his surprise, Sylvinha agreed, but this time, the one who put the brakes on was Candinho. It would be scandalous for his girlfriend, a well-brought-up convent girl, to work in a revue theater with all the chorus girls. Mário, Sylvinha’s brother, also considered the offer an insult, but Colé, amazingly enough, managed to overcome their reservations. He rewrote the script of the show, Gente bem e champanhota (The Smart Set and Some Champagne), deleting all four-letter words, and swore that he would cut off his tongue if any immoral remarks were made on stage. He kept his word, and Sylvinha Telles was able to work in the cleanest show in the history of revue theater. Her participation was limited to singing a song called “Amendoim torradinho” (Roasted Peanuts) by Henrique Beltrão, but it was all she needed to become the singing sensation of 1955.

Colé promised that he would behave himself on stage, and he did, but Candinho, who hadn’t made any promises, fooled around in the wings. He had an affair with one of Colé’s starlets, and was flayed alive by Sylvinha. Sweet Sylvia was thus given the opportunity to show the other gloriously explosive side of her character; she set fire to her dressing-room at the Follies theater. The firemen arrived instantly, and nothing too serious happened, but it was a warning signal that she was capable of roasting far more than just peanuts.

Candinho begged forgiveness, and Odeon invited Sylvinha to record “Amendoim torradinho.” The radio stations fell in love with the song and made her a star. The B side of the 78, which bore a composition by Garoto entitled “Desejo” (Desire), was recorded to fill the record, but it revealed what an accomplished guitarist Candinho was. It was said that Candinho slept with matchboxes jammed between his fingers in order to increase his finger span and allow him to stretch to more difficult chords, such as those which Garoto and Luiz Bonfá were able to play, without the need for all that work. Be that as it may, the record allowed him to progress to working at Rádio Mayrink Veiga, where he became part of the ephemeral Trio Penumbra [Shadow Trio], with Luizinho Eça on piano and Jambeiro on double bass. With a name like that, they would never overshadow the “King” Cole trio, on which they modeled themselves. This forced the young Eça to continue dedicating himself to late nights at the Plaza nightclub with his own trio, with which he had been hired to replace Johnny Alf. Candinho then decided to dedicate his career—and his life—to the fiery Sylvinha, starting by marrying her.

He did not make the same childish mistake as João Gilberto, and went to her father in person to ask for the girl’s hand. He was unsuccessful, but he won it anyway, because Sylvinha was already old enough to make up her own mind, and she wanted to marry him. They didn’t just get married, they also played out their real-life roles of husband and wife on a TV sitcom for thousands of viewers. It was perhaps the first marriage in Brazil where people who wanted to know what was going on between the couple had only to switch on their TVs on Wednesdays at eight o’clock in the evening.

The show was called Música e Romance and reminded one of I Love Lucy with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, who were also husband and wife in real life. Despite the absolute scarcity of resources of the recently inaugurated TV Rio, the show was, in a way, the prime-time soap opera of the era in Rio. Not so much for the story line, because Música e Romance didn’t really have one, but for the quarrels the two of them would have on screen. Sylvinha and Candinho played a couple who would host friends “at home,” to sing and chat. In theory, it was an easy show to do: one studio set, a single microphone, the two hosts, and a few guests. It was shown live, of course, in the days before videotape.

However, in practice, it was the most complicated production in the world. Candinho was always late and, once the show had already gone on the air, Sylvinha would try to save appearances: “Huh, he hasn’t arrived! Could he have forgotten?” Or Candinho would turn up slightly tipsy, and his wife and partner would gnash her teeth at him and at the camera. Or sometimes, Candinho would simply not show up, and Sylvinha’s fury would strike fear into the hearts of the technical crew that she would also set TV Rio on fire. Even Katharine Hepburn never got so marvelously annoyed with Spencer Tracy. The situation was even more pathetic because Sylvinha was pregnant, and according to the script, her belly would be the conversation-starter. (The previous year, Lucille Ball had based an entire series of I Love Lucy episodes around her pregnancy, but none of her run-ins with Desi Arnaz ever surpassed those that Sylvinha had with Candinho.)

Once the show was over, the soap opera continued in real life, in front of their friends and guests on the program. If Candinho was there, the episode would conclude right there in the studio; if not, Sylvinha would go home to Rua Anita Garibaldi and wait for him. Candinho would appear hours later, bringing flowers, which Sylvinha would throw out of the window, threatening to throw him out as well. Candinho would run down to the street to pick them up and take the opportunity to serenade her beneath her window. Sylvinha would throw a bucket of water over him, close the window, leaving him in the street, and go to bed. It was even better than the show.

But there were also viewers who always watched Música e Romance for the music, which, when things were running smoothly, could be sensational. Guests would perform their latest creations, and it was thus that they got Garoto onto the program with “Duas Contas” (Two Beads); Dolores Duran, with Tom Jobim on piano, in “Se é por falta de adeus” (If It’s Because We Haven’t Said Goodbye); Johnny Alf with “Rapaz de bem” (Nice Guy); and Billy Blanco with “Mocinho Bonito” (Pretty Boy). Sylvinha herself, with Candinho on guitar, displayed her impeccable taste with songs like “Canção da volta” (Returning Song); the very new “Chove lá fora” (It’s Raining Outside) by Tito Madi; “Amendoim torradinho” (Roasted Peanuts), which was a must on the program; and “Foi a noite” (It Was the Night) by a new duo: Antonio Carlos Jobim and Newton Mendonça.

Despite all this, Música e Romance didn’t last very long; there was no reason for it to continue after Sylvinha and Candinho’s marriage ended. As soon as Sylvinha gave birth to their daughter, the two separated and were much happier. So much so that he accompanied her on her next record—”Foi a noite” (It Was the Night) on one side, and “Menina” (Girl), by Carlinhos Lyra, on the other. And in 1957, when the new A&R man of Odeon, Aloysio de Oliveira, decided to expand the 78 r.p.m. into a ten-inch LP, Sylvinha and Candinho rereleased, for the last time, the duet with which each episode of Música e Romance would start and finish: the samba-canção by Altamiro Carrilho and Armando Nunes, “Tu e eu” (You and Me), an ode to the happiness of married life.

Talking of married life, Sylvinha’s life and career soon fell into someone else’s hands. Though unable to play the guitar, they were much more experienced, for they belonged to Aloysio de Oliveira.

If all the good ideas that came to people over a bottle of whiskey survived until the last drop in the bottle, Casa Villarino, at the corner of Avenida Calógeras and Avenida Presidente Wilson in downtown Rio, would have been declared a national historical site. There, in the 1950s, a daring gang of late-night lushs planned the biggest shows on the radio, the most definitive poems, plays that would make posterity drool, the most earth-shattering samba-canções, the deposition of certain presidents, and, with or without justifiable motivation, the destruction of the most unblemished reputations. It’s true that almost all of this happened only in the imaginations of those who frequented the place—not that they weren’t capable of pulling those sorts of things off, but because they were more interested in continuing drinking than actually putting their plans into practice. It’s almost unbelievable that Orfeu da Conceição (Black Orpheus), which signaled the beginning of the partnership between Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes, was conceived at the Villarino.

Newspaper offices, book publishers, recording companies, the Ministry of Education, the Palácio do Itamaraty, and Rádio Nacional, the main employers of those carousers, were all relatively close to the Villarino. This made it easy to make a daily pilgrimage there, during that agonizing time between five-thirty in the afternoon and nine at night, before serious drinking really began in late-night Copacabana. The Villarino was (in fact is, because it still exists) whatever you wanted to call it. From the outside, it looked like a grocer’s shop, which sold grapes from Argentina, sardines from the Baltic, and a huge stock of imported drinks. In the back room, it was transformed into a charming whiskey bar, with the vague atmosphere of a speakeasy.

One official story tells of a time when, at the end of an afternoon in May 1956, the poet and diplomat Vinícius de Moraes—recently arrived from Paris, where he had been gently compelled to fulfil the role of Brazilian vice-consul—was looking for an associate to write the music for a Greek tragedy that he was adapting into a black tragedy, set during Rio Carnival. It would be something like Cabin in the Sky, a Broadway musical that had been made into a Hollywood film. Vinícius had brought the libretto, in verses, almost finished from Paris. It was missing the songs, to which he would write the lyrics. However, Vinícius did not want just any old composer. It had to be someone modern. His first choice was the pianist and composer Vadico, also known as Oswaldo Gagliano, Noel Rosa’s former associate in “Feitiço da Vila” (Village Witchcraft), “Feitio de oração” (Prayer Style), “Conversa de botequim” (Baroom Chat) and other pre-1934 sambas.

It may seem surprising (although, apparently, no one thought it strange) that, in search of someone modern, Vinícius should propose musical marriage to a forty-six-year-old man like Vadico, whose last successes had happened almost twenty years before. But Vinícius did not see that as a hindrance. The harmonies written by Vadico, who at the time was Rádio Mayrink Veiga’s arranger, were so modern that they made Sílvio Caldas, who was allergic to any type of innovation in samba, break into a cold sweat. Surprisingly, Vadico declined Vinícius’s proposal because he “didn’t feel he was up to it.” (Strange excuse, considering his ample experience as a Hollywood arranger in the forties, and as the conductor of the orchestra that accompanied American ballerina Katherine Dunham on a tour of Europe in 1949.) But the fact was that Vadico said no, and Vinícius needed an associate for Orfeu. Well, according to the official version of the story (repeatedly told by Aloysio de Oliveira, who wasn’t even there), the poet found a collaborator at the Villarino.

The story goes that, asking for suggestions from this and that patron, Vinícius’s friend Lúcio Rangel repeated the name of Antonio Carlos Jobim, who, by coincidence, was sitting two tables away “having a beer,” on the lookout for a possible ride to Ipanema. Rangel introduced them, and Tom, who was interested, was bold enough to ask: “Would there be a little cash involved in the project?”

It was a very logical question, given that his day job at Odeon (he walked around day and night with a briefcase, which contained material that allowed him to do instant musical arrangements for everyone) still did not allow him to give up his night job. But Lúcio Rangel did not understand it that way and reacted indignantly:

“How can you talk about money in the face of such an invitation? Tom, this is the poet Vinícius de Moraes!” (This gave the impression that an invitation from Vinícius de Moraes meant that one had to work for free.)

But in the end, Jobim shrugged his shoulders with embarrassment, and on being hired by Vinícius, their fantastic partnership began.

It must have been fascinating to witness dear old Lúcio introducing Jobim to Vinícius at the Villarino. The two of them probably made a huge effort to pretend they didn’t recognize each other from three years ago, in 1953, when the poet, accompanied by Antônio Maria, entered the Clube da Chave, heard the pianist, liked what he heard and, at the end of Jobim’s shift, took him out to eat ham and eggs at the Bar dos Pescadores (Fishermen’s Bar), where they talked until the sun came up. They must also have neglected to tell him that, months later, Vinícius, passing through Brazil, went to hear Jobim at the Tudo Azul nightclub in Rua Domingos Ferreira and from there, they left—with another friend of Tom’s, named João Gilberto—to go and chat at the Far West, another late-night bar.

“I talked and the two of them listened. Everything I said seemed profound,” Vinícius told reporter Beatriz Horta many years later, on one of the rare occasions on which he admitted that he already knew Jobim before being introduced to him at the Villarino.

OK, so why the discussion on such an apparently banal subject? It wasn’t as banal as it seems. The meeting between Jobim and Vinícius totally transformed Brazilian music, and it’s only natural that everyone would like to have been responsible for its origin. The two of them really did meet at the Villarino—and Lúcio Rangel was not at fault for the story having been simplified like that by Aloysio de Oliveira—but that meeting was merely the formalization of a campaign that had been in the making for days to bring them together as associates. The day before, for example, Vinícius had spent hours hearing about Jobim from someone for whom, at the time, he had the utmost respect: his brother-in-law Ronaldo Bôscoli.

Bôscoli and his friend Chico Feitosa had gone to Vinícius’s house, in Avenida Henrique Dumont in Ipanema, with the express purpose of selling him the idea to invite Jobim to write the music for Orfeu, and Vinícius had bought it. What a year, 1956.

Bôscoli, whose family tree seemed to have an artist on every branch (he was the great-grandnephew of Brazilian pioneer female composer Chiquinha Gonzaga, nephew of the theater personalities Geysa Bôscoli and Jardel Bôscoli, and cousin of the broadcaster Héber de Bôscoli and the actor Jardel Filho), was twenty-two years old in 1951, when he first got to know Vinícius. The poet was dating his beautiful nineteen-year-old sister Lila, and Ronaldo was not happy about the situation—it’s amazing how much protection sisters needed in those days. It was one of Vinícius’ eruptions of passion, for which he would soon be famous. But that particular affair was a novelty because Vinícius was still married to his first wife, Tati.

Vinícius and Tati had been married for thirteen years and appeared to have an indestructible marriage. She had a huge amount of influence over him, and together with the American socialist Waldo Frank, had been responsible for Vinícius abandoning, in 1941, his previously unwavering sympathies for Hitler and Mussolini. Up until then, he had supported the Axis powers in the war like Botafogo in Rio soccer. Vinícius’s conversion was so radical that, in 1946, he embraced the idea of joining the Brazilian Communist Party, which he was only dissuaded from doing by Secretary-General Luís Carlos Prestes himself. (Prestes said that he would be more useful outside the Party than as a part of it. It was better that way because Vinícius, with his dislike of bureaucrats, would not have tolerated party discipline for very long.) All in all, a marriage capable of leading the husband to those kinds of extremes would appear to be more resistant to destruction than Stalingrad.

But Vinícius convinced Ronaldo of his honorable intentions toward Lila, and effectively separated from Tati to live with her. Although it’s said that he always left his marriages with little more than his legendary toothbrush, it appears that this was the only time he actually did so. The fact is that, living on the meager salary that the Palácio do Itamaraty paid diplomats stationed in Brazil, Vinícius discovered that he needed to earn some extra money. He and Lila were living hand-to-mouth in an apartment with no electricity or refrigerator, in Rua Francisco Otaviano in Ipanema, and this did not sit well with the author of the highly acclaimed book Poemas, sonetos e baladas (Poems, Sonnets and Ballads).

Ronaldo Bôscoli was a reporter for Samuel Wainer’s newspaper Última Hora, whom Vinícius approached to ask about the possibility of collaboration. Wainer, with typical generosity, guaranteed the poet a check every month, in exchange for a pound of flesh: he gave him the movie reviews, made him write a daily column, and put him in charge of “letters from the heart,” to which, under the pen name Helenice, Vinícius responded to the palpitating passions of the female readers—which he enjoyed immensely.

It was brave of Wainer to trust him with the movie reviews, even in 1951. The first time he fulfilled this task, in 1941, for the no-longer-published newspaper A Manhã (The Morning), Vinícius declared holy war on talking films—not to mention those in color—and did so with such vehemence that it was a wonder they actually survived. He considered talking films to be entertainment for the “ignorant masses,” and not to be compared to the classics by European cinéastes Eisenstein, Dreyer, and Murnau. It wasn’t that Vinícius was unconditionally in favor of silent cinema. He was also against silent movies having explanatory captions, or being accompanied by an orchestra or even a solitary pianist.

This was at least ten years after the controversy between silent and talking films had been resolved in the rest of the world, and it was under the eyes of Orson Welles himself, who had already made Citizen Kane and was in Rio to make a movie on the Carnival. (When asked his opinion, Welles expressed amusement at Vinícius’ controversial attitude.) Of course, when in 1946, he was sent to his first diplomatic posting, in Los Angeles (the alternative, which he turned down, was Moscow), Vinícius quickly became a Hollywood citizen, lost all his cinematic purism, and grew to accept talking films, even those that starred Donald Duck. In 1951, he was already capable of being more impartial than the great critic of the era, Antonio Moniz Vianna, from the Correio da Manhã, who refused to accept any talking film—in Portuguese.

The torment lasted two years, but in 1953, Vinícius said goodbye to the daily column, the movie review, and Helenice’s distressed readers, took Lila by the arm, and went to fulfill his dollar-salary post at the Brazilian Embassy in Paris, where he wrote Orfeu.

Ronaldo Bôscoli, who remained in Brazil, continued to work as a reporter for Última Hora, but his love for the press was beginning to take an easy third place among his priorities—music and women fought for first and second place. He indulged in these preferences at the Tatuís club in Ipanema, at the parties organized by the social director Walter Clark. The Tatuís assembled the prettiest girls in Rio, which would explain why Bôscoli never left the place, but the music played there was almost as good—often under the organization of Candinho, the music director, and eventually, that of pianists Newton Mendonça or Tom Jobim. Bôscoli had met Jobim at the beach and bumped into him again at the Tatuís in 1953, but that would only prove significant three years down the road, when his brother-in-law Vinícius was looking for someone modern to write the music for Orfeu.

Bôscoli and his friend Chico Feitosa went to the poet’s house that night. At Bôscoli’s suggestion, Feitosa had become Vinícius’s secretary and was acting as his assistant in the production of Orfeu. Lots of things were arranged during those meetings. Lila would design the costumes. Candinho would, behind the curtains, provide music for the guitar that Orpheus was supposed to play. The street-smart Ronaldo, at Vinicius’s request, was inserting slang and popular expressions into the play’s script to make it seem more modern. The poet considered Bôscoli an authority on the latest Brazilian pranks—after thirteen years of marriage and several more spent living outside the country, the rather formal and conservative Vinícius felt somewhat of out touch with the reality of Brazilian society. This was one of the reasons he trusted Ronaldo’s suggestion of hiring Tom Jobim. Besides, he had heard Tom play at the Tudo Azul and was familiar with the record “Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro” (Rio de Janeiro Symphony).

Jobim and Vinícius did not get to speak to each other that night, but Vinícius knew they would meet the following day, at the Villarino, when Tom finished his workday at Odeon, nearby on Avenida Rio Branco. The meeting finally did happen, and Rangel marveled at the speed with which the poet accepted his suggestion of hiring an unknown musician for such an important task.

When Jobim and Vinicius met at the composer’s house to write the songs for Orfeu da Conceiçao (Black Orpheus), the address at Rua Nascimento Silva, 107, wasn’t at all famous, even to the neighborhood’s mail carriers, and no one dreamed that it would one day be included in the lyrics of a song by Vinícius and Toquinho, called “Carta a Tom 74” (Letter to Tom, 1974). On the contrary, the little apartment in Ipanema was merely a cause for loss of sleep for Jobim, who calculated how many notes he had left to compose that month by the number of days remaining before his rent was due. Vinícius and Lila’s new house on Avenida Henrique Dumont, at the intersection with Avenida Vieira Souto, was impractical for working because they had made it an open house, without the need for keys, since so many of his noisy friends were continually coming and going: people like Rubem Braga, Di Cavalcanti, Cyro Monteiro, Moacyr Werneck de Castro, and Paulo Mendes Campos. Orfeu was almost all written at Nascimento Silva, during the constant clamor by Paulinho, Tom and Teresa’s six-year-old son. It’s hardly surprising that, combining the composer’s shyness in the presence of the poet, and the latter’s relative inexperience in writing lyrics, the first songs were really tough to put together.

Vinícius’s experience in this department was limited to collaboration on a foxtrot with Haroldo Tapajós, “Loura ou Morena” (Blonde or Brunette), in the antedeluvian year of 1932, and on two songs with Antônio Maria—a samba, “Quando tu passas por mim” (When You Pass by Me), written in 1953, and “Dobrado de amor a São Paulo” (Dobrado of Love for São Paulo), in 1954—both with Vinícius writing the music and Antônio Maria the lyrics. But once Jobim loosened up, and Vinícius helped himself to a whiskey (he never drank when writing poetry, but after all, this was popular music), the first finished product that emerged from the partnership was none other than “Se todos fossem iguais a você” (Someone to Light up My Life). That song was enough for a definitive loosening-up, and set a standard. From that moment on, they felt free to drink while they worked, and Jobim, following Vinícius’s advice, began to replace the barley in his diet with malt. “Beer is a waste of time,” said the poet.

When Orfeu da Conceição opened at the Teatro Municipal in Rio, on Monday, September 25, 1956, the audience had several reasons to gasp in admiration. Architect Oscar Niemeyer’s set was boldly allegorical, with a ramp leading to a platform that represented the hill, and a spiral staircase that occasionally served as Orpheus’s hut. The guitar ended up not being played by Candinho, who could not read music but, at Jobim’s suggestion, by Luiz Bonfá. Jobim, who was supposed to be conducting the orchestra, was afraid of trembling in front of the audience and passed the baton to the more confident hands of Léo Peracchi, his colleague at Odeon.

The black cast, headed by Haroldo Costa (Orpheus), Léa Garcia (Mira), and Dirce Paiva (Eurydice), was very good-looking, and it was said that it was the first time that blacks had stepped on stage at the Municipal for a purpose other than to clean it. (This is not true. The theater had already hosted an adaptation of The Emperor Jones by Eugene O’Neill.) During the entire week that Orfeu was running, the Municipal had a full house, and it was a major event in Rio cultural and social life, with columnists Ibrahim Sued and Maneco Müller leading the festivities. The play could have continued at the Municipal for a lot longer, but due to Vinícius’s lack of business savvy, the Sunday night performance was the last because he had only booked the theater for one week.

Some days later, Orfeu moved to the Teatro da República, where it ran for another month, despite several problems. On the second day, Abdias do Nascimento, who played Aristeus and was a black activist, accused Vinícius of taking advantage of blacks—a huge insult to someone who, barely six years later, would dub himself “the blackest white man in Brazil.” Vinícius fired Abdias and replaced him with none other than Chico Feitosa, in “black face.” Feitosa looked more like Al Jolson than Aristeus, but the audience applauded him wildly. They would have applauded even harder if they had known that, behind the scenes, Feitosa was dating the extremely desirable Eurydice. Orfeu was also a hit at the Teatro da República, and the show went to the Teatro Municipal in São Paulo. The set was transported by truck, but mysteriously, it never arrived in São Paulo, nor did it return to Rio.

The entire score of Orfeu was magnificent, but the impact made by “Se todos fossem iguais a você” cast a shadow over the beauty of Jobim and Vinícius’s other songs, “Um nome de mulher” (A Woman’s Name), “Mulher, sempre mulher” (Always a Woman) and “Lamento no morro” (Lament on the Hill), as well as “Valsa de Orfeu” (Waltz of Orpheus), for which Vinícius wrote the music and Tom the harmonies. While the show was running, a ten-inch LP was recorded at Odeon, with sambista Roberto Paiva, Vinícius reciting Orpheus’s monologue, and—given that there was no audience—Jobim conducting the orchestra. A friend of Vinícius’s, the São Paulo industrialist, Zequinha Marques da Costa, took the songs to São Paulo, where they were a sensation at the Cave nightclub, performed by an amateur singer, Almir Ribeiro. “Se todos fossem iguais a você” had become Ribeiro’s personal property, when he drowned two years later in Punta del Este, during an excursion with Carlos Machado.

A music publisher from São Paulo, Enrique Lebendiger, owner of the powerful Fermata, got in ahead of the others and managed to persuade Jobim and Vinícius to publish the songs from Orfeu da Conceição with him. He said that this meant that from that point on, they would be protected, even internationally. No one could record them without permission from the publisher, who, with representatives in New York, Zurich, Sydney, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires, would ensure the collection of dues for the rights to reproduction, interpretation, and performance of these works—leaving the composers the sole and arduous task of collecting the money from him, when appropriate.

As Jobim and Vinícius soon discovered, dealing with music publishers was indeed an arduous task. And the money, at first, was exactly what was mentioned at the Villarino: “a little cash.” But the songs from Orfeu remained undoubtedly protected even from the composers themselves.

6

The Gang

Ever ready for songs and girls: Menescal and Bôscoli

Manchete Press

In 1956, Roberto Batalha (Battle) Menescal was living up to his middle name and playing host to more internal conflicts than a sack full of cats. He couldn’t make up his mind whether to study architecture, join the Navy, or play the guitar. That’s a big decision to make at eighteen. In his triple dilemma, the option that least appealed to him was studying architecture, despite belonging to a family of architects and engineers. Or maybe because of it. He always turned scarlet with embarrassment when he had to give out his address: the Galeria Menescal building in Copacabana, built by his parents. The idea of joining the Navy did not necessarily inspire military vocation in him, and he wasn’t particularly inspired by the sailors he saw in MGM musicals. The only thing that vaguely excited him was the thought that if he joined the Navy, he wouldn’t have to restrict his harpoon fishing in Cabo Frio to the weekends—he would have the entire year and the seven seas to hone his skills with the blade. But after a few guitar lessons with Edinho, from Trio Irakitan, and breathing the scent of late nights and early mornings, he began to suspect that he was more excited about becoming a musician. At any rate, because of music, he was already taking more risks than he did with the 180-pound jewfish and manta rays that he was used to facing underwater. The year before, for example, he faked a student ID card to get into the adult hangout, the Scotch Bar, on Rua Fernando Mendes in Copacabana, to hear his idol, newcomer Tito Madi, sing “Chove lá fora” (It’s Raining Outside). At the same time, he was developing the dangerous habit of stealing bottles of White Horse Scotch from his father’s cellar to sell late at night at the Tudo Azul nightclub and, if he was lucky, catch a guy called Tom Jobim playing “Foi a noite” (It Was the Night). The only place he didn’t manage to get into was the evening performance of the revue Gente bem e champanhota at the Follies theater, to hear the girl who was the epitome of modern, Sylvinha Telles, singing “Amendoim torradinho” (Roasted Peanuts) instead, he had to settle for the Wednesday matinée.

Menescal spent hours listening to the record “Julie Is Her Name.” Not because of the bedroom voice of the singer, Julie London, and her sensational décolletage on the album cover, but for the guitar accompaniment by Barney Kessel. His parents were concerned with his fanaticism. They would have been even more concerned had they known the real reason Menescal was switching institutions in the last year of high school, from the Mello e Souza school to the Mallet Soares, which were both in Rua Xavier da Silveira. He knew that, in the latter, there was a student named Carlinhos Lyra. Apparently, Lyra could read music while playing the guitar, was a friend of Johnny Alf, and had already recorded two songs—that is, he was almost a professional. It was also said that cutting class to play guitar was standard practice in Lyra’s gang, and that the professors who liked guitar music would cut class with them and vouch for their presence in class. Did he have to switch schools or not?

Menescal’s parents, like many parents in 1956, considered the guitar a symbol of idleness and would not, in their wildest dreams, ever have approved of his plans. Menescal wasn’t really made for a late-night lifestyle. Despite making a concerted effort to drink some alcohol, his worst vice was milkshakes—a friend, the drummer Vítor Manga, nicknamed him the “Milk King.” Even so, in an effort to curtail his activities, his parents stopped his monthly allowance. Suddenly left without sufficient resources to buy even a bag of popcorn, Menescal had to get a job. Carlinhos Lyra, also trying to escape the devoted clutches of his overbearing mother, suggested they open a guitar “academy,” and Menescal accepted without hesitation. In their vision, the academy would be a source of income which would at least pay for their cocadas and mariolas. But in practice, it soon became, on its own terms, a booming enterprise. Lyra became independent and Menescal resolved his dilemma: the academy allowed him to wave goodbye to architecture and convinced him that, from that point on, he could earn a living from music and fund his own harpoon-fishing trips, without the need for subsidies from the Navy.

João Paulo, a friend of Carlinhos, offered them the use of a studio apartment in Rua Sá Ferreira, in Copacabana, which he used as a bachelor flat, for running the academy. In exchange, he would take 10 percent of the revenue. It was essential for the bachelor flat to be run with the best possible reputation. Lyra and Menescal were very good-looking guys, which might explain why 80 percent of their students were female. But times were different then, and several of the more watchful mothers insisted on accompanying their daughters to ensure that all they did during the class was play the guitar. This made their work somewhat chaotic, and the two instructors were forced to separate the two halves of the room.

A notice that bore the extremely polite message was posted in the waiting room: “Mothers, please be so kind as to wait in the reception area.” Of course, for all intents and purposes, it might as well have read “No admittance to mothers.” However, to ensure that there was be no doubt as to the instructors’ intentions, they installed a peep-hole in the door that separated the two rooms, so that the mothers could inspect their daughters’ progress in the mysteries of the guitar. In fact, so many precautions and preoccupations were unnecessary, because Lyra and, particularly, Menescal, were most concerned about maintaining an atmosphere of propriety in the classroom. And besides, that was no obstacle to some students (almost always the oldest ones), who took extra “classes” at late hours at the academy with Menescal and, especially, with Lyra.

The two of them were also the beneficiaries of a virus that took hold of many parents at that time: that of forcing their children to study the accordion with the nationally famous professor Mário Mascarenhas. In order to escape this terrible fate, youngsters bargained with their good grades in school, or with their regular church attendance, and extracted permission from their parents to learn the guitar. Others took lessons in secret. Thus, within just a few weeks, Lyra and Menescal had almost fifty (female) students. One of them was Nara Lofego Leão.

She was just fourteen years old and was about to move into the soon-tobe-famous apartment in Copacabana, where the “bossa nova gatherings” would take place. But in 1956, bossa nova had not yet come on the scene and her apartment was merely the residence of Dr. Jairo Leão, an ambitious and intelligent lawyer from the state of Espírito Santo, and his wife, Dona Tinoca. The Leãos’s eldest daughter, Danuza, who had been a top model for the elegant fabric manufacturer Bangu, was a permanent candidate on the “Ten Most Elegant” list, became the muse of the Country Club, dated the columnist Rubem Braga and French leading man Daniel Gelin, and married journalist Samuel Wainer. What a life. Compared with Danuza’s exuberance, Nara’s shyness was cause for concern—her nicknames at home were “Jacarezinho do pântano” (little swamp alligator), “Caramujo” (clam), and “Greta Garbo.”

There was certainly nothing shy about Leão’s apartment. It occupied the entire third floor of the Palácio Champs-Elysées building in Avenida Atlântica, whose exterior was clad in mosaic-style tile typical of the fifties, right in front of Posto 4. The living room was spread out over 700 square feet, with huge picture windows that opened out to the sea. Therefore, there was no reason to keep the noise level of the music down “so as not to bother the neighbors,” as was later said in an effort to explain the coolness of bossa nova—mostly because there were no neighbors. The building next door, on the corner with Rua Constante Ramos, had not yet been built. It was an empty lot.

Contrary to Menescal’s father, who considered the guitar a tool of the devil, Nara’s father gave her one when she was twelve years old and hired, to teach her at home, the veteran Patrício Teixeira, a surviving singer from the Oito Batutas de Pixinguinha (Pixinguinha’s Eight Masters), and composer of 1937’s “Não tenho lágrimas” (I Have No Tears), a samba that Nat “King” Cole would later record in 1960 on one of his Brazilian records. During the last few decades, Patrício had merely been collecting dust and earning his living as a guitar teacher of the Rio “Ladies Who Lunch” set. To the old guard, he probably was a living legend, but this did not change the fact that for Nara, he was too much of a veteran; he was sixty-three years old, was tired, bureaucratized, and he himself didn’t see much sense in teaching the guitar to a girl of twelve who was “rich” (she must have been, judging from the size of the apartment) and who would never pick up the guitar again once she got married.

For her part, Nara doubted that her guitar lessons with Patrício would ever find their way into history books. It just so happened that she was genuinely interested in playing the guitar and, at fourteen, when she found out about Lyra and Menescal’s academy, signed up immediately. She could become part of a gang, play in front of others, and perhaps even sing. It was the chance to overcome her shyness, and motivation to come out of her shell. When she discovered that Menescal was her neighbor in Posto 4, the two of them started going everywhere together, and as Menescal was four years older, you could say that he became her boyfriend. Shortly after, it was Carlinhos’s turn to court her, although, according to Nara, she was not informed of this at the time. Be that as it may, neither relationship worked out romantically. They were nothing like what she would start a year later, when Ronaldo Bôscoli appeared in the apartment. He wasn’t Vinícius’s brother-inlaw for nothing.

Menescal and Bôscoli did not suspect that they were made for each other when they met in 1956 at one of the guitar jam sessions of another veteran, composer Breno Ferreira, in the Gávea neighborhood. Breno wrote “Andorinha preta” (Black Swallow), a melody from the distant year of 1925, which would also be recorded by Nat “King” Cole. (Where did Nat find those songs?) The hit of his guitar jam sessions was the inevitable “Andorinha preta,” which had recently been revived by Trio Irakitan.

That night, at Breno’s house, after listening to enough black swallows for several summers, Menescal opened the door and went out onto the patio, where the jam participants, and their repertoire, were considerably younger. One of the two boys was singing songs like “Duas contas” (Two Beads), “Nick Bar,” “Uma loura” (A Blonde)—basically, Dick Farney’s numbers. Menescal knew that the young man was a reporter for Manchete magazine named Bôscoli. He should be a great journalist, to sing as badly as that, Menescal thought. The two chatted and discovered that, in addition to having a common passion for the sea, they also had the same opinions on the state of affairs in popular music. They thought it was appalling.

Both of them had a particularly strong dislike of the gloomy type of lyrics that were all the rage then, like those of a samba-canção entitled “Bar da Noite” (Bar of the Night), which went, “Waiter, turn out the light / Because I want to be alone.” In another song, a bolero entitled “Suicídio” (Suicide), the singer simply fired a gun on the recording. They had no patience for Antônio Maria either, who was much admired by forty-somethings for having written “Nobody loves me / Nobody wants me / Nobody calls me / My love” and “If I should die tomorrow morning / No one will miss me.” The Mexican melodramas were nothing compared to that overdosing of nobodies. At their sexual peak, the two boys, who practiced beach sports and were the models of health, found it impossible to identify with the somber mood of those samba-canções, full of evil women who betrayed men and led them to their deaths.

And that wasn’t the worst of it. There were also ludicrous lyrics by Lupicínio Rodrigues, like those of “Vingança” (Vengeance), with his apparent hate for women: “While there is breath in my body / I want nothing more / Than to cry out to the saints for vengeance, vengeance, vengeance / She must roll like the stones in the street / Without ever having a refuge of her own / Where she can rest.” But not even Lupicínio, with his bad-taste tango, managed to beat Wilson Batista’s description in “Mãe solteira” (Single Mother), describing the torment of the Carnival flag-bearer who “set fire to her clothes” when she found out she was pregnant: “She looked like a human torch / Rolling down the slope / The poor wretch was ashamed / To be a single mother.”

It was what was heard most often on the radio, and it’s no surprise that Menescal and Bôscoli were unable to identify with it. Those kinds of melodramas were not a part of their lives. They felt much closer to the songs of Tito Madi, Jobim, and Newton Mendonça; to the lyrics of Billy Blanco, Marino Pinto, and some of those written by Dolores Duran; to the harmonies attempted by Radamés Gnatalli, Garoto, Valzinho, João Donato, and Johnny Alf; to the voices of Dick Farney, Lúcio Alves, and Sylvinha Telles, and the vocal gymnastics of Os Cariocas. Of the older set, they liked Custódio Mesquita, Dorival Caymmi, and Vadico, but they felt that Brazilian music could have used a little more Cole Porter, George Gershwin, or Jimmy Van Heusen. And they also felt that Frank Sinatra’s only flaw was not being Brazilian.

Menescal wanted to write music, Bôscoli the lyrics. The two of them arranged to see each other again a few days later, canceled their appointment with each other, and only met again a year later, when they ran into each other at Arpoador Beach. At that time, in 1957, many things had started to take shape. Bôscoli had provided tips during the production of Orfeu da Conceição, became a lyricist, and collaborated on “Fim de noite” (End of the Night) with Chico Feitosa; and Menescal played the Sunday dances at the Columbia club in Lagoa and ran the guitar academy with Carlinhos Lyra. The apartment of a student named Nara Leão became an extension of the “academy,” with a noticeable frequency of attendance by the pair’s best shaped students. Menescal spoke to Ronaldo about the academy, the girls, and how, every night, they would go to Nara’s house with the guitars. He invited him to join in. Bôscoli was very interested—mostly in Nara and their other female students—and promised to show up. And this time, he didn’t cancel.

It had to happen. A student, running her fingers distractedly over the folds of fabric of the “academy” sofa, found a recently used Jontex condom. João Paulo, the son-of-a-bitch, was still using the apartment as his bachelor flat, thought Carlinhos Lyra in horror. When the student’s hand came in contact with that soft and slimy object, the girl was shocked and screamed aloud. Her mother, sitting in the waiting room, ran in to help. Carlinhos tried to think of how to hide the condom, stuffing it into his pocket or swallowing it, like they did in spy films, but it was useless. They would never believe he wasn’t responsible for its presence. The young offendee canceled her classes and her mother blabbed the incident to the world.

Lyra and Menescal had to close the academy for a while.

The arrival of Ronaldo Bôscoli in 1957 changed the scenery in Nara’s apartment. He brought with him his friend Chico Feitosa. The two of them squeezed themselves into a studio apartment in Rua Otaviano Hudson, in Copacabana, in which they also sheltered Luís Carlos Dragão, a dragon-sized black boy of indeterminate profession. Dragão paid his share of the rent by running small errands for the others, like taking Bôscoli’s column to Última Hora, to which he was now also a regular contributor, every day, or going to the corner to buy Coca-Cola for Chico Feitosa. But his main occupation was sleeping. When he was sound asleep, not even World War III would have woken him. Some mornings, Ronaldo and Chico would carry him, still sleeping in his bed, down the service stairs to the entrance to the building, four floors below. When he woke up and found himself practically in the street, Dragão would react in the only way he felt appropriate: he would turn over and continue snoring.

Bôscoli took Feitosa to Nara’s apartment, but not just because he was an expert on guitar and the two of them were writing songs together. In the past year, Bôscoli had been suffering outbreaks of paranoia that made him afraid to leave the house. He was now able to leave the house, but never alone. Feitosa accompanied him, both to work in the old Manchete headquarters in Rua Frei Caneca and back, as well as to the office of his female psychoanalyst, Dr. Iracy Doyle. Feitosa also accompanied Bôscoli to and from Nara’s apartment but, after a short while, his chaperone service was unnecessary. Taking advantage of the extremely liberal attitude of the Leão family, Ronaldo practically moved into Nara’s house, and it was she who then accompanied him everywhere, by taxi or streetcar.

Able to better observe what passed by unnoticed by Menescal and Lyra, he was the first to admire Nara’s tanned and dimpled knees with the eyes of a man. Which was perfectly natural, considering that in 1957 Bôscoli was twenty-eight years old—very old, compared to the early twenties of his predecessors. Nara also saw in him what she could not see in the two boys: Ronaldo was a poet, a journalist, and an experienced man. He socialized with Jobim, Vinícius, and Newton Mendonça, he knew the night and the day, and, like her, was painfully shy. He hid his shyness behind such a sharp wit that, although hilarious, it had already earned him a group of enemies.

What girl of fifteen could resist him? Nara was besotted with him, as were her parents, to the extent that old Jairo playfully turned a blind eye to the lack of a few shirts, socks, and underwear in his closet. He knew that Ronaldo, just for the fun of it, had borrowed them.

Carlinhos and Menescal pooled their resources, rented a house in Rua Cinco de Julho, also in Copacabana, and re-opened the “academy.” The condom scandal was forgotten and the beautiful students returned in hordes. Now there were almost two hundred. Menescal was happy to play and teach, but Lyra was more interested than ever in songwriting. He had already written a few things by himself, like “Maria Ninguém” (Maria Nobody), but when Menescal introduced him to Bôscoli, he felt that he had met a potential colleague. The two began to work together, and the first song they produced was “Se é tarde me perdoa” (Forgive Me if It’s Too Late). They followed it up, as a joke, with “Lobo bobo” (Foolish Wolf). The lyrics were not as naïve as people thought, because they told the story of how Bôscoli the wolf was captivated by the ingénue Nara. And the tune, which seemed so spontaneous, was blatantly derived from the theme music for old Laurel and Hardy movies, whose short comedy routines had become popular again on TV. Lyra and Bôscoli thought it was hilarious that nobody really caught on.

Contrary to popular belief, almost nothing was written in Nara’s apartment. Lyra and Bôscoli would meet in each other’s apartments and only afterward go and reveal the results at Nara’s house. The pair did not insist on exclusivity in their partnership. Lyra sometimes wrote alone, like he did with “Barquinho de papel” (Little Paper Boat), and Bôscoli continued to write lyrics for Chico Feitosa’s songs, such as “Sente” (Feel) and “Complicação” (Complication). But Nara’s apartment was the center. Luís Carlos Vinhas, an ex-colleague of Menescal at the Mallet Soares, and Normando Santos, an ex-student and now a guitar instructor at the academy, were always there. Music occupied the gang twenty-four hours a day. Those who were still studying, like Nara, stopped going to school, unless it was to perform the songs for her pals. Another meeting place was the home of Lu and Aná, two rich girls who lived in the Urca neighborhood, where the boys who liked jazz would hang out.

Things started to heat up even more when Bôscoli introduced the young Castro-Neves brothers to the gang in Nara’s apartment. They were all formidably musical and each one of them specialized in a particular instrument: Mário, the piano; Oscar, the guitar; Léo, double bass; and Iko, percussion. They had formed a group, the American Jazz Combo, in their apartment in the Laranjeiras neighborhood, and had been fans of Jobim ever since “Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro” (Rio de Janeiro Symphony). Bôscoli’s friend was Mário, the eldest, but it was Oscar, then seventeen years old, who first wrote a little something with Ronaldo entitled “Não faz assim” (Don’t Do That), which later would be considered one of the first bossa nova songs.

Meanwhile, Mário gave Ronaldo a complicated and dissonant tune, inspired by Garoto’s “Reloginho do vovô” (Grandpa’s Pocket Watch), and allowed Ronaldo to summarize in his lyrics what was on all their minds: “Take it up with Daddy / If I was born so modern / Ask Mommy / If dissonance lives within me / I took the nursing bottle and was rocked to sleep by atonality / And my dreams are lulled by an infernal rhythm.// If the hearts of people understood that this is OK/ No one could convince me that I am out of tune.// I’m asking you if a samba like this is wrong / If those who don’t play the tamborim aren’t truly Brazilian.// I wasn’t born a conformist / I cannot conform / But my samba has the right to live and speak.”

This samba, “Mamadeira atonal” (Atonal Nursing Bottle) would never be recorded and, from what followed, it didn’t need to be. In 1957, everyone heard it at the Mello e Souza and Mallet Soares schools, and at the homes of Nara, and Aná and Lu—where it was sung by João Gilberto. Two years later, in 1959, when the first official bossa nova shows started, “Mamadeira atonal” had already been left behind. There was another song, in the same style, but much better: “Desafinado” (Off-Key).

Say, did you mention João Gilberto?

A few months before, in the middle of 1957, Menescal was at home, at his parents’ silver wedding anniversary celebration, in their Galeria Menescal apartment, when someone knocked at the door. It must be another guest. He went to open the door and a young man he had never seen before asked: “Do you have a guitar here? Maybe we could play something.” Menescal’s face twisted into a question mark. He didn’t know what to say. All became immediately clear when the guy introduced himself: “I’m João Gilberto. Edinho, from Trio Irakitan, gave me your address.”

For Menescal, if that truly was João Gilberto, the name of singer-guitarist Edinho was irrelevant by way of recommendation. He had already heard of João Gilberto. Who, among the young Rio musicians in the last few months, hadn’t? He knew he was a half-crazy and cheerful Bahian, who was a fantastic guitarist and an extremely refined singer who sometimes appeared at the Plaza. He invited him to come in. João Gilberto cut through the dozens of guests as if they were made of steam—likewise, no one saw him—and they went into one of the back rooms. He saw nothing else. He just examined Menescal’s guitar, loosened a few of the tuning pegs, strummed a couple of chords, and sang “Hô-ba-la-lá,” his own composition.

It was a beguine—a Caribbean rhythm that, even in 1957, would have been long forgotten had it not been for a song by Cole Porter called “Begin the Beguine.” Menescal did not completely understand the lyrics and, even if they made sense, he, like most musicians, did not pay much attention to lyrics. And who would be concerned about lyrics in the light of what he was hearing?

João Gilberto’s voice was an instrument—more precisely, a trombone—of the highest precision, and he made each syllable fall on every chord as if the two had originated together. Which was remarkable, because the man sang at one speed and played in another. In fact, he didn’t even appear to sing, he spoke the words softly, as Menescal had already heard others doing. But he felt that João Gilberto, if he wanted to, was capable of making himself heard in the living room, with or without the party going on. João Gilberto sang “Hô-ba-la-lá” five or six times, with imperceptible changes, but each version sounded better than the one before. And what kind of beat was that? Menescal couldn’t resist. He took him by the arm, guitar and all, and went out into the night with him. He was going to show him off to his friends.

They started at Ronaldo Bôscoli’s apartment, in Rua Otaviano Hudson. João Gilberto sang “Hô-ba-la-lá” again innumerable times. He also sang another beautiful song of his, entitled “Bim-bom,” and a series of sambas that they had never heard—and that João Gilberto identified as being huge hits for this or that vocal ensemble from the past. In just one night and almost the entire following day (no one slept), he opened their eyes to a Brazilian music that was far richer than they had ever thought possible. And when he spoke to them about his heroes—Lúcio Alves, Dick Farney, Johnny Alf, João Donato, Luiz Bonfá, Tom Jobim, Tito Madi, Dolores Duran, Newton Mendonça, many of them their friends—they understood everything. For Menescal and Bôscoli, on that night, João Gilberto was the personification of what they had, up until that point, been blindly searching for.

Completely insomniac, they left Bôscoli’s house first thing in the morning and went to Nara’s apartment, where the epiphany was repeated, and from there they went to Aná and Lu’s house in Urca. Menescal wanted to learn the beat that João Gilberto performed on his guitar—the knack of playing chords, not notes, producing harmony and rhythm with one single stroke. During this pilgrimage, which lasted almost two days without a break, he did not take his eyes off João Gilberto’s hands, particularly his right hand: Menescal noticed that João Gilberto’s thumb and little finger stretched out practically in a straight line, while his three middle fingers formed the chord, and tightened all the muscles in his forearm. And he, Menescal, considered himself a guitar teacher!

And there were the things that João Gilberto talked about as they went from house to house and back to Ronaldo’s apartment. Poetry, for example. Carlos Drummond de Andrade was clearly his favorite, but he also recited, by heart, long extracts from Letters to a Young Poet by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Literature was a distant preoccupation of musicians, including singers, and it was unusual to hear one citing authors with such familiarity. On another occasion, João Gilberto started to talk about the technicalities of voice projection. He admired the way that Dick Farney controlled his breathing while singing, managing to release miles of verse in a single breath, despite smoking “two packs of Continentals per day.” (Menescal later observed that, during the entire time they were together, João Gilberto never smoked and appeared to grumble whenever anyone lit a cigarette near him. He didn’t drink either, which was doubly strange. Hell, everyone smoked or drank!)

But what left Menescal really perplexed was when João Gilberto explained to him how he used yoga techniques to breathe, and how this allowed him to prolong or cut short musical passages without skipping syllables or tiring himself out. He gave one example after another. Menescal took in these gold nuggets of information, and, fascinated, he understood that he was becoming this man’s prisoner. The image that came to mind when he thought of João Gilberto was of a spider in its web, weaving seductions around the flies. He needed to be careful. But being aware of this fact didn’t help him in the slightest: when he finally said goodbye to him in the street and went home to try and get some sleep, he was already talking, thinking, and behaving like João Gilberto.

Almost nobody among the young crowd in Rio in 1957 knew much about João Gilberto—who he was, what he had been doing before, where he learned to sing and play like that. They vaguely knew that he had come from Bahia to sing in a vocal ensemble (which one was it, anyway?), that he had left the group, and that he worked sporadically at night. Everything was unclear regarding specific names, dates, and places, and amusingly enough, people weren’t very interested—or had not dared to break the barrier of silence that he personally had set up regarding his life. But the big question was: why weren’t they aware of this wonder before?

Carlinhos Lyra, who had met João Gilberto in the doorway of the Plaza in 1954, vaguely remembered those late-night vocals under the light of the street lamp, and even the nickname they gave him, but he did not remember him being such a wonder in those days. He certainly didn’t sing like that, let alone play the guitar. Ronaldo Bôscoli had never seen him before. And there weren’t many other people who could give the boys any information. Johnny Alf had moved to São Paulo and Jobim was practically inaccessible to them, as were Bonfá, Newton Mendonça, and Os Cariocas. It was a shame, because some of them, who had known him in the past, had been among the few to realize that in the last few years, João Gilberto had vanished from the scene. But if asked, not even they knew for sure how, when, and where he had gone, although they had a—mistaken—idea of why.

7

In Search of the Lost Self

João Gilberto

Two years before, at the beginning of 1955, João Gilberto had reached rock-bottom in Rio. He had no money, no job, and almost no friends. His pride, bombarded from all sides, made his self-esteem plummet. But he tried to resist: he refused to sing in clubs where the customers prattled inanely, or humiliated him with tips—which was tantamount to charity, in his opinion. He would not seek work with vocal ensembles, he wouldn’t sing dressed up like a marine anymore, and he wouldn’t record idiotic jingles. It wasn’t as if he was being fought over so much, in fact, no one seemed particularly anxious for his services. He wandered around the Copacabana nightclubs at night, but never went into any of them. Neither was he invited to come in by the doormen who knew him, and certainly not by those who didn’t know who he was. He stayed outside on the sidewalk in silence, but his almost miserable appearance didn’t help much: hair that fell to his shoulders—at a time when men who wore this hair style were considered half-insane—several days’ growth of beard, and clothes wrinkled as if he had been sleeping in them for a week, which, in fact, he had. On more than one occasion, he was seen talking to himself while sitting on the benches in the square in front of the National Library, in the city center, or on Avenida Atlântica.

His family in Bahia had cut off their financial support years ago, and he did not consider the option of getting a normal job, one outside the music industry. With no money for the streetcar, he had to walk everywhere, and it’s said he often went hungry. None of this prevented him from occasionally spending his last coins on a fino reefer in Lapa. He needed some form of escape from the intolerable feeling of frustration he suffered as a result of the world not behaving according to his plans. Rio de Janeiro, with its successful mediocrities, had not yet discerned his talent, and there wasn’t anyone who thought he was the best singer in Brazil.

We don’t know if João Gilberto ever thought about throwing himself off the Arcos da Carioca aqueduct or under a streetcar. But he came to a decision that, for him, must have been a form of death: admit defeat, leave Rio, and start again somewhere else. But where? He couldn’t return to Bahia, because his family would make a martyr of him. He didn’t know anyone in places like São Paulo or Belo Horizonte. There was only one choice: to accept the invitation issued by Luís Telles, his protector in the Quitandinha Serenaders, to spend some time “resting” in Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil. Telles was the only friend he had left. When everyone else turned their backs on him, fed up with his abuse, his idiosyncrasies, and being used by him, there was always a safety net to catch Joãozinho in the form of Luís’s small dwelling in the Praça do Lido in Copacabana.

Lately, Luís had become concerned by the boy’s physical and psychological deterioration, which he attributed largely to the “hallucinogen.” He believed he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and tried to think of a way to get him out of Rio. He would take João to Porto Alegre, where the nightlife wasn’t exactly Las Vegas, but at least it would be a change of scene and would help him recover his spirit. (Of course, before they left, Joãozinho—as he still called him—would have to cut his hair.) But the main thing was that in Porto Alegre, he would be far away from the marijuana, a terrible drug that drove people crazy and made them sad and lose their desire to sing. That interesting concept of the effects of marijuana was not exclusively held by Luís—many in his circle of friends (and Joãozinho’s) felt the same way.

Luís Telles may not have had a good understanding of what reduced Joãozinho to that state, but his good intentions of getting him out of Rio would certainly be worth an extra pair of wings in heaven, where he arrived in 1987 at the age of seventy-two. That trip to the South signified, for João Gilberto, the start of a painful self-examination process that would take the next two years—perhaps the most important of his life. From the solitary descent into his own personal hell, which began in Porto Alegre and continued through cities like Diamantina in Minas Gerais and Salvador and Juazeiro in Bahia, until his return to Rio in 1957, João Gilberto emerged not only strengthened and resolved as to what he needed to do, but also—finally—with the answers that he had been searching for regarding his career.

João Gilberto spent almost seven months in Porto Alegre, most likely from January to August of 1955. (The dates are approximate and are based on calculations by people with whom he lived in the South.) Luís Telles put him up in the luxurious Majestic Hotel, on Rua da Praia, where the noted local poet Mário Quintana also had his permanent home. The fact that Telles preferred to accommodate his guest in the best and most expensive hotel in the city, assuming responsibility for his expenses—when it would have been easier to invite him to stay with his family, who were almost all in the military—indicates that he knew only too well what would be best for everyone.

Possibly, in the end, Joãozinho would not have been such a financial burden (comparatively, of course). For example, Joãozinho had barely settled in the hotel when he began to use all his powers as a charmer to flatter the waitresses, messengers, telephonists, cooks, and even the owners of the hotel. They were hypnotized by his fine manners, his intelligence, and his music. Within a short time, he had an army of employees doing their best to tend to his every need, while for the first time, he dedicated himself full-time to playing the guitar—as if he had just discovered it. His conquest of the staff saved his benefactor an absolute fortune, considering that the innumerable sandwiches he requested outside room service hours were delivered at no extra charge, and he wasn’t billed for all of his hour-long long-distance phone calls.

Luís Telles took João Gilberto all around Porto Alegre wearing a very short, brown Prince of Wales overcoat which he took from his closet and gave to him. He started by taking him to the Clube da Chave, the first respectable nightclub in the city—that is, one that couldn’t be called a brothel. In fact, it was the hangout of artists and carousers, in Rua Castro Alves, with a name that was obviously borrowed from its famous Rio counterpart. On his first night at the Clube da Chave, João Gilberto offered to accompany a curvaceous Argentine singer named Noélia Noel, in the famous bolero “Juguete” (Toy). João Gilberto riddled the bolero with so many different harmonies that the singer was delighted. Ovídio Chaves, the club’s owner, who wrote the popular “Fiz a cama na varanda” (I Made My Bed on the Porch) was unable to resist, and gave him a key to the place. Now João Gilberto had a fixed place to hang his hat every night in Porto Alegre.

Despite not being famous (in fact, until then, no one had heard of him), João Gilberto changed the life of the city, or at least its nightlife. The music-lovers of Porto Alegre, used to going to bed early, started to adapt their schedules to his. The Clube da Chave became a mandatory meeting place, because at any moment, Joãozinho might make an appearance with his guitar—and this could happen at, say, three in the morning. But he didn’t always sing. Sometimes he just talked—and how!—to a respectful and attentive group. Within a short time, some of the regulars were inspired to swap their harsh gaucho accent, which sounded like the revving of an engine, for a poor affectation of the relaxed Bahian dialect, in order to try and speak like him. There were even those who started to think like him, which meant firing off a series of mystical, poetic, “deep,” and generally incoherent utterances.

Influenced by Luís Telles, everyone in the city started calling him Joãozinho. For a while, he went back to being Joãozinho, as he was in Bahia. He bumped into two friends from Juazeiro, the gaúchas Belinha and Ieda, who had returned to their hometown. His sudden congeniality with both people he knew and people he didn’t was unlimited and he delighted even the children. On the day he turned twenty-four, June 10, 1955, his new and many friends in Porto Alegre threw a surprise birthday party for him. They took him to the house of Mrs. Boneca Regina, an elderly lady who already thought of herself as his mother, and as he walked into the darkened living room, they switched on the lights and sang “Happy Birthday to You.” Joãozinho was touched beyond belief, and could only say “Thank you so much, thank you so much.” He had never felt as loved in all his life—and had no idea what he had done to deserve so much affection from a group of strangers.

No one understood why, but, with the exception of “Solidão” (Solitude) by Tom Jobim and Alcides Fernandes, which he heard on the radio with Nora Ney, João Gilberto would never complete a song at the Clube da Chave —he always stopped in the middle. (And he never even started “Fiz a cama na varanda” [I Made My Bed on the Porch], although doing so might have flattered the owner.) One night, he explained why: he didn’t like his guitar, and besides, it was a steel-string. If he could, he planned to get a new guitar with nylon strings, which were becoming popular. The Clube da Chave leapt into action and, under the organization of Luís Telles and two other friends, the lawyers Paulo Parreira and Alberto Fernandes, they took up a collection and gave him the new instrument.

On the night of the formal presentation, João Gilberto thanked everyone profusely, strummed a few chords and—oh!—decided he didn’t like the guitar. “I don’t know, there’s something about it …,” he tried to explain.

The Clube da Chave patron did not take offense. The following day, they returned to the store and exchanged it for another, which João himself picked out. With the new guitar, he began a veritable marathon of performances at the homes of local society families and at the Bar do Treviso in the public market square. Telles also took him on Adroaldo Guerra’s show on Rádio Gaúcha and promoted a concert of his at the Clube do Comércio. This all inspired João to perform at a dance at the Bento Gonçalves club, singing with a local group. He was introduced as “an artist from Rádio Tupi, in Rio,” but that only yielded polite applause. It would have been a different matter had he been with Rádio Nacional.

A few months before, in Rio, if he had been contracted for what he believed he was worth and sold at market price, the purchaser would have suffered an enormous loss. In the meantime, however, his value had started to appreciate. Luís Telles introduced him to the old pianist and professor Armando de Albuquerque, one of the jewels of gaucho music, a serious man who was friends with Radamés Gnatalli. Albuquerque, who wasn’t someone who usually sang people’s praises, listened to the young man and was enraptured. He perceived that he was distressed, in search of something modern that he himself was unable to define. João Gilberto would visit him at his home in Rua Lobo Gonçalves, and the two of them would play for hours, each discovering with his own instrument the delicate beauties of Lamartine Babo and Francisco Matoso’s waltz, “Eu sonhei que estavas tão linda” (I Dreamed You Were So Beautiful). Or João Gilberto would ask Albuquerque to play, innumerable times, “Canção da Índia” (Song of India). He was astonished to learn that it was a composition by the Russian Rimsky-Korsakov. He had always thought that it had been written by Tommy Dorsey.

For Joãozinho, there didn’t seem to be anything else to do in Porto Alegre, other than be the beneficiary of local affection. However, even there, stories were beginning to circulate that would haunt him forever. It was said, for example, that the chambermaid who cleaned his room at the Majestic Hotel was constantly finding tangerine peel under his bed. No matter how often she threw them away, they would reappear the next day. Joãozinho explained to her that he had been putting them there in order to attract ants “to keep him company.” When other stories of the same kind began to circulate, part of the fascination he inspired started to become folklore. Luís Telles realized it was time to take him away from Porto Alegre.

Telles had to go back to Rio to try and reorganize the Quitandinha Serenaders, and he couldn’t leave Joãozinho in Porto Alegre. At the same time, he didn’t want him back in Rio again, exposed to the same old temptations and liable to sink back into the depression that had poisoned him. He knew that Joãozinho had an older sister—Dadainha—living in a city called Diamantina, in Minas Gerais. Dadainha’s husband, Péricles, was a highway engineer and had been transferred there to work on the construction of a highway. From what Joãozinho had told him, Dadainha was the only relative he had whom he could actually listen to. She would be the ideal person to put him up for a while, with the added advantage that, as she lived in Minas Gerais, his family in Bahia would not pester him.

Diamantina, in the west-central part of Minas Gerais, had been in the headlines recently as the hometown of the Social Democratic Party candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, Juscelino Kubitschek. Kubitschek had everything he needed to win. His primary adversary, General Juarez Távora, of the National Democratic Union, lost votes every time he made a speech. It would be a fun place to spend some time. Now all Telles had to do was to convince Joãozinho.

To his surprise, Joãozinho liked the idea. They would go to Rio and, as soon as he felt up to the journey, he would leave for Diamantina. When he left Porto Alegre, Joãozinho also left some broken hearts behind—among them, at least one married one.

Luís Telles took João Gilberto back to Rio and set him up in his apartment in Lido. On the ground floor of the building there was a popular bar, O Ponto Elegante (The Chic Meeting Place), but João Gilberto was not one of its regular customers. One month was enough for his happiness in Porto Alegre to go up in smoke, and he returned to awakening compassion in whoever saw him. And, inevitably, he went back to making purchases in Lapa. In order to prevent the situation from continuing in perpetuity, Telles was emphatic in telling him that he should go and stay with Dadainha, in Diamantina, as soon as possible. Joãozinho got the message.

Telles gave him some money, and he went to the old bus station in Praça Mauá, bought a ticket, and got on a bus—which ended up going to the wrong city. The ticket he had bought was for Lavras, also in Minas Gerais, and he only realized his mistake when he arrived in that city, more than two hundred and fifty miles from where he wanted to be, and found out that no one knew his relatives Péricles and Dadainha. He had also forgotten to bring his sister’s address.

But he didn’t give up, and arrived in Diamantina in September. Dadainha was more surprised to see him than if Juscelino Kubitschek himself had knocked on her door. Joãozinho had neglected to write to her to inform her of his arrival. Dadainha had just had a baby, daughter Marta Maria, which usually requires one’s exclusive attention. But the fragmented state of her brother’s emotional health was so apparent that she took him in with all the affection she could muster. She didn’t know what to do to relieve his depression, and Joãozinho was unable to adequately translate his distress into words. But she gave him what she had to give: a home, food, love, and what would afterward prove to be essential, peace and seclusion. It was what he needed to get his head together.

João Gilberto spent eight months in mountainous Diamantina, until May 1956. No one ever saw him on the street, but the city was not unaware of his presence. Gossipmongers commented that there was a “weird guy” at Péricles and Dadainha’s house, who spent the entire day in his pajamas, playing the guitar, and didn’t even venture out onto the sidewalk. Juscelino won the election, there had been a fabulous street party in Diamantina, and the “weird guy” hadn’t even gone outside to take a look at what was going on. Joãozinho didn’t just stay in the house, he locked himself in his bedroom with his guitar and only emerged to go to the bathroom, where he would also closet himself for hours—with his guitar. His sister took his meals up to wherever he was. In the early morning, he would be seen tiptoeing down the corridor in his socks, on the way to Marta Maria’s bedroom, to sing and play his guitar softly next to the child’s crib.

During that whole time, only one person in Diamantina decided to go looking for him, and it wasn’t exactly a local: a young student from Belo Horizonte, very tall and thin, named Pacífico Mascarenhas. His parents were the owners of a powerful textile industry in the region and he was there on vacation, sorely missing performing with his musical group in Belo Horizonte. When he heard about the “guy who plays guitar,” Pacífico thought he might have found a soul mate and went to Dadainha’s house. She called Joãozinho in his room, and to her surprise, he came into the living room to meet the young man. They talked for a while, and João Gilberto played a few things, but did not sing. The exchange yielded nothing. Pacífico left, promising to come back, and never did. (Two years later, he met João Gilberto again in Rio, but he encountered a completely different person.)

A maelstrom of thoughts buzzed around in João Gilberto’s head during his exile in the mountains. His life started to pass before his very eyes, like a movie, with a soundtrack that had been written by the best and most ambitious musicians of his generation. He spent the first weeks in silence, rehashing old memories that hurt at the slightest touch of his mind. It was apparent by the anguish etched in his face, which he could not hide from those who saw him. But something ignited a spark in him because suddenly he started playing his guitar day and night, shut up in his room, as if seized by some kind of obsession. At first, nothing he played made much sense, he would repeat the same chord a zillion times, each one almost perfectly identical to the next, except when he added his voice.

He discovered that the acoustics in the bathroom were ideal for listening to both himself and the guitar. All those floor and wall tiles, infused for years with steam and humidity, created a kind of echo chamber—the chords reverberated and he could measure their intensity. If he sang more softly, without vibrato, he could speed up or slow down at will, creating his own tempo. To do this, he needed to change the way he projected, using his nose more than his mouth. His mind was like a radio whose dial was spinning apparently at random, tuning in to everything he heard and loved. The natural enunciation of Orlando Silva and Sinatra. Dick Farney’s velvet tone and style of breathing. The timbre of trombonist Frank Rosolino with Kenton’s orchestra. The soft enunciation of the Page Cavanaugh trio, Joe Mooney, and Jonas Silva. The colorful harmonies of the vocal ensembles—how was it possible to use one’s voice to alter or complete the guitar’s harmony? Lúcio Alves’s phrasing—only Lúcio would phrase backward, delaying himself. It was possible to speed up and slow down in relation to the rhythm, as long as the beat remained constant. Johnny Alf’s syncopated beat on the piano and, particularly, João Donato’s on the accordion—how would that sound on the guitar? The new João Gilberto was being reborn from those experiences.

They gave him courage to reflect on the events of the past with less self-pity. What had happened to him since he had left Salvador six years earlier? The nights of “champagne, women, and music” that he had promised himself and that he imagined were waiting for him in Rio had failed to materialize. Champagne didn’t flow from the faucets, and he could not buy it. But after innumerable binges with Mário Telles and others in the Lapa bars, he discovered that he didn’t really like to drink. Women, well, he had had some—Sylvinha and Mariza, but they were two young girls. Where were the mature women he saw in films, who were talked about in songs? None of them were interested in him. But his main source of disappointment was his career.

No one was aware of his talent more than he, and that was the problem: he knew he was good, but that wasn’t getting him anywhere. Contrary to the illusions he had packed in his suitcase on leaving Juazeiro, success didn’t happen overnight, money was short, and he had been compelled to sing things he hated. With Os Garotos da Lua, he had even sung Carnival music. Rio de Janeiro was not Juazeiro, and doors which were open to him as a matter of course in his home town appeared difficult to force open in the big city. He was beginning to admit that he did not have enough self-discipline—that is, professionalism—to succeed in the aggressive and mercenary Rio market. If he really wanted to succeed, he would have to make concessions and do what everyone else did, subject himself to keeping schedules, putting out his hand, asking to be hired, accepting criticism, and swallowing rejection. He would have to bury his pride and allow virtues that, up until then, were not a part of his character, to flower, such as patience, modesty, and tolerance. He would have to become a new João Gilberto.

He developed a sudden aversion to marijuana. In Rio, when the world had seemed cruel and unfair to young unemployed artists like him, it helped temporarily lift his spirits and made everything seem rosier. It was a worthless illusion. Perhaps the drug mixed well with success, but not with failure. In Porto Alegre, where it was difficult to find, and in Diamantina, where he couldn’t motivate himself to look for it, he was obliged to go through life without it—and had discovered that he could survive. If he was ever going to get to where he wanted to be, he was going to have to give the stuff up. Years later, he said that convinced himself to quit when he sang to little Marta Maria.

All of these concerns boiled in his brain, and became the foundation of the man who, barely two years later, would revolutionize popular music with “Chega de saudade” (No More Blues). Obviously, Péricles and Dadainha weren’t being forced to see the bats that were living in his particular belfry and, for them, João Gilberto’s appearance was that of someone who appeared to have more problems than could be resolved by an entire medical council. Despite that fact, he was not introspective all the time. Sometimes he would burst into the living room with explosions of enthusiasm, to show off a sound he had coaxed from his guitar—something which would later become known as the “bossa nova beat”—and this made them even more concerned.

And why shouldn’t it? Picture yourself in tiny Diamantina in 1956, and see if it’s so hard to understand why someone would have such violent mood swings. Joãozinho could go from being entrenched in the deepest depression to a state of euphoria like a lighted lamp—with the ability to regress, in a matter of seconds, as if a cloud were raining right over him, just because he couldn’t get a chord to sound the way he wanted. Who could understand Joãozinho?

Péricles and Dadainha began to think that the best place for him was with their parents, Dona Patu and Mr. Juveniano, in Juazeiro, and began a discreet campaign to take him back there. When they spoke to him about it, he reacted very negatively. The idea of going back to his hometown and his parents’ house, taking with him his sense of defeat, was the ultimate humiliation. But it was a humiliation that he perhaps considered inevitable while chewing over his own failure. Besides, he had no choice. Péricles and Dadainha were going to Juazeiro anyway, to introduce Marta Maria to her grandparents, and they didn’t want to leave him alone in Diamantina.

Joãozinho still didn’t feel ready to go back to Rio, and even if he had, he didn’t have a penny. He resigned himself and went with them, like a child led by the hand.

His calloused soul hurt more than ever in Juazeiro. The city didn’t exactly welcome him with fireworks, and his father took it upon himself to make his two-month stay there even more oppressive. All of Mr. Juveniano’s tedious urgings—that Joãozinho should become a great doctor, engineer, lawyer, or even an important businessman in Bahia—were rejected with utter vehemence, and he had only his disappointing music career to counteract the argument. The difference was that he was no longer a young man of eighteen with a great deal of promise. He was now a man of twenty-five with a mustache and already nostalgic for the sweet bird of his youth.

He decided, at the very least, to be practical. He would not fight with the old man, and now that he was based in Juazeiro, he would continue his search for that new combination of guitar and voice on which he would bet all his cards when he returned to Rio.

Only Juazeiro didn’t provide him with space to practice. He tried locking himself in his room as he had done in Diamantina, but the sounds he produced filtered down to the living room and his father, a bel canto expert, was the first person to denounce the future bossa nova with the description: “That’s not music. It’s nyah nyah nyah-nyah nyah.”

Mr. Juveniano was now interfering not just with Joãozinho’s choice of profession, but with his actual choice of style. Others in the city echoed Mr. Juveniano’s disapproval. For those who remembered how the adolescent Joãozinho projected his voice like a song-thrush and imitated Orlando Silva perfectly, that new way of singing—as if each syllable were being delicately slipped out of an envelope—did not seem, at the very least, terribly manly by Juazeiro standards.

Joãozinho had no peace and quiet at home to work, nor did the street offer much refuge. Going to play beneath the tamarind tree was out of the question—the only time he tried it, he felt the contempt of people who heard him. It was the same at the small beach on the bank of the São Francisco river. No one would understand “Bim-bom,” which he had just written, trying to reproduce the rhythm of the washerwomen’s hips when they passed by carrying bundles of laundry on their heads. It was as if, in Juazeiro, João Gilberto were being kept prisoner inside a bottle—in solitary confinement, but in full view of everyone, exposed to public scrutiny. He had to escape from there, to anywhere, even to Salvador—if he couldn’t go straight back to Rio.

Again, for whoever saw him from the outside, his state must have been intriguing. How could they have known that the oyster was making a pearl? “Joãozinho is going crazy,” was what his father started saying. With such a source of authority, the rumor turned into a general consensus of simplemindedness among those who knew him. Joãozinho was not right in the head and needed to be treated. But where, how, with whom? Forget about Juazeiro. It would not do for someone in Mr. Juveniano’s social position to let the city know that his son was in such a state. And he couldn’t lock him in the broom closet. Dewilson, Joãozinho’s older cousin, himself a psychotherapist in Juazeiro, had the solution: he would take him to Salvador for treatment, where there were more resources and no one would recognize him. And there he would have the support of Dona Patu’s relatives.

Thus, Joãozinho and Dewilson once again took the train to Salvador, as they had done when they were kids. This time, however, the mission was serious. Dewilson was going to hand his cousin over to someone who understood what was going on with him, with the latter’s consent and cooperation, of course. On the train, João Gilberto seemed strangely calm about the prospect of being examined by doctors who threatened to peep into his mind and soul. Perhaps he was curious to know what was “going on” with himself, but all he really knew was that he was getting out of Juazeiro. Nothing serious was going to happen to him, and he now had a weapon that no one could take away from him: that guitar rhythm, which totally simplified the samba beat—as if he were reducing the whole rhythmic army of a samba school to just the tamborins—but that was flexible enough to accompany any type of music, as well as being something new, which is what he wanted.

In those days, Salvador had three facilities for treating mental patients. One of them, the Bahia Sanatorium, on the Politeama hillside, was practically an asylum, with wards filled with men whose main insanity was poverty; another, the Santa Mônica hospital, close to the Quinta neighborhood, was a “sophisticated” clinic where the wealthy, or those whose families wanted a break from them for a while, went. Dewilson didn’t think that Joãozinho was a candidate for either of those places. In his opinion, he was merely disoriented by his failure in Rio and was obsessed with that damn music that no one liked. A few conversations with the psychiatrists would do him good. So he took him to the Salvador Clinics hospital, in Rua João das Botas, and filled out the paperwork, putting himself down as responsible for him, both as a relative and a doctor. João Gilberto would be admitted to the care of a respected Bahian doctor, Professor Nelson Pires, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the Federal University of Bahia, and his team.

He wasn’t exactly admitted, as Professor Pires’s section did not admit patients. And as it turned out, there was no need. João Gilberto went to the walk-in clinic and was submitted to a battery of interviews with psychologists, whom he confused with his ferine and sibylline arguments. Like on the day when, gazing out of the window with a lost look, he commented to one of them: “ Look at the wind tearing out the trees’ hair …”

“But trees don’t have hair, João,” she made the mistake of saying.

“And some people have no poetry in their souls,” he countered, curtly.

If João Gilberto wasn’t already depressed when he went there, he could have become at the sight of the human landscape that surrounded him. His old friend Cravinho went to visit him and found him somewhat melancholy, perhaps sedated by some kind of medication they were giving him. “I didn’t want you to see me like this, Cravinho …” said João.

“Hey, don’t be silly. There’s nothing wrong with you. I don’t know what you’re doing here.”

Apparently, the doctors at the Clinics hospital agreed with Cravinho, because João Gilberto was discharged a little over a week later. Dewilson was given permission to take him away and decided to return to Juazeiro with him, in order to pay his respects to Mr. Juveniano and Dona Patu, and to show them the man who had turned over a new leaf. João Gilberto thought it best to go along with the idea. In a few days, he would be out of there, and on the long trip back to Rio—this time, for good. He would stop over in Diamantina, to pay his own respects to Dadainha and consolidate all that he had learned. He did not know what awaited him, but he was certain of one thing: his music would finally make it in Rio.

8

The Arrival of the Beat

At the peak of their partnership: Jobim and VinÌcius at work

Manchete Press

In the two years that João Gilberto was away from Rio, getting his head together, the world continued to live life as best it could—winning here, losing there. Witness the case of the great guitarist Garoto. If he had been given a penny every time someone praised him, he would have died a rich man. There wasn’t a single stringed instrument that he wasn’t able to play right off the bat, as Mário Telles discovered when he presented him with a ukelele. It was said that in a single song, Garoto was able to switch between the guitar, banjo, mandolin, and cavaquinho, playing one after the other without missing a beat—and this wasn’t just one of those stories that musicians like to tell, because he would do this in the auditorium at Rádio Nacional.

Garoto spent his life moving from radio station to radio station, in Rio and São Paulo, and spent some time in the United States with Bando da Lua in the 1940s; but his bank account certainly never inspired envy in anyone. After spending his life half-broke, he finally began to earn a living as a composer in 1954, winning a contest sponsored by São Paulo city hall, who wanted music for the city’s fourth centennial. The music was the stunted dobrado “São Paulo Quatrocentão” (São Paulo Four Hundredth), written by him and Chiquinho do Acordeon. The record sold hundreds of thousands of copies (an estimated 700,000), but as instrumentalist, Garoto only received remuneration for the recording, and no royalties.

The worst thing was, he hated “São Paulo Quatrocentão.” He continually complained down at the Murray that, when he died, he was afraid of being remembered for that dobrado. Garoto must have been guessing his fate, because he died of a heart attack in May 1955, at forty years of age, and the song that the radio stations played most often in tribute to him was, unfairly, “São Paulo Quatrocentão”—and not “Duas Contas” (Two Beads), “Gente Humilde” (Humble People), or “Sorriu para mim” (Smiled to Me).

Carlinhos Lyra, his student, remembered that day well. He telephoned Garoto to schedule a time for their class and was told by Dona Iracy, the musician’s wife, in tears, “There’s no class today, Carlinhos. Garoto died this morning.” Crying, Carlinhos made his way to the apartment in Rua Constante Ramos, where Garoto lived, and viewed him in his coffin, a handkerchief tied around his lower jaw. That wasn’t the way he wanted to remember one of his two idols (the other at the time was Johnny Alf).

Ismael Netto also died, in 1956, and people thought that his vocal ensemble, Os Cariocas, would now break up. But his kid brother Severino took over leadership of the group, putting himself in charge of the arrangements; and to replace Ismael’s falsetto, he brought on their sister, Hortênsia. In 1957, still with Continental, they recorded Carlinhos Lyra’s second song, “Criticando” (Criticizing), which denounced the infiltration of boleros and pop ballads into Brazilian music. Os Cariocas would pay for this in subsequent years, because their new recording label, Columbia, would force them to record the ballads by American pop vocal ensembles that were all the rage in the charts, with arrangements that were literally copied from the original songs—and in English, to boot! They also gave them the unbelievable bolero “Quem é / Que lhe cobre de beijos / Satisfaz seus desejos / E que muito lhe quer?” (Who is it / Who covers you with kisses / Satisfies your desires / And loves you very much?) by Oldemar Magalhães and Osmar Navarro, which they somehow managed to record without succumbing to fits of laughter. But Os Cariocas survived “Quem é” and the horrendous repertoire that they were forced by Columbia to perform. When bossa nova came about, with their kind of songs, they were prepared to once again be the greatest Brazilian vocal ensemble.

Paradoxically, another death would play a significant role in the future of popular music: that of Carmen Miranda, in Beverly Hills, in August 1955. Not because of Carmen Miranda herself, who had been indifferent to the music scene in Brazil for many years, but because her former collaborator Aloysio de Oliveira was forced to face the hard truth: without her, Americans had little connection to what he had to offer; and Bando da Lua, which accompanied her, was only known in the United States as the star’s back-up band—they weren’t even as important as her tutti-frutti hat. In his unexpected state of grief, Aloysio decided to disband the group, pack his bags, and return to Rio.

He arrived at the beginning of 1956, still a slave to Carmen’s memory and completely out of touch with his country. Which was only natural; he had been away for sixteen years. But it didn’t take him long to realize that the new generation of Brazilians probably thought “Chica chica boom chic” was a new brand of ice cream, and not the immortal hit by the “Brazilian bombshell.” His first effort at work was producing a show at Rádio Mayrink Veiga, Se a lua contasse (If the Moon Were to Tell), starring Aurora Miranda, Carmen’s sister. But on the eve of the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik, no one was interested in what the Moon had to say, and the radio show didn’t make it.

His next step was to do voice-overs for commercials, using the voice that would become famous as the Brazilian narrator for Walt Disney documentaries. In his first assignment, his mission was to convince the public that nine out of ten movie stars used Lux soap. Nothing could have been easier, given that everyone already believed this, but for some reason, Aloysio was unable to reproduce for the commercial the intonation he used in the films. Or at least, according to him, the client didn’t think he sounded like the impression that the extremely popular comedian José Vasconcellos did of him. So Aloysio imitated José Vasconcellos imitating him, and the client approved the commercial. He was already starting to think that that wasn’t a very dignified way to earn a living when the English executives at Odeon in Rio offered him the job of top A&R man for the recording company.

At the time, Odeon had not just one man doing the job, but several. Each of its conductors was an A&R man and was responsible for production in one sector. Antonio Carlos Jobim was one of them, together with Léo Peracchi, Lindolfo Gaya, and others. Aloysio was going to be the general director, with the power to decide who should record with those conductors—and why and how. Eventually he would become the biggest record producer in Brazilian history, almost a giant among pygmies. But who knew that in order to get there Aloysio had to break down his wall of preconceptions of all that was new? When he set foot again in Brazil at the ripe age of forty-one, he was a man of the old guard and was unable to do anything about it. For example, he refused to admit singers who “didn’t sing well,” along with those who “had no voice.”

His idea of “great Brazilian popular music” was fixed somewhere in the early 1940s, which is when he left to go to Hollywood with Carmen Miranda. The two greatest songwriters, therefore, were Ary Barroso and Dorival Caymmi. On one of the first LPs he produced at Odeon, he managed to reunite the two of them: Caymmi sang Ary’s songs, and Ary (luckily for Caymmi) merely played Caymmi’s songs on the piano—without either one collaborating on each other’s tracks. It would have been much more fun to put them together, as the Americans would have done, but one of the two (almost certainly Barroso, who didn’t want to provide mere accompaniment to his rival) must have declined the invitation. The result was that not even the most ardent of Ary or Caymmi’s fans felt they had to own the record. (Nine years later, when he had his own recording company, Elenco, Aloysio had the same idea for the record Caymmi visita Tom [Caymmi Visits Jobim], but this time, he made sure that the two recorded several tracks together.)

On another of those first records at Odeon, Aloysio formed a phantom vocal ensemble in the studio, called them Bando da Lua (why not? the name belonged to him) and put them to work singing parodies of old American songs, in Portuguese with a samba rhythm. The lyrics punned those of the classics, so that “In the Mood” became “Edmundo,” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street” became “O sobrinho da Judite” (Judite’s Nephew). The title of the LP itself was enough to make one cry: Samba These Days, a pun on “Some of These Days.” (Aloysio, who was never one to throw an idea away, also remade this record, with a bossa nova flavor, in 1968 with the female vocal ensemble Quarteto em Cy, known in the United States as The Girls from Bahia. It came out much better.)

Aloysio could not yet have known what would become of him at Odeon, but he soon discerned the enormous potential of one of its directors: Antonio Carlos Jobim. At twenty-nine years old in 1956, as yet unable to completely free himself from the drudgery of evening piano playing, Jobim was already hating every minute he spent at the recording company, which certainly weren’t few and far between—he had to go to meetings at nine in the morning, calculate sales balance sheets, and discuss the dismissal of artists. And in his function as an A&R man, it wouldn’t have been a good move to put his own songs on the records he produced. So he was limited to writing arrangements for the Tyrolese boleros of Dalva de Oliveira or the melancholy Orlando Silva, whose voice and star status were a shadow of their former glory.

For Jobim, Aloysio’s arrival meant the slashing of a few zeros from his earnings, but it also lifted a burden from his shoulders that he was able to compensate for by doing what he wanted and knew best: composing, arranging, and—in this particular case—producing records with singers that he liked, and including his own songs. Mr. Morris, the president of Odeon, was not surprised by his sense of relief: “A leopard cannot change its spots,” he remarked to Jobim, meaning that he had been the right man, but in the wrong place.

Jobim and Aloysio were introduced at the Odeon headquarters, at a cocktail party for the press at which the appointment of the new director was to be announced. When he first saw Aloysio—thin, with a mustache, and wearing a jacket with thin vertical stripes—he didn’t think much of the older man. As for Aloysio, who was afraid of Jobim’s reaction, he was relieved to discover that he was delighted at being demoted. But the two of them rapidly came to an agreement, primarily when Aloysio heard “Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro” (Rio de Janeiro Symphony) for the first time and became convinced that he was in the company of the “Brazilian Gershwin.”

Aloysio arrived at Odeon in June 1956, when an important record was already in production: Sylvinha Telles’ 78 r.p.m. with “Foi a noite” (It Was the Night) by Jobim and Newton Mendonça, with arrangements by Jobim, and conducted by Léo Peracchi. Upon entering the studio, unfamiliar with either the song, the vocalist, or the arrangement, he was shocked at how modern it was. It was a difficult record to classify. It wasn’t like a samba, but it wasn’t a samba-canção either, and it obviously wasn’t a bolero. What should be written on the record label, as was imperative at the time? In doubt, he preferred to put nothing, and “Foi a noite” (with “Menina” [Girl] by Carlinhos Lyra, on the other side) was released without any specification of genre.

Later, Aloysio would often say that that was his first contact with what was to become bossa nova, and he wasn’t lying. In fact, he had never heard the recording of “Eu quero um samba” (I Want a Samba), with Donato and Os Namorados, on Sinter, and, by all accounts, he had never heard of Johnny Alf. Months after “Foi a noite” was recorded, Aloysio had the opportunity to back another important development: producing an LP with songs from Orfeu da Conceição by Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes. Unfortunately, he did not want to follow the example set by Goddard Lieberson, an American producer at Columbia who recorded dozens of Broadway musical scores with the original casts. In order to do this, all Aloysio had to do was take the cast of Orfeu, which was still playing at the Teatro Municipal, into the studio. But he couldn’t shake the notion of what it was to “sing well” and preferred to have a “real” singer, sambista Roberto Paiva, on seven of the eight tracks. Paiva sang well, but the impression one has today is that, with his traditional singing style, he felt like a fish out of water with those songs.

Aloysio’s obsession for voices from the past did not prevent him from being very impressed on all accounts with Sylvinha Telles during the recording of “Foi a noite.” What a shame it was that the girl already had a boyfriend—a young actor named Herval Rossano, star of an adventure series on TV Tupi, O Falcão Negro (The Black Falcon).

Sylvinha Telles’ ex-boyfriend, João Gilberto, was on his way back to Rio. To be exact, he was bringing with him the desire to be a good boy, the belief that he must have an element of goodwill toward his fellow man, and, especially, a more realistic measure of his own worth. He saw no prospect of work on the near horizon, and Rio was hardly declaring a public holiday for his return. It was even possible that no one had even realized he’d been gone for two years. As he didn’t know how former acquaintances would welcome him, and his ego wasn’t exactly bulletproof, he rented a room at a shoddy hotel downtown. He decided to stay around there while he scouted out the market, or until he ran out of money, whichever came first. Guess what: his money ran out before he produced a single cent and once again he was forced to knock on Luís Telles’s door in Praça do Lido. Telles gave him, as always, a welcome that would have inspired envy in the Prodigal Son.

Nothing about João Gilberto appeared to have changed, except his voice and his guitar, but Rio de Janeiro was unaware that it was dealing with a different man. During 1957, he moved through the city in search of contacts. He wanted to perform, he wanted to show that he had something new, and he particularly wanted to record. One of the first people he sought out was Bororó, the composer of a great hot samba from the thirties, “Curare.” Bororó, who was almost sixty years old, had a girlfriend, Maria Luísa, who also lived in Lido. Maria Luísa’s apartment was a meeting point for the most respected members of old guard, among whom were singer Sílvio Caldas and harmonica player Edu da Gaita. An unlikely place to play the unpublished “Bim-bom,” with all those altered harmonies.

Sílvio Caldas, who refused to accept any musical innovation that had originated after 1930, must have made some unpleasant comment about “Bim-bom,” or João himself, because if João Gilberto was already pouting about Sílvio’s reputation, he soon became unable to stand him. Sílvio was the kind of singer who gave him heartburn, the kind who thought he truly was the god that the bootlickers said he was. But if João wanted to continue hanging out with Bororó, he had to put up with him, because it was Sílvio who had recorded, in 1939, “Da cor do pecado” (The Color of Sin), the only other well-known song by the composer of extremely limited productivity. So João, spurred on by his doubts, decided to look for a gang to hang out with.

He made peace with Lúcio Alves and with Sylvinha’s brother, Mário Telles, who introduced him to Tito Madi, who had shot to fame with “Chove lá fora” (It’s Raining Outside), and to a young singer from Minas Gerais, Luís Cláudio, who had just burst onto the scene with “Joga a rede no mar” (Throw the Net into the Sea). Madi was the sensation of the moment—every night, he filled the Jirau nightclub, in Rua Rodolfo Dantas in Copacabana, accompanied by pianist Ribamar. All of Rio wanted to hear him sing “Chove lá fora.” At the end of that year, the song received as many gold discs as was possible—one of them from the very hands of President Kubitschek, in person, in the editorial room of Revista do Rádio (Radio Magazine)—and it even survived a recording by the American vocal ensemble The Platters, with all those “doowops.” Madi was modern, competent, and businesslike. He had also come from a small town (Pirajuí, in the state of São Paulo) something like five years before, but had not arrived in Rio all full of himself. Modest as ever, he was still not used to success.

Tito was one of the first people to get to know the new João Gilberto and to fall in love with his way of singing and playing guitar. He not only showered him with affection, of which he seemed to have an endless supply, but he also tried to get him gigs at the most popular Leme and Copacabana nightclubs: the Little Club, the Texas Bar, the Cangaceiro, and the Jirau. The owners of those clubs were grateful to Tito, because he had sealed their reputations by singing in them for the last two years. He had enormous influence, and any singer he recommended was automatically hired—even a complete unknown like João Gilberto. But the latter had a valid reason for not being interested in these propositions: “They talk too much,” he said, referring to the customers that frequented these places, who didn’t feel it was fair to have to pay the extortionary cover charge at a nightclub just to keep quiet and listen to a samba concert.

João Gilberto did not go into those nightclubs to sing and, strangely, didn’t seem interested in going in to listen, either, even when the singer was a friend like Tito. As he had done in the past, he preferred to stay outside in the street, waiting for Tito to come out during the interval, so that they could talk. On one of those nights, in the doorway of the Jirau, João asked to see his friend’s guitar.

“This guitar has something really special, Tito,” said João thoughtfully, as he ran his hand over the top of the guitar, strummed the strings and tightened the tuning pegs. Madi should have deeply considered the implications of this comment because, when he woke up, João Gilberto had vanished. He had simply disappeared with the guitar. Tito ran up and down the sidewalk looking for him, but in vain. He couldn’t understand it—perhaps João had suddenly remembered an appointment—and resigned himself to going back into the club and finishing the show with his spare guitar. Two days later, João reappeared at the Jirau to return it. His only explanation was that the guitar “had something special about it,” and he wasn’t referring to the face of the guitar, to the strings, or to the tuning pegs, but neither did he say exactly what it was. Tito thought it very amusing. His friend, singer Luís Cláudio, told him afterward that João had already done the same thing to him.

There was no sign of the guitar he had been given in Porto Alegre two years before. By all accounts, he must have pawned it, because he always seemed to be in need of one. He telephoned his former colleague, Jonas Silva, the man he had replaced in Os Garotos da Lua in 1950. They hadn’t seen each other for two years, since João had evaporated from the Murray and from Rio. “Jonas, do you have a guitar?” he asked.

“No, João. You know I don’t play the guitar,” Jonas replied.

“Oh, buy one. Then I can come to your house and play,” he suggested. On the very same day, Jonas bought a guitar. Or rather, he asked a mutual friend of theirs, Walter Santos—Waltinho, Joãozinho’s old friend in Juazeiro—to buy it for him. Walter, a great expert, tried out several guitars and chose one, which Jonas paid for. João Gilberto turned up at Jonas’s apartment in Bairro de Fátima a few days later. He played the song “Rosinha,” which Jonas himself had written, and said he had to leave. It was both the debut and the grand finale of that guitar in João Gilberto’s hands.

Jonas was not the only (in his case, former) Garoto da Lua that João sought out. Vocalist Acyr, with whom he had had the quarrel that led to his dismissal from the group, was surprised when João telephoned him, wanting to visit. They had not spoken since the quid pro quo at the Murray in 1952. João gave Acyr the full treatment: he played “Bim-bom” and “Hô-ba-la-lá” and, to the amazement of the other, who had never heard him sing or play like that, he explained in detail how he had come develop his style in Diamantina. He repeated the performance for his best friend in Os Garotos da Lua, the tambourine player Toninho Botelho, whom he also approached once again.

Why was João Gilberto doing all this? Not because he wanted to get back in the group, which was doing very well without him and which had just finished recording “Senhorita” (Little Miss) with the much fought-over Tito Madi. He continued to love vocal ensembles, but professionally they were merely a bridge that he had left behind and burned. He probably just wanted the approval of his ex-colleagues. Toninho and Acyr were very enthusiastic at what they had heard, but even if João had wanted to return, Os Garotos da Lua had no vacancies. And after all, damn it, if they had fired Jonas because he sang too softly, why would they hire João Gilberto again, now that he also sang softly?

João Gilberto may have burned the nightclub and vocal ensemble bridges, but he had to return via the ashen path when his apparent ineptitude started to get on the nerves of the last person to lose his patience with him: his protector, Luís Telles.

João had been living in Telles’s apartment for almost six months now and had not worked for a single minute nor earned one penny. Telles gladly gave him money for his day-to-day expenses, but he wanted to see results. He could not conceive how a genius like João Gilberto could continue to behave like a zombie in the twilight zone. He gave up on him achieving success, but he expected him to get a regular job, like any other genius. The nagging started to get to João, and he resolved to adopt some practical attitudes to placate the man. The guitarist Roberto Paciência was trying to regroup the Anjos do Inferno, which were then on hiatus, and had an offer for a run at a new nightclub in São Paulo, in the Largo do Arouche, which would be called, in their honor, O Inferno dos Anjos (The Angels’ Hell). Paciência convinced João Gilberto to join the group, and he went off to São Paulo. And just like that, he returned within a few days, leaving the others in São Paulo without a crooner. His tour with the Anjos do Inferno was so lightning quick that it wouldn’t even have been worth putting on his résumé.

In Rio, the unicorn remained in João’s garden, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it. He needed to do something to earn some money. So he accepted a job accompanying Sylvinha Telles at the Texas Bar.

There was something deliciously cruel about this. When they were dating, Sylvinha was a mere slip of a girl and João was a professional, a Rádio Tupi artist. Now she was a recording artist, a radio and television star, and he was a nobody. Two years before, in 1955, Sylvinha had sung at the Automóvel Clube (Automobile Club) in Rua do Passeio, accompanied by Garoto on guitar. Singing with Garoto was the most that anyone could ever want. Since then, she had accepted nothing less. When a guitarist auditioned to accompany her, he had to take a test on which the decisive vote, without the musician being aware, lay with her brother Mário. Roberto Nascimento, Carlinhos Lyra, and a young man named Baden Powell had been candidates that Mário had approved.

João Gilberto did not need to take any tests to accompany Sylvinha, as long as he stayed well away from her. Mário was still not entirely sure that the two of them hadn’t rekindled their old flame, and remained vigilant. In fact, his fears were groundless, because João couldn’t stand the clamor of the nightclub, the waiters’ lack of manners, and the rattle of the cocktail shakers, and gave his notice shortly afterward. Once again he was out of work. And to make matters worse, he had a huge problem: Luís Telles had decided that enough was enough and told him to look for somewhere else to live. He basically threw João out onto the street.

For all the love he had shown João Gilberto, it must have been the hardest thing that Luís had ever had to do. But it was perhaps the only thing that could shake up the man’s astonishing incapacity to support himself. He hoped that Joãozinho, faced with no roof over his head other than a canopy of stars, would have to do something. But Telles was mistaken. He had not counted on his protégé’s infinite resources to captivate strangers, make them succumb to his charm, and awaken in them an irresistible urge to protect him. When Luís Telles’s door was shut in his face, for example, João Gilberto barely spent three minutes in the open air. He merely crossed the square, went to the home of Maria Luísa, Bororó’s girlfriend, and convinced one of the regular visitors there, an Argentine painter named Alfonso Lafita, to put him up.

Lafita had just arrived in Brazil and still hadn’t mastered Portuguese. Even though he lived alone, the studio apartment he was renting in Rua Júlio de Castilhos, in Copacabana, was too small to accommodate the canvases and easels with which he intended to pursue, in Rio, his burgeoning artistic career. But he had met João at Maria Luísa’s house, and liked him. He allowed him to stay at his apartment for the few days that João needed to find a new place. And they would have lived happily ever after, had those few days not turned into months and begun to seem as if they really would last forever.

The Argentine began to get irritated when he realized that he was the one who did the cooking, set the table, washed the glasses and dishes, mopped the floor, and dusted the furniture, as well as washed, ironed, and darned João Gilberto’s clothes—while the latter, once again in possession of a guitar, would spend hours trying to master a single chord. Lafita also discovered how difficult it was to concentrate on his oils and watercolors when João never seemed to tire of playing and only interrupted his music to continually ask Lafita’s opinion on what he had just created. Not to mention the fact that the guest turned the host’s schedule upside-down, and Lafita now found himself waking up at three in the afternoon and eating lunch at ten at night, like João did. Despite living together in such close quarters, the Argentine did not get to know João Gilberto very well. Among other things, it was years later before he found out that João was from Bahia and not from Diamantina, in Minas Gerais, as he had told him.

Lafita could not have known it, but João Gilberto was on the verge of radically changing his life. João met up with his friend Edinho, from the group Trio Irakitan, and Edinho recommended he try and find a young man named Menescal, who ran a guitar “academy” and was putting together a group. João Gilberto knocked on Menescal’s door (“Do you have a guitar here? Maybe we could play something.”), went out into the night with him, and was introduced to a gang of talented and intelligent young people. One of them was Carlinhos Lyra, whom he had met years ago, beneath the streetlamp on the sidewalk outside the Plaza nightclub, when they had gone to hear Johnny Alf. Those guys wrote their own music, they were well brought up, and they styled their hair with Gumex. It was going to be great hanging out with them.

One of the guys João knew was the Odeon photographer Chico Pereira. With the number of hobbies that Chico pursued with complete dedication—sound, jazz, aviation, harpoon fishing—it was difficult to imagine how he had the time to take a single snapshot for the record covers. Even so, Pereira managed to account for the photos taken for all the record sleeves put out by Odeon. Menescal was his fishing companion, and the two of them were also Dave Brubeck fans. When João Gilberto, brought over by Menescal, sang for the first time at his apartment in Rua Fernando Mendes, Chico experienced the same feeling he got when he first saw the bottom of the sea, with the added advantage that João Gilberto’s voice and guitar could be captured on tape. He wasted no time and set up a microphone, put a blank reel in his Grundig recorder, and let it roll. It was the first of several recorded sessions that he would make at his home with João Gilberto.

But for Chico, what João had to make, as soon as possible, was a record—and the quickest way to do this was to seek out one of the Odeon conductors, Antonio Carlos Jobim.

It wasn’t easy, but the push that Chico Pereira gave him armed João Gilberto with the courage he needed to ring that doorbell in Rua Nascimento Silva in Ipanema. João and Tom had never been bosom buddies in the distant past, but they knew each other from late nights at the Plaza, the Tudo Azul, and the Far West. At the time, João considered Tom a good evening pianist, like others did, although he thought that (Newton) Mendonça was better. Later he learned to admire him from afar, while Tom’s reputation as an outstanding composer grew. Jobim made himself known (with “Solidão,” “Foi a noite,” and “Se todos fossem iguais a você” [Someone to Light up My Life]) in just the two years that João spent in exile in Porto Alegre, Diamantina, Juazeiro, and Salvador. But he had grown far beyond that. He was no longer an evening pianist who would eventually write with his collaborator, Mendonça. He had become a great professional composer, arranger, conductor, and influential person with record labels. He probably had his tuxedos made to order. It was only natural that João, dressed in clothes from Ducal, the Brazilian equivalent of Sears, felt some apprehension on ringing that doorbell.

Tom Jobim was not surprised to see João Gilberto again. He knew he had returned to Rio, after a stay in Bahia, during which he had been under the care of the “men in white coats,” as he put it. Compared with the last time he had seen him—three years ago, in the doorway of the Tudo Azul, with his hair brushing his shoulders and the appearance of someone who was thinking about migrating to the fourth dimension—he thought he was great. But Tom got the surprise of his life when João Gilberto picked up his guitar and performed “Bim-bom” and “Hô-ba-la-lá.”

Tom was not impressed by the contrast between the João he knew and the one that was standing right there in front him. Without a doubt, there was something different about the way he sang—he was no longer an Orlando Silva disciple with touches of Lúcio Alves, as he remembered hearing. He now sang more softly, hitting exact notes, without vibrato, like Chet Baker, who was all the rage at the time. But what really impressed him was his guitar playing. To begin with, he didn’t associate João with the instrument. He had never in his life heard him play, much less like that. That beat was something new. It produced a kind of rhythm that was flexible enough to take all kinds of liberties. It was possible to write for that kind of beat, which meant goodbye to the dictates of conventional samba, from which the only divergence up until then had been the samba-canção, which was already inducing narcolepsy in most people, both those who played it as well as those who listened to it.

From the very beginning, Tom could foresee the possibilities of this beat, which simplified the samba rhythm and left a lot of room for the ultramodern harmonies that he himself was composing. But it would be necessary to do some work within that rhythm, to test new songs and others he had already written, to see how they came out. He opened a drawer and took out several music scores that were still only half-finished or in the final stages of completion. One of them, which was already finished, had been sitting in that pile for more than a year: “Chega de saudade” (No More Blues).

Jobim had written it with Vinícius de Moraes shortly after Orfeu da Conceição finished its one-month run at the Teatro República. If they had written the song earlier, it would have somehow been incorporated into the play. But it was too late and they decided to keep hold of it. There was no indication that “Chega de saudade” would have a brilliant future—or any kind of future. In fact, Jobim had written it almost on a whim—a short time before, at the home of Dona Nilza, his mother, he watched the maid sweeping the living room and softly singing a chorinho. He was impressed with the way the girl managed to sing such a complicated song, in three parts, when the large part of what one heard on the radio fit into a single musical phrase. He decided then and there that he would also write a chorinho like that.

Weeks later, at his family’s country place in Poço Fundo, near Petrópolis, he got the idea for “Chega de saudade,” and when he reviewed what he had written, he realized he had created a kind of samba-canção in three parts, but with a chorinho flavor. On his return to Rio, he showed the song to Vinícius. The poet had his cases packed and ready to resume his diplomatic post in Paris, but he was gently persuaded to stay a few more days to write lyrics to it.

The two of them liked the end result. But not everyone who heard the newborn “Chega de saudade” liked Vinícius’s lyrics. For example, his wife, Lila, did not. She cited the verse “Well, there are fewer little fishes swimming in the sea / Than the little kisses I will place upon your lips.” “How stupid, rhyming ‘little fishes’ [peixinhos] with ‘little kisses’ [beijinhos],” Lila remarked.

But Vinícius obviously wasn’t in the mood to debate the issue and retorted, “Oh, don’t be so sophisticated.”

Years later, Vinícius said that one of the most difficult set of lyrics he had written had been those of “Chega de saudade,” due to the arduousness of trying to fit the words into a melodic structure with so many comings and goings. This all contributed to the uncertainty of the song’s future—until João Gilberto’s reappearance, more than a year later, made Jobim remember it and “Chega de saudade” emerged from the drawer to be made into a record with Elizeth Cardoso, entitled Canção do amor demais (Song for an Excessive Love).

André Midani, whom everyone thought was French, but was in fact a Syrian from Damascus, was the first to arrive at Chico Pereira’s apartment for the meeting called by the latter. He was wearing the clothes he usually wore in conservative Copacabana in 1957, and which made everyone stare at him: dirty jeans, a red shirt, and wooden clogs. Looking like that, there wasn’t anyone who’d bet that he had a job, but Midani, after only two years in Brazil, was the head of Odeon’s international repertoire department. Within a short time he was also made responsible for the record sleeves, and eventually, the entire record label’s promotion and publicity.

Chico took two bottles of Grant’s whiskey that a friend of his, a Panair Airlines captain, had smuggled back from New York, out of the cupboard, together with the latest records by the Modern Jazz Quartet. He prepared ice, glasses, and his Grundig recorder. He was going to introduce Midani to some people he knew and admired: Ronaldo Bôscoli, Roberto Menescal, Nara Leão, Carlinhos Lyra, and a kid of fourteen, Eumir Deodato. They would play their stuff, Midani would listen, and everything would be recorded.

Midani was twenty-four and had had a little experience with the record business in Paris, which he had fled so he wouldn’t have to fight as a Frenchman in the war in Algeria. His objective was to remove the “conservative smell” from the record label for which he worked and sell records for young people. The problem was that young Brazilians had no music “of their own.” When Chico Pereira mentioned the gang, he became interested in hearing them play. And now, here they were.

Later, Midani would confess that at the beginning he wasn’t particularly impressed. After chatting with them for a few minutes, he found them all boring, except for Bôscoli, who was the oldest. They did not drink (only he and Bôscoli paid their respects to the rare Grant’s), they were far too much the family type, and, by all accounts, they weren’t even sleeping with their girlfriends. This wasn’t the model of youth in the Left Bank, where he had lived side-by-side with existentialists and witnessed Juliette Greco smoking a pipe. With such goody-two-shoes attitudes, it was incroyable that those young people were doing something innovative with their music. But despite his first impression, he decided to hear them. They played a few things. An hour later, Midani was truly amazed: he took a blank piece of paper out of his pocket and made them all sign right there and then. It was a contract with Odeon.

Of course, it wasn’t legally binding, but it was enough of a commitment that, when the time came, it would serve as a valid agreement between the young people and the record label. This was the young music he was looking for.

Just when things were starting to get better for him, João Gilberto found himself on the street again. His host, Lafita the Argentine, told him that the money he was earning for his paintings barely covered the cost of his paints, brushes, and rent, and that he didn’t feel it was fair for João to continue living there for free, without contributing so much as a toothpick to the pantry. It turned his stomach to find himself splattered with paint from his work, even on his forehead, while João left to go out at night all dressed up and sweetly fragrant. Besides, he was fed up with doing all the housework. Another cause for his indignation was that on the few occasions he was able to get some sleep during normal hours, he was awakened at four in the morning by the arrival of João Gilberto and his expansive friend, João Donato.

What made really Lafita rebel was that João Gilberto appeared not to work—that is, at a regular job that would guarantee him earnings to rent a place to stay, or even buy a comb from a street peddler.

In fact, João actually had worked for one month during the five that he was his guest, with the group that accompanied singer Vanja Orico in the Golden Room at the Copacabana Palace. And what a group! Among others, it included the voices of Badeco and Severino, from Os Cariocas; João Gilberto providing voice and guitar; João Donato on the accordion; and Chaim on piano. This group would play great music even in heaven. The problem was the beautiful Vanja’s repertoire: a folk mishmash whose most sophisticated numbers were rustic songs from the Brazilian Northeast, like “Muié rendera.” Despite this fact, the show was a success and none of them, including Donato, missed a single day’s work. One night a week, the show moved to the studios of TV Tupi, in Urca, where it was aired live. (So live, in fact, that one night they broadcast Vanja’s mother’s hand transporting a spoonful of honey to her daughter’s mouth.)

It wasn’t this show that secured João Gilberto’s independence—the salary was so meager that Severino and Badeco merely did the show to supplement their wages at Rádio Nacional. But it was his only source of income at the time, during which he dedicated his greatest efforts to writing lyrics to a samba by Donato, “Minha saudade” (My Saudade). Once the gig with Vanja was over, everyone went back to their regular jobs and João merely continued on as Lafita’s guest.

That is, until the day the latter took him to task and gave him a few days’ grace period to move out. João’s eyes filled with tears, but he said nothing. That same night, he took his guitar and suitcase and went to share a room in a boarding house in Botafogo with his friend Luís Roberto, the new crooner with Os Cariocas, and a friend of his, a native of Minas Gerais named Rômulo Alves. Later, Lafita convinced himself that he had done João Gilberto a great favor by showing him the door.

During the last months of 1957, if anyone had turned João Gilberto upside down, not even so much as a nickel would have fallen out of his pockets. At the same time, however, he was becoming a minor celebrity in Copacabana and Ipanema, if that were indeed possible. Because of João Gilberto, the Plaza nightclub had gone back to being the place where musicians hung out after hours, as it had been three years before, when Johnny Alf played there. The trio that had replaced Alf, with Ed Lincoln on double bass, Luizinho Eça on the piano, and Paulo Ney on guitar, underwent major changes, with Ney’s departure and the arrival of João Donato on accordion and Milton Banana on drums. They even hired a lady crooner: the very, very young Claudette Soares, who did absolutely everything that her five-foot-nothing frame allowed to rid herself of the nickname she earned at Rádio Tupi, “the little princess of the baião.”

It wasn’t as if at the Plaza one didn’t also play baião. However, with Donato on accordion, it was transformed in such a way that not even Luís Gonzaga, whose music epitomized baião, would recognize it as such. In the small confines of the Plaza, they played everything, and did so the way the musicians wanted to, because its limited clientele were other musicians or young people who liked jazz and everything that was modern. It was in this way, for example, that Cravinho, in faraway Salvador, received news of his friend João Gilberto. The last time he had seen him was dressed in pajamas, at the clinic in Rua João das Botas.

The messenger was the movie star Cyl Farney, Dick Farney’s kid brother, who was passing through Salvador. To a group of friends that included Cravinho, he had mentioned an amazing Bahian who performed at impromptu jam sessions at the Plaza almost every night, singing with a different harmony and playing the meanest guitar. When Cyl told him the name of the Bahian—João Gilberto—Cravinho had the surprise of his life. It was obvious that he believed in his friend’s potential, but he had no idea that things could happen so quickly. Cyl even told him about a song he played that was different from anything he had ever heard—”Bim-bom.” (Despite the semi-clandestine aura surrounding the song, so many people had heard “Bim-bom” that by the time João Gilberto finally recorded it in July of the following year, the record sounded like a revival.)

João Gilberto wasn’t the only artist to play bold new music at the Plaza. The drummer Milton Banana obtained permission to accompany him, as long as he played very softly. Little by little, restricting himself to using a small brush on the cymbal and a drumstick against the rim of the drum, Banana managed to emulate the beat of the guitar on his set of cheap Pingüim drums. He succeeded in playing so quietly that at times he was almost inaudible, which also didn’t make much difference because, due to the lack of customers at four in the morning, the owner, José Augusto, would close the nightclub and let the musicians continue playing for their own entertainment. And they could hear Banana.

Another person who heard him was Tom Jobim. Because of João Gilberto, he had started going to the Plaza again and discovered, in that basic rhythm, the ideal soil for planting an orchard of new chords around his melodies. He still didn’t have an exact idea of how it would turn out, but Vinícius de Moraes was on his way back from Paris and had told him he was anxious to start writing. The two of them, Jobim and Vinícius, spent the rest of 1957 in labor pains, but for many, the real baby had already finished gestating, and had in fact already been born.

9

One Minute and Fifty-Nine Seconds That Changed Everything

Arpoador, 1959: João Gilberto with his guitar and his future wife, Astrud

Manchete Press

Canção do amor demais (Song for an Excessive Love) is the famous album that Elizeth Cardoso recorded in April 1958 for a noncommercial recording label named Festa. It would later be hailed as the album that inaugurated the bossa nova sound, because it was entirely dedicated to songs by a new duo, Jobim and Vinícius—and, primarily, because João Gilberto accompanied Elizeth on guitar on two of the tracks (“Chega de saudade” [No More Blues] and “Outra Vez” [One More Time]), playing for the very first time what would become known as the “bossa nova beat.” Legend has it that João Gilberto’s playing during those few seconds in “Chega de saudade” inspired such amazement that Elizeth’s record had barely hit the stores when he was offered a record contract of his own. In fact, less than three months later, in July, João Gilberto recorded his historic 78 r.p.m. with Odeon, with “Chega de saudade” on one side and “Bim-bom” on the other. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Sure. Except it didn’t exactly turn out that way.

Contrary to popular belief, Canção do amor demais was not a hit when it was released in May 1958. It wasn’t even a minor success, nor was it ever destined to be. Elizeth was well respected in the music industry as a great lady of the samba, but she wasn’t exactly someone who brought the house down. To tell the truth, she hadn’t had a hit for years. Festa, in turn, was not much of a recording company, but a featherweight label crowded into a single-room office in downtown Avenida Franklin Roosevelt that depended on established recording companies to cut and distribute its records. Its promotional power was zero. Its owner, the journalist Irineu Garcia, was a pleasant man with good friends in the Ministry of Education. Garcia organized his business activities around the three things he liked most: foreign travel, keeping company with famous writers, and, most preferably, keeping company with famous writers overseas. Fortunately, Irineu was on good terms with a government branch that facilitated this endeavor: the Itamaraty (the Brazilian Foreign Affairs Ministry).

Or to be precise, the Department of Cultural Diffusion, run by his drinking buddy at the Villarino saloon, Mário Dias Costa. Festa allowed Garcia to mix business with pleasure: promoting the best Brazilian poets and columnists, who also just happened to be his friends, by producing low-cost ten-inch EPs, on which they would read their works. And if some of the writers just happened to be diplomats too, like Augusto Frederico Schmidt, João Cabral de Melo Neto, or Vinícius de Moraes, well, so much the better —the swans who floated on the lake of the beautiful Itamaraty palace would be proud, and a record by Vinícius would be right up their street. But what if that record, instead of containing his sober poems, was made up of songs that the poet and vice-consul Vinícius was writing with young Jobim? And why not record those songs performed by a singer like Dolores Duran, a fun-loving fellow night owl? (Good idea, although Vinícius preferred his songs to be performed by Elizeth, who was more of a singer.)

Because it was a popular music record, Canção do amor demais had greater sales potential for Festa than its poetry albums. Despite this fact, Garcia felt it wise to cut a mere two thousand copies, which would be more than sufficient to smooth over his relations with the Itamaraty and not suffer any negative consequences. After all, even after Orfeu and everything else, Jobim and Vinícius still hadn’t achieved fame as composers and no one knew those new songs. Dolores demanded a high fee to make the recording, and Garcia had to give her up. So he hired the much less expensive Elizeth and, incidentally, made Vinícius happy, because she was his choice in the first place. And that was how, “bronzed by the patina of life,” the Divine One (as Elizeth used to be called) “rose like the moon for a night of serenading,” according to the flowery text written by the poet on the record sleeve, and entered bossa nova history books like Pontius Pilate entered the Creed.

Despite the “casual” manner in which Vinícius’s text appears on the original record sleeve (written by hand, complete with mistakes and “corrections,” rather than typed), it’s obvious that it was very deliberately composed. Vinícius reviewed it carefully before delivering it to the graphic artists. Reading it today, his preoccupation with not offending the Itamaraty, through whose monocle a samba record might be seen as an offensive commercial undertaking, practically leaps off the paper. Selecting every word with the utmost care, Vinícius made it abundantly clear that those songs were the “freely given and unrecompensed” product of “utmost diversion” of—”with no intent whatsoever to profit” from—his friendship with the composer and singer. He did everything he could to point out that it was nothing more than an amateur production. In order to erase the possibility of any doubt to this effect, the words “friendship” and “friend” appear on the sleeve no less than six times. Had it been a record of poetry, none of these precautions would have been necessary.

This was one of the two reasons for which, on both the record sleeve and the record itself, the songs were attributed as follows: “Music: Antonio Carlos Jobim. Poetry: Vinícius de Moraes.” The other was that Vinícius was insisting to his literary peers (for whom in 1958 it was inconceivable that a poet should meddle with popular music) that his lyrics indeed were “poetry.” After all, if he, a poet, said they were, who could argue otherwise?

So many political and poetic precautions taken by Vinícius in writing the text for the record sleeve, and he forgot to mention the one thing that posterity would come to consider the most important feature of Canção do amor demais: João Gilberto’s guitar playing on those two tracks. There is no reference in Vinícius’s text to that amazing guitar rhythm or what it represented. João Gilberto’s name is simply not mentioned; nor are those of other great musicians who feature prominently in accompanying Elizeth in “Chega de saudade”: the flutist Copinha, trombonist Edmundo Maciel, violinist Irani, drummer Juquinha—they all remained anonymous. They were all studio musicians, the veterans of thousands of recordings for which they had never received the slightest bit of credit. The omission of João Gilberto is inexplicable, because Elizeth’s record was released a few weeks after he had, literally, obtained the power to paralyze Odeon’s recording studio with his demands while recording his own single featuring “Chega de saudade”.

For João Gilberto, that was the problem with Canção do amor demais: the record was Elizeth’s, not his. Jobim’s arrangements were initially composed for him to play the guitar on five of the tracks: “Chega de saudade,” “Outra vez,” “Eu não existo sem você” (I Don’t Exist Without You), “Caminho de pedra” (Stone Road), and “Luciana.” But he was only given the chance to collaborate on the first two, besides providing backing vocals (along with his friend Walter Santos, whom he had chosen, and Jobim himself) on “Chega de saudade.” On the other three tracks, he was little more than an extra, and they didn’t need him for the eight tracks that remained.

Despite this fact, when Jobim and Vinícius met with Elizeth in Rua Nascimento Silva to teach her the songs, he made a point of showing up. He didn’t care for the reverence with which the Divine One treated the musical scores, as if they were parts of some sacred repertoire—perhaps because the lyrics were written by an important poet such as Vinícius. João wanted Elizeth to sing in a more lively way, especially in the sambas, and sometimes dared to proffer a suggestion or two. He showed her what he could do with “Chega de saudade,” slowing down and speeding up the rhythm in accordance with what he felt the lyrics needed, and tried to encourage her to do something similar. But Elizeth was not particularly interested in his advice, and clearly insisted that she did not need his suggestions.

João retreated into silence and began to participate less during rehearsals. Besides, Vinícius’s lyrics to “Serenata de adeus” (Goodbye Serenade) turned his stomach: “Ah, woman, resplendently shining star / Go, but before you leave / Tear out my heart / Drive your talons into my aching breast / And let all love and disillusion bleed to death.” He felt that music lyrics shouldn’t talk of blood, death, or daggers, and it nauseated him to imagine those fingernails clawing at chests and tearing out pulsing hearts. His records would have none of that.

Despite the good intentions of Jobim, who was trying to arrange a session for him at Odeon, there was no prospect of a record on the horizon; and at that time, João found himself once again with the same old problem: the landlady of the boarding house in Botafogo where he was staying had kicked him out and told him not to come back to fetch his suitcase until he had the money to pay her the rent he owed. His two roommates were unable to help him: Luís Roberto, of Os Cariocas, lived on credit, and Rômulo hadn’t yet become the wealthy coffee grower that he would be in later years in Minas Gerais—or he wouldn’t have been sharing a room in that cheap boarding house.

João Gilberto explained the situation to Tito Madi, whose heart was as soft as the grape leaves that his mother, who was of Lebanese extraction, used in her recipes. Tito lent him the money to pay his debt at the boarding house and recover his suitcase, and invited him to live with him in his apartment on Avenida Atlântica, at the intersection of Rua Miguel Lemos. The singer Luís Cláudio, a friend of Tito’s and now of João’s, lived nearby, on Rua Rainha Elizabeth. The three of them became like family, and were joined every now and again by a young man from Belo Horizonte who often came to Rio: Pacífico Mascarenhas, the student whom João had met in Diamantina at Dadainha’s house.

In Belo Horizonte, Pacífico headed a group of young men who were crazy about Dick Farney and who tried to produce a mixture of samba and jazz. The group called themselves Samba-Cana. Pacífico played a little piano and guitar, and had no money worries. At night, he and his friends kept Belo Horizonte awake, especially the smart neighborhoods, with fabulous serenades, which even included a piano mounted on a truck. The piano traveled in the truck with them, and needed to be retuned after each nightly performance. One of Pacífico’s friends, a student named Roberto Guimarães, had written a song called “Amor certinho” (Sure-Fire Love), which was the top hit in all their serenades.

Luís Cláudio and Pacífico were with João Gilberto when they ran into Carlos Drummond de Andrade in Avenida Rio Branco. Drummond, a great poet, worked close by at the Ministry of Education and had already become a kind of myth for many, but had still not even approached the national acclaim that he would later achieve. His poem “No meio do caminho” (In the Middle of the Road), written almost thirty years before, still induced hilarity among many literature professors who were nostalgic for the stony sonnets of Olavo Bilac. But his poetry was one of João Gilberto’s passions, and when he recognized Drummond, who was strolling bureaucratically along the sidewalk outside the Jornal do Brasil building, he threw himself at the latter, crying, “Master! Master!”

The poet was startled. He wasn’t used to such effusiveness from admirers and had never seen this guy in his life. João Gilberto wanted his autograph, but didn’t have the courage to actually ask for it, limiting himself to smiling at Drummond and mumbling in a fawning voice, “Master … Master …”

He handed Drummond a manila envelope he was carrying. It took the poet a while to figure out what he wanted, and, blushing conspicuously, he autographed it with turquoise ink. João Gilberto thanked him and let him go, all the while smiling and whispering “Master….” Minutes later, he walked into the Odeon office in the São Borja building and upon leaving, forgot the envelope there.

Anyone who succeeded in getting an autograph from Carlos Drummond de Andrade could do anything, especially make a record.

The temperature inside Columbia’s studio, in Praça Mauá, was close to zero. Not because the weather in Rio had gone crazy during that particular May of 1958, but because João Gilberto was going to sing for a man who acted as if he had neither the time nor the patience to listen to him: the current artistic director, Roberto Corte Real. It was the first time since 1952 that João Gilberto had stepped inside a real recording studio, with the expectation that they would allow him to make a record all of his own and in his way—without having to share the microphone with a vocal ensemble, or accompany rebellious singers. And he was desperate to make a record.

But in order for the record to become a reality, he needed to undergo a kind of test with Corte Real, whose stakes were now higher than ever: the man had launched Cauby Peixoto with “Conceição” and two years previously, in 1956, had discovered Maysa. João Gilberto might have been dying to make a record, but the prospect of being tested—and eventually rejected—by a guy from São Paulo, someone he didn’t even know, wasn’t exactly part of the plan he had for his life. Tom Jobim was trying to convince Odeon to record him, and he wanted to wait. He had only agreed to offer his talents to Columbia on the insistence of Luís Cláudio, who that same day was due to record Tito Madi’s “Olhe-me, diga-me” (Look at Me, Tell Me), and had managed to drag him there, telling him that this was his chance. Once his own recording was over, Luís Cláudio would take Corte Real into a corner of the studio and João Gilberto would sing something for him—”Bim-bom,” of course, or perhaps “Hô-ba-la-lá.”

Corte Real, like everyone in the record business, had heard Elizeth sing “Canção do amor demais,” but in somewhat of a rush, and had not been particularly impressed by the guitar that accompanied her. He agreed to hear João Gilberto as a favor to Luís Cláudio, a promising Columbia recording artist, and to Tito Madi, who had also spoken to him about the young man. He had almost no expectations. João Gilberto must have felt the chilly atmosphere and took it upon himself to make the temperature drop to glacial lows when he began to sing his little baião “Bim-bom” without the slightest bit of enthusiasm to “This is just my baião / And there’s nothing more to it …”

Corte Real listened to him attentively, smoothing his bow tie and—what a surprise—he actually liked it. However, perhaps because he had a conservative notion of what a baião was, he made the fatal mistake of remarking:

“Look, that’s very good, but it’s not a baião, and never will be. How about if in the verse that says ‘This is just my baião’, you substitute ‘This is just my song’ or something like that?”

João Gilberto didn’t openly agree or disagree with him, but it was right then that Columbia lost him. Hours later, in a nearby bar that the studio musicians called Minhoca Sorridente (The Smiling Earthworm), he remarked to someone, “I didn’t like that Corte Rayol one bit,” distractedly mispronouncing his last name.

When he emerged from the meeting with Corte Real, he bumped into Os Cariocas in the Columbia corridors. They were just about to go into the studio to record, believe it or not, “Chega de saudade.” They had learned the music with Luís Roberto, the group’s crooner, who in turn had learned it from João himself at the Botafogo boarding house. After hearing Elizeth’s record with João on guitar, they had decided to record it to escape the overbearing dictatorship of Columbia, which had been torturing them with boleros, rock ballads, and cover versions of songs by American vocal ensembles. But Badeco, Os Cariocas’s guitarist, had a problem: “I still haven’t figured out the beat, João.”

“Let me do it for you,” he offered.

He went in and recorded with them, incognito. “Chega de saudade,” performed by Os Cariocas, would only be released in the latter half of the year, after João Gilberto’s own record had already come out. But at that moment it was as if “Chega de saudade” had slipped through his fingers and become the property of everyone in the world except for him.

Tom Jobim was doing everything he could. At the beginning of the year, he had the idea of making a demo on which João Gilberto would sing “Chega de saudade,” to be shown to Aloysio de Oliveira. Russo do Pandeiro, João’s collaborating partner on “Você esteve com meu bem?” (Have You Been with My Sweetheart?) in 1953, still had the studio he had built with the proceeds from the sale of Rudolph Valentino’s house. The record was made there—at no charge, featuring João Gilberto and his guitar—and taken to Aloysio de Oliveira. However, the latter refused to be convinced. He was still of the opinion that singing well meant not dispensing with vibrato in a strong voice. His model was Dorival Caymmi singing “Maracangalha,” Odeon’s first big hit since he had become director. Additionally, his experience in the United States had taught him that singers with short-range voices may be the toast of intellectuals, but have no commercial value whatsoever.

But this time, Aloysio was pressured. André Midani persuaded him with the rationale that João Gilberto represented something that Brazilian music didn’t have: appeal for the younger generation. Jobim promised him that he would cut costs, they would record “Chega de saudade” using a simplified version of the arrangement he had written for Elizeth, without all those harps and French horns, and the other side, “Bim-bom,” would be cheaper still. He guaranteed him a record that was inexpensive and simple to produce. (Exactly what it ended up not being, but no one could have foreseen this.) On hearing all this, Ismael Corrêa, the sales director for the recording label, was emphatic with Aloysio: “Go ahead and make the recording, I’ll vouch for it.”

The final blow to Aloysio’s resistance, meanwhile, came from a pro-João Gilberto campaign supported by the Brazilian composer Aloysio most respected: Dorival Caymmi. The old Bahian had met João at Rádio Tupi, and liked him. It was Caymmi who took him to Aloysio’s apartment in Rua Toneleros—and, like everyone who allowed themselves to be taken in by João Gilberto’s powers of seduction, Aloysio was unable to resist. He not only bought the idea of making the 78 r.p.m., he told João and Jobim to do as they pleased in the Odeon recording studio.

Z. J. Merky, the authoritarian recording engineer, threw João Gilberto a dirty look through the glass partition when he asked for two microphones: one for himself and another for his guitar. Who had ever heard of such a thing? Odeon was very British in its control of assets and even more British (tight-fisted) in its control of costs. Debuting singers and unknowns had no right to luxuries. But Aloysio’s authority presided, and two microphones were found. However, Aloysio’s guarantee did not extend to personal conflict, and the first confrontation was between João Gilberto and the musicians. Recording live in the studio with the orchestra, without any playback, he interrupted take after take, purportedly detecting mistakes made by musicians, which no one else noticed, and forcing the entire orchestra to play the piece over. At times, he behaved almost as if everyone in the studio but him were tone-deaf.

Jobim’s arrangement was simple, but João asked for a four-man percussion section: Milton Banana on drums, Guarany on caixeta, Juquinha on the triangle, and Rubens Bassini on the bongos. While Vinícius’s lyrics talked about “abraços e beijinhos e carinhos sem ter fim” (endless embraces, kisses, and caresses), under their breath, the orchestra branded the singer a crazy man, and the latter declared that it was the orchestra who was trying to drive him mad. He had particular antipathy for an Argentine trumpet player named Catita. Following one of the innumerable interruptions, some of the musicians mutinied, put their instruments in their cases, and left, slamming the door behind them; when they agreed to return, the singer decided he didn’t want to record anymore. Tom Jobim didn’t know if he was supposed to be playing the piano, conducting the orchestra, or running around trying to keep the peace.

The second confrontation was between João Gilberto and the technicians. Accustomed to normal singers, who accounted for three tracks every four hours (the average recording rate on planet Earth), they couldn’t understand such maniacal perfectionism, which was turning the recording of a simple 78 r.p.m. into an endless Cuban soap opera. The upheaval was prolonged for days following the third and worst conflict, between João Gilberto and Jobim himself. In addition to his nitpicking and bickering with the musicians and technicians, João Gilberto’s complaints about the chords were elevating the tension between the two of them to the tautness of a violin string. One more accusation from either one of the two—like João Gilberto repeating yet again that Jobim “didn’t understand anything”—would mean the end of “Chega de saudade” and “Bim-bom.”

But it was in fact a deep and far-reaching insult by João Gilberto that ended up re-establishing a harmonious atmosphere: “Tom, you’re lazy—you’re Brazilian.” There was nothing else to do but laugh, and carry on to the end.

According to Milton Banana, the recording took “almost a month,” coincidentally, the same month (June 1958) that the Brazilian soccer team was playing in the World Cup in Sweden. Banana was exaggerating. What he probably meant to say was that it took a month for all the different stages to be finalized—Jobim writing the arrangements, João Gilberto rehearsing with him at home, the meetings between João Gilberto and Banana to coordinate guitar and percussion, rehearsals with the orchestra, and, finally, the recording itself. All in all, actual studio time probably wasn’t more than a few days, and not even Odeon had enough studios to allow one of them to be occupied for weeks on end by a singer whose commercial success seemed, at best, doubtful. The official recording date for “Chega de saudade” and “Bim-bom,” July 10, was merely the date on which the definitive takes were recorded.

After all that confusion, Odeon deprioritized the project, and realized that, when they thought about it, they had no idea how to categorize João Gilberto. He wasn’t exactly Anísio Silva (the recording company’s biggest seller); that was clear. But he wasn’t Lúcio Alves either, and Odeon only knew how to think in those terms. The record hit the Rio stores and radio stations in August, in a supplement that included, among other assorted absurdities, “Cachito” by Trio Irakitan, “Sayonara” by singer Lenita Bruno, and “Nel blu di pinto di blu” by violinist Fafá Lemos. That is to say, with no competition whatsoever.

But nothing happened with “Chega de saudade” or “Bim-bom” in the first few months following their release—not because João Gilberto was too different for the market’s tastes, but because no one was listening to it. (Sophisticated radio stations, like the Rio-based Tamoio or Eldorado, who were the first to discover it, didn’t count, according to IBOPE [The Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics]). But no other recording released at the time took off either, because the only thing that was played on the radio and through loudspeakers in stores was the victory anthem of the Brazilian soccer team in Sweden, “A Taça do Mundo é nossa” (The World Cup Is Ours), with the vocal ensemble Titulares do Ritmo (The Counts of Rhythm).

But sales director Ismael Corrêa, who after all was running the show and had pushed to make the recording, refused to be beaten. The record—whatever category it fell into—could take off. He waited two months, until people had gotten used to the idea that Brazil was the world soccer champion and came back down to earth, and prepared to play the last card in his hand: releasing the record in São Paulo. In 1958, São Paulo was already the main market and had the largest chain of record and electrical appliance stores in the country, Lojas Assumpção. With twenty-five branches, almost all of them in the city and within the wealthy interior of the state, the Lojas Assumpção alone were practically able to dictate the success or failure of a record, as long as it was well promoted. Additionally, they were the sponsors of the music show with the largest audience in São Paulo radio, Parada de sucessos (Hit Parade), aired daily on Rádio Excélsior-Nacional by disc jockey Hélio de Alencar, from eleven-thirty in the morning to noon. If Alencar liked a record, the record label had only to fire up the presses.

In 1958, Oswaldo Gurzoni was the influential director of sales at Odeon in São Paulo. He entered the Bossa Nova history books as the man who, on hearing the 78 r.p.m. with “Chega de saudade” and “Bim-bom,” had an apoplectic fit and smashed the record over his salesmen’s heads, shouting, “This is the shit they’re sending us from Rio!”

The story is a classic, and has been repeated over and over by all lazy researchers. It allows them to indulge in their favorite pastime, guessing at the past, and to expand upon how João Gilberto had to face the tanks and cannons of even his own army. Let us suppose, in the meantime, that things were a little different.

Ismael Corrêa sent a copy of the acetate record to Gurzoni with instructions from Aloysio that, in order to avoid a fiasco like the one in Rio, João Gilberto should be promoted in São Paulo with more zeal than usual. Gurzoni, who had heard of João Gilberto about as much as he had heard of Karlheinz Stockhausen, made a note of the message. He called together his marketing team and played the record in Odeon’s São Paulo studio in Rua General Jardim. On the suggestion of Gurzoni himself, Odeon had stopped designating A and B sides on record labels to encourage radio stations to play both sides. But on seeing the names of Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes attributed as the authors, he decided that “Chega de saudade” must be side A, and played it first.

When he listened to the record, he couldn’t understand why the label classified it as a samba-canção. If that was a samba-canção, then he was Pope Pius XII. The singer didn’t have a very strong voice, and he didn’t keep to the rhythm; and what kind of damn rhythm was that? He turned the record over and played “Bim-bom.” Another disappointment. The lyrics were silly and had no meaning; Aloysio must be crazy. Gurzoni didn’t smash the record. He merely bellowed his opinion, which was swiftly shared by the entire marketing team—except for one man, named Adail Lessa, who was very enthusiastic about João Gilberto. But they weren’t assembled there to express their personal likes or dislikes, and the message from Rio was clear: the record had to be submitted to all those little tricks that usually guaranteed success.

The first thing to do was to win over Álvaro Ramos, sales manager of Lojas Assumpção. If Ramos liked the record, that would be more than half the battle. It was from him that orders would come for all the Assumpção store clerks to employ an old series of tactics used to sell this or that record. One of those tactics, obviously, was to play the record all day long in the booths that looked out onto the street. If some passerby happened to withstand the onslaught and came into the store to buy another record that wasn’t X, the store clerk would start playing record X while he went into the back to look for the record that the customer had asked for. In most cases, the customer would take both. It was a matter of crossing one’s fingers and seeing what Ramos thought of it.

Gurzoni invited Ramos to have coffee with him, Lessa, and the rest of the Odeon marketing team. Years later, Ramos would admit that it might have been “somewhat unwillingly” that he left the central office of Lojas Assumpção, in Rua do Curtume, to go and listen to an amateur in Rua General Jardim. The traffic he encountered on the way did nothing to improve his mood. Gurzoni played “Chega de saudade” for him. Ramos felt as if he were being mocked. “Why do you record singers who’ve got a cold?,” he growled.

He didn’t bother waiting for the song to finish, and he never got to hear “Bim-bom.” He snatched the record off the turntable, shouted the famous line, “So this is the shit they’re sending us from Rio?”, and smashed it on the edge of the table. Gurzoni and Lessa froze.

Right then and there, the two of them began a campaign of indoctrination on Álvaro Ramos. Gurzoni didn’t really know what to say, but Lessa was masterful in his defense of the music that Ramos had refused to listen to. It was something different, modern, bold. Boring old squares would be up in arms, and this would cause a controversy that would attract a new type of audience. Young people would buy the record. Ramos thought for a minute. He didn’t mind for a second being called square, but he didn’t want to be accused of missing out on a good deal. And his business was to sell records, not music.

Gurzoni and Lessa felt that Ramos would work more enthusiastically if he liked the record at least a little. Without realizing what they were doing, they convinced him to allow them to introduce him to João Gilberto. They would bring the singer from Rio especially to meet him. Ramos agreed and arranged a lunch at his house that weekend. In Rio, Odeon located João Gilberto and put him on a train to São Paulo, where Lessa went to pick him up at the train station. As you can tell, life was somewhat simpler in those days—João Gilberto could be moved from position A to position B at a mere request.

The date and time of the lunch found them all face-to-face in that huge house in São Paulo: the buyer (Álvaro Ramos), the salesmen (Oswaldo Gurzoni and Adail Lessa), and the merchandise (João Gilberto). Dona Ignez, Álvaro’s wife, produced a mayonnaise and a stroganoff, which João Gilberto merely pushed around with his fork and pretended to take bites of, while making colorful remarks like “Why was electricity invented? Don’t we already have the sun?” In order to avoid Dona Ignez taking offense to his reaction to her culinary talents, Gurzoni and Lessa quickly turned the conversation to music, before some disparaging comment about the food was made. A guitar was produced, but João Gilberto didn’t sing “Chega de saudade” or “Bim-bom,” as expected. Instead, he sang, no less than four times, “Fibra de herói” (The Strength of a Hero), a choral piece composed in 1942 by long-hair maestro Guerra Peixe. Ramos was very impressed. When he was leaving, João Gilberto saw a child on the sidewalk in front of the house. He picked a rose from Dona Ignez’s garden, crossed the street and offered it to the child. If Gurzoni didn’t really understand what was going on, Álvaro Ramos’s state of mind can only be described as catatonic.

They were in the presence of either a madman or a genius—perhaps both, he thought. But the important thing was, by means of the stuffy “Fibra de herói,” João Gilberto had convinced him to sell “Chega de saudade” and “Bim-bom.” The disc set record sales levels in Lojas Assumpção that year.

The disc jockey Hélio de Alencar played the record on his show Parada de sucessos, and made known, over the microphone at Rádio Excélsior-Nacional, how it had been smashed in the Odeon office in São Paulo. But he didn’t say by whom. The story got out that the frenzied murderer of the record had been poor, dear Oswaldo Gurzoni. The latter let it lie, because he wasn’t trying to win a popularity contest, and because this would give the impression that João Gilberto was a singer who went against the flow (which, in fact, he did). It would be good for sales and, after all, the record was being aimed at the younger market. As we know, his strategy worked, and even today, Gurzoni still laughs at the terrible reputation he acquired because of Álvaro Ramos’s attitude.

The latter also thinks it’s funny, but makes no apology: “At the time, I really did think the singer had a cold.”

“Listen to this record, call Rádio Bandeirantes at 36-6331 or 36-8451, sing the tune, the lyrics, and the rhythm, and win ten albums!”

The record was “Chega de saudade” by João Gilberto, and the program was O pick-up do Picapau (Woodpecker’s Pick), which another disc jockey from São Paulo, Walter Silva, had debuted on Rádio Bandeirantes at the beginning of December. Dozens of listeners phoned in that day, trying to repeat what they had heard, but were rejected by conductor Erlon Chaves, who was present in the studio, after just the first few notes. A few already knew the lyrics by heart and others managed to passably sing the tune, but they all floundered at João Gilberto’s rhythm—it seemed impossible to imitate. Except for two listeners who managed to sing it perfectly. The first identified himself as Francisco Nepomuceno de Oliveira, who was, in fact, Chico, vocalist with the group Titulares do Ritmo. The second didn’t count: it was the compulsively accurate singer Agostinho dos Santos.

In the months that followed, “Chega de saudade” became the opening track for O pick-up do Picapau—much against the wishes of the station’s marketing director, Samir Razuk, according to Walter Silva. Bandeirantes was a popular station in São Paulo, with an audience that favored singers of questionable taste. But O pick-up do Picapau, due largely to the opinionated personality of Walter Silva, was gaining ground on the dial, and within three months, had 22 percent of the radio audience, overtaking Parada de sucessos. “Chega de saudade” remained uncontested on both programs. João Gilberto, known in Rio only within the music circle and in two or three apartments, became a mini-phenomenon to the São Paulo public.

It wasn’t exactly love at first sight for Paulistas. A few days after the lunch at Álvaro Ramos’s house, João Gilberto was one of the fifty Odeon artists who made an impromptu appearance at a benefit performance held in the old Piratininga theater in the Brás neighborhood. (The sound system was provided courtesy of the recording company.) The radio stations and stores still hadn’t started promoting the record, and it was expecting too much for the same audience that thrilled over the square Catarino and his orchestra to receive it enthusiastically. João Gilberto sang—or at least, started to sing—”Chega de saudade” and was, quite simply, booed off the stage.

This disastrous beginning did not prevent him from being behaving like a model of cooperation with Odeon and submitting to the humiliating promotional schedule needed to market the record. With Adail Lessa permanently riding his back in São Paulo and, later, in Rio, João Gilberto went to radio and TV stations, granted short interviews, sang live on shows like Oswaldo Sargentelli’s Viva meu samba (Long Live My Samba) on Rádio Mauá, and posed for photographs—all for the sake of “Chega de saudade.” It was all right, he’d do what they told him, but no one could force him to like it. He even commented to Luís Cláudio, “We could be the only ones on the radio, don’t you think, Luís? You, me, Tom and Vinícius …Without all that crap that infests it …”

Probably only God knew how difficult it was for him, but one of the most important performances in his schedule was his appearance on Programa Paulo Gracindo (Paulo Gracindo’s Show), one of TV Rio’s highest-rated variety shows on Sunday nights. A few years earlier, the ground floor of the TV Rio building, in Posto 6 in Copacabana, had housed the now closed Clube da Chave, where Jobim and Vinícius had met. Now it was a theater, and its seats were in high demand for Gracindo’s show. On the night on which João Gilberto made his appearance, there were other strong acts lined up. One of them was the first Brazilian rock ‘n’ roll group, Bolão e seus Rockettes. Another was a competition for dogs in fancy dress. It was between these two acts that João Gilberto sat on a stool and sang.

But it was worth it. The “Chega de saudade” 78 r.p.m. made the Radiolândia (Radioland) and Revista do Radio (Radio Magazine) music charts at the end of the year, fighting with Celly Campello singing, mind you, “Lacinhos cor-de-rosa” (Pink Shoelaces) for play time on the air.

You may not have liked them, but your maid adored them. Another Bahian, Anísio Silva, and a Pernambuco native, Orlando Dias, dominated the toothpick-legged Victrolas when João Gilberto came along. They were both thirty-five years old and were classified as sentimental singers, although Anísio Silva, whose hit was a brassy bolero entitled “Alguém me disse” (Someone Told Me) (revived by Gal Costa in 1990), seemed somewhat reserved compared to Orlando Dias. The latter, famous for being a widower, gave a really heartrending performance when he sang, and was capable of soaking a handkerchief the size of a tablecloth during “Perdoa-me pelo bem que te quero” (Forgive Me for How Much I Love You), another insufferable bolero. Both of them worked to promote their popularity in the cinemas, circuses, town squares, amusement parks, and barbecue restaurants in both the suburbs and rural zones. Both of them sold a minimum of one hundred thousand copies of each 78 r.p.m.—equivalent to one million today, given the number of victrolas in use. And they were both contracted by Odeon, João Gilberto’s recording label.

Sustained by the six-figure sales numbers of Anísio Silva and Orlando Dias, Odeon was able to allow itself the luxury of keeping classy acts like Lúcio Alves and Sylvinha Telles on their books in order to acquire greater prestige. In 1958, Lúcio’s career was at a crossroads. In just a few years, since the days of the “singer of the little masses,” he had become too old for the younger audience, while continuing to seem too modern to old squares. Despite his phenomenal talent, he was at risk of being remembered for a powdered milk commercial, which he had recorded in 1956 (“The Mococa cow / Is asking / Moooooo …”), rather than for the way he influenced an entire brilliant generation of vocal ensemble singers and arrangers. Nor did Sylvinha appear to be cut out to please the proletariat. She was an extremely polished singer whose repertoire only included songs of the highest caliber, and she did not suffer from occasional vocal exhalations like Dolores or Maysa.

According to the books at Odeon, Lúcio sold no more than five thousand records, and Sylvinha barely ten thousand; but the London head office of the recording company felt that those numbers were reasonable, given that the Brazilian branch did not employ more prestigious singers.

João Gilberto had everything he needed to be included in that category. But with the launch in São Paulo and his subsequent discovery in the Rio market, “Chega de saudade” sold fifteen thousand 78 r.p.m.s from August to December 1958. Odeon still didn’t know that that minute and fifty-nine seconds of music, which had been hell to record, would be expanded, in January and February 1959, into an album entitled Chega de saudade that would sell, right off the bat, thirty-five thousand copies—and that, by André Midani’s 1990 calculations, would eventually pass the five hundred thousand copies-sold mark in Brazil alone. Odeon also didn’t realize that the music contained therein would, quite simply, change everything.

When the 78 r.p.m. with “Chega de saudade” came off the press, jet black and lustrous, João Gilberto took it in person to Lúcio Alves. His action can be attributed as courtesy to an old friend, but also as an example of the eager desire for approval from the man who had been his model. What did João Gilberto secretly want to hear? Probably a few gasps of admiration from Lúcio, when the latter realized that the new, modern sound that so many of his peers had sought after for so long had finally been pulled together by João in that record. João knocked on the door of Lúcio’s apartment in Copacabana, and wanted to put the record on the turntable right away.

“Chega de saudade” started playing, but instead of delicate flutes and string instruments, what they heard was the sinister roar of engines, five floors below, with vrooooms fit to make the building shake. Lúcio’s apartment, on the corner of Rua Raul Pompéia and Rua Francisco Sá, in Posto 6, was located above the Snack Bar, the meeting place for neighborhood rockers, like Carlos Imperial, and a wild gang led by young Erasmo Carlos and Tim Maia. With nothing else to do but get into fights and discuss the creation of a rock group that they would name The Snakes, the boys entertained themselves by revving the engines of their parked Lambrettas, making it impossible for good Christian folk in the neighborhood to listen to music in a civilized fashion. Any music, much less “Chega de saudade.”

It was irritating, and João Gilberto began to feel desperate. Lúcio decided to retaliate, in a manner that his family in gentle Cataguazes, Minas Gerais, would not have approved of, but that proved to be the only way to restore peace in the block: dropping harmless but noisy firecrackers on the rabble below. The first explosions startled the rockers, and the following ones caused havoc worthy of The Wild One, but as they didn’t know where the missiles were coming from, the punks were unable to retaliate. João Gilberto enjoyed the game tremendously, and behaved like a child, throwing the little bombs on the louts. When they finally gave in and scattered, João Gilberto was able to play his record for Lúcio Alves.

Lúcio listened to it attentively and sarcastically declared, “This is it, João. You’ve made it.”

Was his attitude somewhat cold? Not really. Lúcio wasn’t being intentionally mean—because, after all, he thought the record was very good—but nothing about it really gave him cause for revelation. Of course, the one thing that was different about it was that João had gotten rid of the dramatic inflections and depth of voice typical of Orlando Silva (or of Lúcio himself). João was now “singing softly,” like Jonas Silva and the American singers that he, João, used to listen to at the Murray in 1950. That guitar beat vaguely reminded Lúcio of Donato’s accordion and Johnny Alf’s piano, although it seemed more organized and compact than the sounds that had emerged from those late-night jam sessions at the Plaza nightclub in 1954. And the percussion section wasn’t as overwhelming as before.

If there was one thing about the new João Gilberto that impressed him, it was his new-found ability to divide musical phrases—praise which, coming from Lúcio Alves, should have been cherished, considering that a different division, one that was full of surprises, was the great specialty of the former Namorado da Lua. João Gilberto had indeed made it, and he knew what Lúcio meant.

Another old friend, João Donato, was caught by surprise, but for different reasons. Soon after “Chega de saudade” was recorded, André Midani was in his office at Odeon with João Gilberto when Donato stuck his Brylcreemed head round the door and shouted, “Ah-ha! So, Brazil’s greatest singer has finally made a record!”

João Gilberto leaped out of his chair as if he’d been ejected from it and tore out of the room, just like in a cartoon, causing a small whirlwind as he rushed past Donato. The latter gave a wicked giggle. Apparently, João had tried—and succeeded—in recording without Donato knowing. He would die if Donato thought he was singing “nyah nyah nyah-nyah nyahs.”

In 1958, at the age of twenty-four, João Donato behaved in the same way he had when at fifteen, still wearing shorts, he frequented the fan clubs of all his idols without feeling that he really belonged to any particular one. Only now, he was doing it professionally. With Johnny Alf’s departure to São Paulo in 1955, he had become perhaps the most respected musician in Rio. And, unfortunately, the least trustworthy. He was widely touted as someone who could hit the right chord even if he was surrounded by Flamengo fans celebrating their three-time soccer championship. The problem was that he gave the impression that he actually preferred to work under those kinds of conditions.

His accordion reigned supreme, but from 1954 on, he started to concentrate on piano also and later would take up the trombone, with which he hoped one day to overshadow his idol Frank Rosolino, Stan Kenton’s trombonist. If he was considered flighty for not settling on playing a single instrument, the genres of music he favored drove people even more crazy. João favored, quite simply, all types; it was a miracle he hadn’t invented something like the “fox-baião.” And he had no desire to adjust his repertoire to suit his audience.

From 1950 to 1958, Donato made appearances at dozens of jam sessions in clubs like Tatuís and Copagolf; he played rancheiras (a kind of Brazilian country music) on the show Manhã na roça (Morning in the Cornfield) on Rádio Guanabara; he played locally with master flutist Altamiro Carrilho and with the conductor Copinha’s orchestra; he spent brief periods in São Paulo, in places like the new Baiúca in Praça Roosevelt and down-market places like the dance club Cubadanças; back in Rio, he joined organist Djalma Ferreira’s combo at the Drink nightclub, that of Fafá Lemos at the Monte Carlo, and that of Ed Lincoln at the Plaza; he accompanied Vanja Orico in the Golden Room of the Copacabana Palace and several other singers in rooms that were far less golden; he played carnival dances at a place called Ranchinho do Alvarenga (Alvarenga’s Little Lodge) in Posto 6 in 1957; and he played at all kinds of dance events, even at debutante balls and proms.

After all, it was a living. But it didn’t matter what he played, because whatever the genre of music, Donato played for himself. Because of this, he drove double bass players and percussionists crazy, because they were unable to accompany him. His unsurpassed infatuation with Kenton made it difficult for him to be understood, which in turn caused problems with the awkward combos with which he was forced to play. It’s hardly surprising that he felt much more at ease playing in jam sessions, when he could get together with other musicians who were tuned to the same frequency—like at saxophonist Paulo Moura’s house in Tijuca, where he drank innocent guaraná, or at the home of the industrialist Everardo Magalhães Castro, in Leblon, where he drank Scotch. And especially during late nights at the Plaza, after the tiresome paying customers had gone home and only the musicians were left, playing and singing for one another for free.

It wasn’t as if Donato, contrary to most of his colleagues, experienced many financial difficulties. By all accounts, he had managed to convince his father that he was a lost cause and had softened him up, because he continued living at home with his family in Tijuca and never lacked a roof over his head, food, or clean clothes. This allowed him to become the most well-rested professional in Rio nightlife, at a time when young men like Baden Powell ran from one Copacabana nightclub to another with their guitars, trying to get in to play somewhere in order to earn enough money for their return fare to the suburbs.

It was a shame that the erratic nature of his career prevented him from settling in one place and establishing the kind of success for himself that was consistent with the reputation he had acquired among his colleagues. But it was even worse that perhaps thousands of his innovations as a musician were lost at those foolish dances, or at graduation parties where nobody was paying any attention. Almost nothing he played during that time in his life found its way into a record, and even became difficult to find second-hand. Paulo Serrano, the owner of Sinter, did everything he could, in his own way. In 1953, the year Donato recorded “Eu quero um samba” (I Want a Samba) with Os Namorados, Serrano convinced him to make an instrumental record of the song “Invitation,” by Bronislau Kaper, which was heard, amid sobs, on screen in the film Invitation, a Metro tearjerker starring Dorothy McGuire and the suave Van Johnson. Donato picked up his accordion and said:

“OK. Where’s the sheet music?”

“What sheet music?” replied Serrano. “Go to the movie theater and see the film.”

Donato went to the Metro-Passeio, in Cinelándia, and stayed for three consecutive showings of Invitation. During the second showing, he was no longer moved by the drama of the dying Dorothy being courted by the pious Van, who was paid to do so by her father. Ladies in the audience would dissolve into tears by his side, while Donato closed his eyes to hear “Invitation.” By the third showing, he was bursting with laughter at Van’s shameless role.

He learned the song and recorded the 78 r.p.m. (with “Tenderly” on the other side), producing that combination of accordion and clarinet that he had heard on Ernie Felice’s records. The end result was exceptional, not because it was a nineteen-year-old Brazilian musician, but because Ernie Felice himself could not have done any better. What happened to the record from there? Nothing. His friends, which included João Gilberto, Johnny Alf, Badeco, and a few other lucky people heard it. They were amazed, but their opinion was not shared by the masses.

In 1954, Paulo Serrano dragged Donato into the studio once again, this time to record his trio, preferably a piece of Brazilian music. Donato swapped his accordion for the piano and on one side played “Se acaso você chegasse” (If by Chance You Arrive), by Lupicínio Rodrigues, with an authoritarian air that must have frightened more than one professional pianist. Taking advantage of Paulo Serrano’s momentary distraction, on the flip side he recorded a song entitled “Long Ago and Far Away” by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin. Once again, the masses weren’t particularly moved. In 1956, Odeon allowed him to record an entire ten-inch album, “Chá dançante” (Tea-Time Dancing Party), produced by Jobim. But going by the record’s content (“Farinhada” [Manioc Flour Manufacturing], “Comigo é assim” [It’s Like That with Me] and “Peguei um ita no norte” [I Boarded a Ship in the North]), the tea must have been made of night-shade and the dance had to have been a forró. Donato must have concluded then and there that those records were a waste of time, because from that point on until the end of the decade, he only went into studios for the sole purpose of giving João Gilberto a fright.

That is, except for one occasion, and that happened when he recorded two tracks (this time playing the trombone) on the album Dance conosco (Dance with Us), released by Copacabana in 1958. It was a record with a dreadful cover and title that had nothing to do with the great music recorded on it. The tracks were a fantastic mambo, modestly entitled “Mambinho” (Little Mambo), and an instrumental version of his and João Gilberto’s samba, “Minha saudade” (My Saudade). His arrangements were so surprising that many people began to ask how many cards Donato had up his sleeves, should he decide to keep them rolled up.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t work hard, when he did work, that is. But at the same time he was developing as an instrumentalist and arranger, he was also living up to his reputation as a crazy and irresponsible person, and all for the same old reasons: absences, tardiness, and an excess of additives. Bebop musicians also had the same image, but for some unknown reason it was more noticeable in the West Coast jazz players. The same thing happened with Donato, who probably wasn’t any crazier than the others, like the great trombonist Ed Maciel, or João Gilberto himself. Donato’s dubious fame reached its peak when he worked with Copinha’s orchestra at the Copacabana Palace. His tardiness was so frequent that, had the conductor docked his pay for each time he showed up late, Donato would have been in the red by the end of the month. So, instead of firing him (which any insensitive conductor would have done with any normal musician), Copinha found the perfect solution: for every two occasions on which Donato was late, only one was deducted from his salary. His colleagues adored him, because his fines were thrown into a collection box and then evenly distributed among the other musicians. Copinha wouldn’t make do without his accordion, even if only on rare and happy occasions.

Donato himself decided to give up the accordion to concentrate on piano, and merely played the trombone as a hobby. The story goes that he could no longer stand to drag his accordion around the nightclub circuit because this obliged him to avoid having a last drink, for fear of leaving it someplace. On one of those nights, he left the accordion in an unlocked car and it was stolen. He felt no compulsion to buy another and, as there was a piano in every nightclub he worked in, the dilemma was solved.

Donato might also have recounted that he stopped playing the accordion because he had exhausted the instrument’s possibilities, while the piano seemed to be an endless source of harmonic possibilities. And he wanted to be able to explore them, if he had somewhere to do so. He was becoming a musician whose head was somewhere up on the jazz map, but whose feet were firmly planted in the Caribbean, and whose hands had no preference for the music from any particular Brazilian region, contrary to the urban Rio thing his colleagues were into. This, as well as his reputation for being unreliable, began to shrink the market in which he was able to work to the size of a thimble. In 1959, no one wanted to hire him, and he even started finding it hard to be able to play for free at four in the morning.

His former colleague in Os Namorados, the guitarist Nanai, was working in Mexico and invited him to meet him in California for a two-week vacation. He went, and ended up staying for the next thirteen years.

10

“Desafinado” (Off-Key)

The proofreader was off-key: Newton Mendonça becomes “Milton”

Charlton Heston descending Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments under his arm—that was more or less the feeling that those who listened to João Gilberto sing “Chega de saudade” (No More Blues) for the first time got. Even those who already thought Jobim was modern, after the release of “Foi a noite” (It Was the Night) and “Se todos fossem iguais a você” (Someone to Light up My Life) got a shock. In less than two minutes, these two great songs became as outdated as “Ninguém me ama” (Nobody Loves Me)—relics of the noir romanticism of older men, who had lovers, not girlfriends, and whose souls were as stale and smoke-filled as the nightclubs in which they drowned their cuckolded sorrows. “Chega de saudade,” as was later eloquently described by conductor Rogério Duprat, was a “a kick up the backside to the bolero era.” João Gilberto’s new way of singing and playing guitar cast a ray of sunshine over everything, much more so than Dick Farney’s “Copacabana,” which had been released twelve years before. (Only twelve years, yet it felt like it had been when pterodactyls were still flying around.)

“Chega de saudade” offered, for the first time, a mirror to the narcissistic youth. The kids could see themselves in that music, as clearly as in the waters at Ipanema, which were much clearer than those at Copacabana. It was unknown at the time, but later it would be discovered that no other Brazilian record would awaken the desire in so many young people to sing, compose, or play an instrument, specifically, the guitar. And at the same time, it also put an end to the infernal national obsession with the accordion.

It seems hard to believe today, but that instrument dominated all facets of daily life. And what was even worse, it wasn’t the kind of accordion played by subtle masters like Chiquinho or Sivuca, and far less that of Donato—but the countrified accordion playing of Luís Gonzaga, Zé Gonzaga, Velho Januário, Mário Zan, Dilu Melo, Adelaide Chiozzo, Lurdinha Maia, Mário Gennari Filho, and Pedro Raimundo, adding up to a festival of rancheiras and xaxados that appeared to have transformed Brazil into a permanent June hoedown. And, destroying the myth that this was a phenomenon particular to cities in the rural regions, Mário Mascarenhas was threatening to put the best Brazilian musical talents to accordion music.

Mascarenhas was a gaucho based in Rio and virtually monopolized the manufacture of the instrument in the country. He not only manufactured accordions by the thousands at his factory in Caxias do Sul, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, but also ran a network of “academies” in most of the state capitals. In the fifties, youngsters who were in any way rebellious, those who answered back, or those who risked flunking their exams in school had to study with Mário Mascarenhas as punishment. At the end of every year, he would promote a fearsome concert of “one thousand accordions” at the Teatro Municipal, gathering together all his students, teachers, and former students from the innumerable groups he had formed. (In 1960, he boasted that he had taught twenty-five thousand accordionists.) Mascarenhas’s popularity among Rio families wasn’t shaken even when his beautiful wife, Conchita, left him in 1956, claiming that he made her dress in “lascivious outfits”—Salomé, The Queen of Sheba, and even the Merry Widow—at their sacred retreat. It was a gas, but for society’s peace of mind, she returned home and afterward claimed that it was all a misunderstanding, although photographs of Conchita in those “lascivious outfits” appeared in the magazine Revista do Rádio and were a huge hit among her husband’s students.

Among the one thousand young accordion players in the 1957 class at the Teatro Municipal were none other than Marcos Valle, Francis Hime, Eumir Deodato, Edu Lobo, Ugo Marotta, and Carlos Alberto Pingarilho, all aged between fourteen and seventeen—and all hating being there. Marotta later became the vibraphonist for Roberto Menescal’s band (another former student of Mário Mascarenhas) and then turned himself into a much-sought-after arranger. Pingarilho also managed to survive the accordion and composed “Samba da pergunta” (The Question’s Samba) with Marcos Vasconcellos. But at the graduation party of 1957, the musical future of those young men appeared to reside in the bellows of what American humorist Ambrose Bierce called “an instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.”

In 1958, a common obsession united those young men: to free themselves from the accordion and take up the guitar, which, incidentally, would make them much more popular with girls. They all believed that their chances with members of the opposite sex would increase if they could only duplicate what they heard on certain records that they played until they wore out: “Dans mon Óle” (On My Island) by the Frenchman Henri Salvador (which Caetano Veloso, who was of the same generation, would record thirty years later); the sensual and sultry “Fever” by Peggy Lee (of which Norma Bengell would do a fabulous cover version on her album Ooooooh! Norma in 1959); and, by general consensus, “Cry Me a River” by Julie London (but only because of Barney Kessel’s guitar).

All of these songs were foreign, but what choice did they have? It was what was young and modern, and in their minds no one was doing anything comparable in Brazil—until they were introduced to João Gilberto singing “Chega de saudade.” From that moment on, their lives were never the same again.

Right before the 78 r.p.m. with “Chega de saudade” hit the radio stations—before the record had even been released—spools of tape containing the voice and guitar of João Gilberto were already making the rounds of Copacabana and Ipanema. “Making the rounds” is a figure of speech. Few people owned tape recorders in those precassette days, which restricted the tape’s audience to the friends of someone who owned a recorder. One of those tapes had been recorded by the photographer Chico Pereira, who fortunately was a man with lots of friends; another, by the singer Luís Cláudio. On almost all of them, João Gilberto sang “Bim-bom,” “Hô-ba-la-lá,” “Aos pés da cruz” (At the Foot of the Cross), “Chega de saudade,” and other songs he never recorded on disc, like “Louco” (Madman) by Henrique de Almeida and Wilson Batista, and “Barquinho de papel” (Little Paper Boat) by Carlinhos Lyra.

Several youngsters got hold of those tapes by chance, and from that moment on, sat up all night thinking about his guitar beat. Most of them swore not to rest until they had managed to duplicate what they called “that beat.” One of them (it could have been anyone) was the accordion novice Pingarilho, who was seventeen. He heard the tape at his neighbor Luís Cláudio’s apartment in Rua Rainha Elizabeth, and pestered the singer until the latter, who was a good guitarist, taught him how to play “that beat.” In order to do this, Pingarilho all but moved into Luís Cláudio’s apartment, hoping that at any moment his friend João Gilberto might walk in the door carrying his guitar. But João Gilberto, whose radar appeared to be tuned to such things, never turned up while he was there.

Other youngsters heard the beat for the first time at Menescal and Lyra’s academy, which was then located in Rua Cinco de Julho, ever since the condom incident. (Despite the scandal, the student body continued to be predominantly female.) “In fact, we didn’t really teach guitar,” Menescal would later remark. “We taught João Gilberto’s beat. No one came out of there trained as a soloist.” Together with the beat that Lyra and Menescal taught came the songs they used to illustrate it: the repertoires of Jobim and Vinícius, Jobim and Newton Mendonça, Tito Madi, Luiz Bonfá, Garoto, and the first songs written by Lyra, Oscar, and Chico Feitosa. (Menescal still did not attempt to compose, he said he preferred fishing.) After all, for a handful of youngsters from Rio, the asyet-unpublished and invisible João Gilberto was already a voice, or at least a guitar beat.

It was then, around the summer of 1958, that Canção do amor demais (Song for an Excessive Love), with Elizeth, was released. Those few youngsters were the only ones to recognize that on at least two of the tracks, “Chega de saudade” and “Outra vez” (One More Time), Elizeth’s Prussian ‘r’s were backed by that revolutionary guitar. Months later, the real “Chega de saudade,” by João Gilberto, was released. They were already familiar with “that beat,” but now they had the records. They could practice at home, listening to them day and night. And the records—breakable but portable—began to circulate at the speed of light among Rio high schools and universities, from the Mallet Soares school to the Mello e Souza, from the College of Architecture, in Praia Vermelha, to the PUC (Pontificial Catholic University) in Gávea. Never had so many classes been skipped. Girls and boys threw parties and gatherings just to listen to João Gilberto. When the record was being played, nobody spoke. Every beat echoed in church-like silence, and the rhythm and harmony were meticulously dissected.

For the first time, it became unthinkable to hold these parties without a guitar, a formerly accursed instrument. Whoever learned the new harmonies taught them to the others rather than keeping them for themselves, as was apparently commonplace among the previous generation. Learning that beat became an obsession in Rio, and to play any other way was considered square. Those who didn’t play the guitar had to make do with singing, but as long as they could manage to do a passable imitation of João Gilberto, they were guaranteed them some leeway with the girls. Those with the most finely tuned ears began to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. They began to perceive vestiges of those sounds in previous records, such as Sylvinha Telles’s album Carícia (Caress); Tito Madi’s 78 r.p.m. “Menina Moça” (Girl); and in some of the recordings by Os Cariocas. The name Jobim appeared on the “Chega de saudade” label, as well as on that of Orfeu da Conceição (Black Orpheus), and in half the songs on Carícia. The kids were taking this all in.

Described thus, it sounds like a huge crowd of people had their ears tuned to the record. But it was only a small crowd. There was no communication between the groups, and anyone could consider him- or herself the exclusive owner of “Chega de saudade,” already a cult classic. The fans needed to organize an event that would gather them all together and prove that even though there weren’t very many of them, they weren’t alone.

During the first half of 1958, for example, young Moysés Fuks was the editor of Tablóide UH, a daily section containing assorted information on show business, of the newspaper Última Hora. Reporter Chico Feitosa and apprentice Nara Leão worked (a figure of speech) side-by-side in the editorial room in Praça da Bandeira. Ronaldo Bôscoli, then with Manchete Esportiva magazine, became a collaborator and wrote an all-purpose column, which covered soccer, popular music, and assorted news. Being editor of the section was easy for Fuks. What was hard was also being the artistic director for the Grupo Universitário Hebraico do Brasil (University Hebrew Group of Brazil), an association of Jewish students in Flamengo. One of his tasks in the group was to organize nights of musical events for the members that did not include the compulsory “Hava Nagila,” a traditional Jewish folk song that would shortly become a huge hit for Chubby Checker. But the Hebrew Group did not have the money to hire either famous or little-known entertainers and did not yet possess sufficient talent to guarantee a varied weekly program like that of the Tatuís club, much less for free.

But one of Fuks’s sisters was a student at Menescal and Lyra’s academy. Hearing her practice at home, he got to hear the gang’s songs firsthand: “Lobo bobo” (Foolish Wolf), “Sente” (Feel), “Se é tarde me perdoa” (Forgive Me if It’s Too Late), “Não faz assim” (Don’t Do That), and “Maria Ninguém” (Maria Nobody). He then heard them again, sung by Feitosa, Normando, and Nara, as well as Menescal and Lyra, at Nara’s apartment and at Aná and Lu’s house. Fuks got excited about the group and offered Bôscoli the University Hebrew Group’s auditorium for a concert. He didn’t need to ask twice. He merely suggested they include someone “who had made a name of sorts.”

Bôscoli immediately thought of João Gilberto, but he was not available. Sylvinha Telles was chosen. Despite being a professional, having recorded an album, and even having been a TV star, she considered herself “one of the gang” and knew their repertoire by heart. Feitosa, Nara, Lyra, and Normando would sing back-up vocals, accompanied by Menescal on the guitar; Luizinho Eça on piano; Bebeto on alto sax; an American boy who lived in Rio, named Bill Horn, on French horn; Henrique Montes on double bass; and João Mário on drums. Bôscoli would emcee the show.

Fuks drafted the program for what would be performed that night and then had it mimeographed and mailed to all the members. He promised “a bossa nova evening.” No copies of that program are in existence today, nor does Fuks remember why he used that expression to describe the content of the show, but he swears it wasn’t whispered to him by a prophet from the Old Testament. The word bossa, at least, was far from new, having been used by musicians since the days of yore to define someone who played or sang differently. Veteran singer Cyro Monteiro, for example, had a lot of bossa. In 1932, Noel Rosa used the word in a samba (“Coisas Nossas” [Our Specialties]), which went O samba, a prontidão e outras bossas / São nossas coisas, são coisas nossas (Samba, empty pockets and other bossas / Are our specialties, are our specialties). In the forties, the guitarist Garoto headed a group called Clube da Bossa (Bossa Club), which included his friend, songwriter Valzinho. Long after the expression bossa nova was already in use and practically included in dictionary listings, columnist Sérgio Porto (for a long time, a fierce adversary of the new music) casually attributed himself as its adoptive parent, alleging to have heard it from a shoeshine boy commenting on his laceless shoes—”Bossa nova, eh, doctor?”—and to have begun to use the expression himself.

The origin of the expression has never been completely clarified, and more paper and ink has been wasted on the controversy than it really deserves. The fact is that the two hundred or so people who went to the sold-out Grupo Hebraico show (at least eighty people couldn’t get in and listened to the show from outside) were greeted upon arrival with a blackboard upon which could be read, written in chalk by a secretary, “Performing today, Sylvinha Telles and a bossa nova group.” Not a Bossa Nova group, mind you, which would indicate that, at least until that night, bossa nova was merely a lowercase adjective, not the name of a musical movement. (The secretary who wrote on the blackboard was never identified.)

The University Hebrew Group was domiciled in a large two-story house in the narrow Rua Fernando Osório in Flamengo, which would later house the Ch. N. Bialik Library. It had two mini-auditoriums, one on each floor, and the show was performed on the ground floor. There weren’t enough chairs for everyone. Half the audience stood, fighting for space with the enormous upright fans, or sat on the zebra-striped carpet. Contrary to what would happen at future bossa nova shows, no one photographed or recorded what was played that night, much to the relief of some of its extremely nervous performers. Carlinhos Lyra, for example, sang with his back practically to the audience, too scared to actually look at them. Nara Leão trembled so much that Ronaldo Bôscoli had to hold her microphone; it was the first time she had used one. But the impact on the audience made by that strange combination of samba and jazz (Johnny Alf’s “Rapaz de bem” [Nice Guy], performed by Lyra, received the most applause) was so great that no one noticed the precarious tuning of some of the singers, or the lack of confidence of some of the musicians. More insecurity than usual abounded because, except for Sylvinha and young veterans like Eça and Menescal, no one there had ever performed on stage, or for more than ten people.

The boys also liked the expression bossa nova, which described that new guitar beat well. They felt that something would come out of all this. Up until then, it hadn’t been a musical movement. Now it was becoming one. And months later, when Tom Jobim and Newton Mendonça dubbed their music bossa nova, they thought it was the most natural thing in the world.

Newton Mendonça and his collaborating partner, Tom Jobim, were in hysterics in Mendonça’s tiny apartment in Rua Prudente de Moraes in Ipanema in the second half of 1958. Laughing on the job was not a common occurrence between the two, who had only recently begun getting together on Monday nights to compose, when Mendonça had the evening off from the nightclub where he still worked as a pianist. Normally they were serious, almost somber, as they took turns at the piano and writing their compositions. After all, the samba-canções they produced—”Foi a noite” (It Was the Night), “Caminhos cruzados” (Crossroads), “Meditação” (Meditation)—were serious, and at least one of them, “Só saudade” (Only Saudade) was so grievous that stores should have provided a handkerchief with each record they sold. A few days before, they were so immersed in their work that when Cyrene, Mendonça’s wife, made a lighthearted comment about how dirty the piano keys were and wanted to wipe them down with a slice of bread soaked in alcohol, they all but drove her away.

“Cyrene, what do I care about how dirty the keys are?” roared Jobim. “All I care about are chords and harmonies.”

That night, however, the usual fiery combination of Antarctica beer and Georges Aubert cognac was being fueled by the hilarious comments by Jobim and Newton regarding the incompetence of most of the Rio evening singers whom they sometimes had to accompany. Almost none of those singers got any points for being in tune, at least to the ears of Jobim and Mendonça, but for them, the ultimate lost cause was Lélio Gonçalves, a swarthy character with a boxer’s nose and only one hand, a fact which he hid by wearing gloves. The few people who remember Lélio from his days as a crooner in the Rio nightclubs during the fifties confirm that he was indeed painfully off-key.

The idea that reduced Jobim and Mendonça to helpless tears of laughter was cruelly inspired by singers like Lélio Gonçalves: they would compose a samba that defended those who sang off-key, but would make it so complicated and so full of key traps that it would leave the singer in complete distress. This samba would probably never be more than an inside joke, which no one would understand or be interested in recording. But it would be amusing to do, and so the two of them filled their glasses and rolled up their sleeves. Newton sat down at the piano and Tom sharpened his pencil. Notes and words flew from the piano keys to the pages of the notebook, while Cyrene served them with beer and the three of them laughed like mad. Occasionally, Jobim and Mendonça switched places and they took turns at wielding the pencil. When they got stuck, whoever was standing bent over the piano and proposed a solution. In just a few hours—except for the introduction, which Jobim would write later without Mendonça’s help, and the respective lyrics, which would be written by Ronaldo Bôscoli (uncredited)—”Desafinado” (Off-Key) was ready.

The song came out much better than they had hoped. It wasn’t merely an inside joke, but could also be a humorous samba with certain commercial possibilities . It depended on whom the music was aimed at. “Desafinado” was just a bit of fun, both the music and the lyrics, especially the verse that made them laugh the most when Jobim suggested it: “Fotografei você na minha Rolleiflex” (I took your picture with my Rolleiflex), a reference to the classic German camera, the best available at the time. And to add just a pinch of provocation, they made reference to the “in” phrase of the moment among Ronaldo Bôscoli’s kids, and wrote: “Isto é Bossa Nova, isto é muito natural” (This is Bossa Nova, this is very natural).

It was a song intended to be sung by someone who didn’t take himself too seriously. The first person they thought of was Ivon Curi, a funny Brazilian version of the French chansonnier Jean Sablon. Curi fit the image perfectly and used to sell lots of records. At that time, he had five hits on the charts, the kind of achievement that Jobim and Mendonça weren’t used to.

But if that were the case, reasoned Tom, why not offer the song straight off to César de Alencar? On the air for fourteen years, his auditorium show on Rádio Nacional continued to enthuse housewives, domestic employees, and fans by the thousands on Saturday afternoons. If anyone were to call him a singer, Alencar would burst out laughing, but he recorded every year for Carnival, and any sound he produced over the microphone was a hit. Sung by him, “Desafinado” could become a gold mine. Mendonça wasn’t very enthusiastic about the idea. He preferred Ivon, who, despite being funny at times without really meaning to, was a good singer.

Surprisingly, Jobim did in fact go to César de Alencar’s house to show him the song. The disc jockey, fanning himself with a copy of Revista do Rádio, listened to it with interest, but didn’t think it was really his “thing.” As for Ivon Curi, Jobim and Mendonça ran into him by chance at the Posto 5 nightclub a few days later. They showed him “Desafinado,” and Mendonça asked him, “Don’t you think it fits well with your style, Ivon?”

Ivon didn’t really think so. He was courteous enough to praise the song, but privately he thought it was somewhat off-the-wall—and what on earth was all that about Rolleiflex? Even if he had loved it, he had just finished making a record and wasn’t about to jump into recording another.

Some days later, at Jobim’s apartment, three other singers heard “Desafinado” at the same gathering. Two of them wanted to record it: Lúcio Alves and Luís Cláudio. The third actually did record it, in November of that year: João Gilberto, who shoved the others aside shouting “It’s mine!”—and got it.

João Gilberto couldn’t believe it when he looked out of the window and saw the moving van parked outside the main entrance to Tito Madi’s building. Within a few minutes, three solidly built men entered the apartment and started packing up Tito’s furniture, and had João Gilberto not quickly ducked out of the way, they would have packed him up, too. Madi was carrying out his threat of moving out of his apartment in Avenida Atlântica, if he, João, refused to leave. Five months after inviting him to stay, Tito decided he’d rather be alone. He had already asked him twice to leave, and João had pretended not to understand. Tito felt as if his space no longer belonged to him, because João was continually hosting friends from São Paulo, whom he had gotten to know during the release of “Chega de saudade.” Tito was afraid that, at any time, he would come into his own house and be mistaken for the cleaner.

The last straw was two days before, when Tito had finally convinced a beautiful young lady, whom he had been courting for some time, to come and visit. Going up in the elevator with her, he was already dreaming of a night in Nirvana, but when he turned the key in the door, he realized he had guests. In addition to João, there were the boys from São Paulo again, apparently well settled-in. Tito’s visions of Nirvana dissipated and he felt so frustrated that he almost clicked his tongue in disgust. Eventually, he got up the courage to ask João to leave. The latter had ignored the request, and, to his great surprise, there was the moving van.

For João Gilberto, it was just one more obstacle. Following his success with “Chega de saudade” in São Paulo, he was going to record “Desafinado” that November, but he felt that Jobim was taking his time in writing the arrangement. The relationship between the two of them wasn’t great, nor could it have been, after having quarreled so fiercely during the recording of the first disc. Jobim was different from the others; he put up with the insults for the sake of getting the job done, but he was capable of giving as good as he got. Before João threatened to move in with him, other than for strictly musically focused meetings, he drew a symbolic line. On the day that João appeared at Jobim’s house with the air of someone who had come to stay, Teresa, Jobim’s wife, told him purposefully, “Tom told me to tell you that he’s not home.”

João was hurt. His heart dropped, but he picked up the pieces once again and went to live in the apartment of a singer named Sérgio Ricardo, in the Humaitá neighborhood, while he looked for another place to stay.

Sérgio Ricardo was a young man from Marília, São Paulo, who had training in classical piano and the profile of a television actor, which he had in fact been, in São Paulo. He had come to Rio in 1956 to work as an evening pianist and singer, and had inherited an illustrious piano stool, that of Jobim at the Posto 5 nightclub. The long nights of playing American music had inspired him to compose in a modern style, and while he was recording at RGE, one of his songs, “Buquê de Isabel” (Isabel’s Bouquet) had attracted the attention of the recording company’s star, Maysa. She released the song in 1958, and Sérgio was lured by bossa nova to participate in the movement, although as a singer his voice was more along the lines of Parnassian romanticism. Within a short time, he had written several songs that embodied the new spirit, like “Pernas” (Legs) and “Folha de papel” (Sheet of Paper), which he wasn’t in any particular hurry to record.

João Gilberto, on the other hand, was impatient to record “Desafinado.” Several people already had their eyes on the song, like Lúcio Alves and Luís Cláudio. In addition, the song was becoming known among the nightlife crowd, mainly at the Posto 5 nightclub, where Jobim and Mendonça had offered the song to Ivon Curi. All he needed now was for César de Alencar to about-face and say the song was his.

According to André Midani, “Desafinado” took thirteen takes to be recorded by João Gilberto on November 10, 1958. This was despite the fact that Jobim had simplified the arrangement even further, in order to avoid quarrels between the singer and the orchestra. This time, Jobim merely wanted the rhythm section, with Milton Banana on drums, and some string instruments. Friction arose between him and João and had already become more than considerable—there had been shoot-outs at the OK Corral caused by far less. During one of the interminable arguments about the chords, João remarked, loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the studio, “Wow, Tom, you are stupid, aren’t you?”

Jobim felt his blood begin to boil, but Midani calmed him down. His capacity for tolerance was reaching new extremes. “Desafinado” was finally ready, and the other side of the record would be “Hô-ba-la-lá.” Things went a little better, even with the addition of backing vocals and a percussion section. But the new musicians had been chosen by João. The percussionist was Guarany, one of the most respected drummers in the scene, despite having a peg leg—at the time, probably the only drummer in the world to work with that kind of disability. And the backing vocals comprised three of the Garotos da Lua, Milton, Acyr, and Edgardo, João’s successor in the group.

When “Desafinado” and “Hô-ba-la-lá” hit the stores, things started to snowball. “Chega de saudade” finally made it big in Rio, spurred on by its initial success in São Paulo. This in turn caused “Desafinado” to make the charts. Despite being included in the lyrics, the expression “bossa nova” was still not popularly associated with that kind of music. João Gilberto’s singing style, hitherto unknown, was what sparked discussions. Those who were tone-deaf asked sincerely, “But is he really off-key?,” which usually generated an answer that was as ridiculous as the question: “Are you crazy? The guy has the hearing of someone with tuberculosis!”

Many people appeared to believe the myth that people who suffered from tuberculosis, for whatever reason, had excellent hearing and therefore were always perfectly in tune. In fact, according to some doctors, medications with a streptomycin base, which are taken by those with tuberculosis, damage the acoustic nerve, affect the hearing, and therefore may compromise the ability of the patient to hold a tune. The musicians themselves already had a far less disagreeable and more precise classification to describe João Gilberto: perfect pitch, a rare quality in humans, which he shared in Brazil with Dick Farney, Dalva de Oliveira, and few others.

Or it could have been said that, had he not been on the verge of becoming famous, that João Gilberto could have earned his living tuning tuning-forks.

Two months later, by January 1959, Tom Jobim had eaten just about as much humble pie as he could digest during the recording of the 78 r.p.m.s. It was necessary to carry on, no matter how hard it was for him to tolerate the Bahian’s temperament, and he began to put pressure on Aloysio de Oliveira to make an entire album with João Gilberto. Ismael Corrêa and other people at Odeon seconded the idea, which would make it easier to convince Aloysio. They already had four of the traditional twelve tracks: “Chega de saudade,” “Bim-bom,” “Desafinado,” and “Hô-ba-la-lá.” The rest would be recorded, as usual, with a minimal staff in order to cut costs and reduce the risk of confusion.

The production schedule that was followed for this album (which was, naturally, entitled Chega de saudade) is self-explanatory. Of the eight tracks that still remained to be recorded, João Gilberto recorded only one on January 23, 1959—”Brigas, nunca mais” (Fights, Never More), by Jobim and Vinícius. A week later, on January 30, he returned to the studio and recorded another: “Morena boca de ouro” (Brunette with a Mouth of Gold), by Ary Barroso. Had he continued that same schedule, the album would never have been finished. But then, in just one day, on February 4, he recorded the remaining six: “Lobo bobo” (Foolish Wolf) and “Saudade fez uma samba” (Saudade Made a Samba), by Lyra and Bôscoli; “Maria Ninguém,” by Lyra alone; “Rosa morena” (Brunette Rose) by Caymmi; “É luxo só” (It’s Just a Luxury), by Ary Barroso and Luís Peixoto; and “Aos pés da cruz” (At the Foot of the Cross), by Marino Pinto and Zé da Zilda. Strange, don’t you think?

Not really. On the six tracks that remained, the only accompaniment was provided by a rhythm section. At the very most, it included Copinha’s flute or Maciel’s trombone; no orchestra to get on his nerves.

The album sleeve text that Tom Jobim wrote for Chega de saudade is perhaps the best that has ever been published in Brazil. Those thirteen lines were, in their own way, informative, revelatory, and even prophetic. His contemporaries didn’t really understand much of what he said, but it was all there. “João Gilberto is a bossa nova Bahian of 27,” Tom’s text started out. It was one of two references to bossa nova on the record (the other being in the lyrics to “Desafinado”), but it still took a few months for the expression to catch on. He continued: “In just a short time, he has influenced an entire generation of arrangers, guitarists, musicians and singers.”

To the first uninitiated buyers of Chega de saudade, in April 1959, it seemed like somewhat of an exaggeration. How was it possible for a singer, whom they had barely heard of, to have already influenced “an entire generation”? But as incredible as it sounds, it was true. Those buyers, of course, did not frequent the late nights at the Plaza or go to Nara Leão’s apartment. It is worth noting that Jobim, with an uncanny knack, omitted songwriters and lyricists from the scope of his influence. Jobim, as well as Vinícius de Moraes, Newton Mendonça, and even Carlinhos Lyra still did not recognize the authority of João Gilberto to influence their compositions.

“Our greatest concern,” continued Jobim, “was that Joãozinho should not be constrained by arrangements which inhibited his freedom, his natural agility, or his personal and nontransferable style, that is, his spontaneity”—a tactful way for Jobim to say that he had to squash his own ideas in order to finish the record without the two men going for each other’s throats.

“Joãozinho took an active part in composing the arrangements contained on this album: his suggestions and ideas are all there,” he went on. Well, this was the understatement of the year: Joãozinho actually directed the recording, like the slave-driver directed the rowers with his whip in the epic Ben Hur. The difference was that João used a velvet whip. “When João Gilberto accompanies himself, he plays his guitar. When he is accompanied by an orchestra, he becomes the orchestra.” Nor would João Gilberto have it any other way, Jobim could have added. And it’s clear that the “orchestra” had to be João Gilberto. Odeon did not want to spend the money, and halfway through the project Jobim himself became convinced that it was better that way; the less people there were surrounding the star, the better. Besides, João Gilberto was an orchestra all by himself.

Jobim went on: “He [João] believed that there is always room for something new, different and pure that—although at first, may not seem like it—can become, as we say in the music industry, highly marketable.” This was in fact a message from Jobim to their internal audience at Odeon, from which he still perceived a certain amount of resistence to João Gilberto and to that type of music. The last sentence—”P.S. Caymmi thinks so, too”—was a sure guarantee, coming from the man to whom Aloysio de Oliveira listened most.

By saying that that type of music could become “highly marketable,” Jobim was merely remembering the writings of Norman Vincent Peale and applying a kind of wishful thinking. At the beginning of 1959, no one could guarantee that something so modern and sophisticated would one day be “highly marketable.” João Gilberto himself wouldn’t have dared tempt fate like that. In private, for example, he remarked to Ronaldo Bôscoli, “It won’t go anywhere, Ronaldo. There are too many of them.”

“Them” were the enemies. But if Jobim himself had also been somewhat unsure of what he was saying, it wouldn’t take Odeon and the other recording companies long to find out that bossa nova was more than just wishful thinking.

Life seemed so rosy at the beginning of 1959 that João Gilberto didn’t even flinch when Sérgio Ricardo also asked him to go and live elsewhere. João spent the day sleeping on the couch in the living room, and Sérgio felt that this inconvenienced his parents and sister, who lived with him. João Gilberto was like a shuttlecock thrown from one side to another. But this time, the eviction was painless. João packed up his junk, stuffed it into a matchbox-size suitcase, and left for where, he soon found out, he should have gone a long time ago: Ronaldo Bôscoli’s apartment in Rua Otaviano Hudson.

Part II

The Long Holiday

11

Bossa Nova Goes to School

Bossa nova comes out of its shell: Sylvinha Telles singing, Norma Bengell and Bôscoli on the right, and the whole gang at the “First Samba Session Festival,” September 22, 1959

Collection of João Luiz de Albuquerque

The photographer, Chico Pereira, adjusted the lights and lenses in his studio and instructed the star to smile for his Chega de saudade (No More Blues) album sleeve photo.

“You know I don’t smile, Chico,” replied João Gilberto, supressing a smile.

It was February in Rio and the temperature outside had already exceeded thirty degrees Celsius (86 °F)—imagine what it must have been like inside the studio. But João Gilberto was wearing a wool sweater, a white sweater with two blue stripes around the cuffs and bordering the V-neck, which he had asked to “borrow” from Ronaldo Bôscoli. It wasn’t that he was cold. He merely wanted to hide the narrow-striped, short-sleeved shirt he was wearing, which didn’t seem very flattering to him, although it was the best one he owned. João placed his hand on his chin, struck a “cool” and solitary Montgomery Clift–style pose for the camera, and just as Chico Pereira fired the flash, the spotlight illuminating the back of the picture went pfffft and burned out.

Chico only realized this upon developing the film. In the photos, there was a shadow behind João Gilberto that looked like a hatchet aimed at his head. It was the shadow of the spotlight. The photos would have to be redone, but there wasn’t time. When André Midani, who was responsible for the album sleeves, approved one of them regardless, Chico said “to hell with it,” and the cover was printed like that. And, ah yes, João forgot to return Ronaldo Bôscoli’s sweater.

Ronaldo would never have ventured to ask for it back, as João Gilberto lived with him and therefore had free access to his closet, just like Ronaldo helped himself to the contents of Nara’s father’s closet. Sometimes, the expensive socks and underwear that Bôscoli would appropriate from the lawyer Jairo’s dresser drawers would suddenly materialize on João Gilberto, to whom it was all somewhat of a novelty. For the first time, among the many houses in which he had stayed since he had left Salvador in 1950—nine years earlier—he was finally able to make himself completely at home with no restrictions.

Not that he would have changed his behavior. The following were now living permanently in Ronaldo’s studio apartment, which was the size of a doll’s house: Bôscoli, Chico Feitosa, João Gilberto, and that amiable messenger boy (six feet tall, with a 600-watt voice), Luís Carlos Dragão. The four of them were enough to completely crowd the place, bringing to mind a scene from the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera, but their number was frequently further augmented by the presence of Luís Carlos Miéle, a stage manager at TV Continental, whose beard took up enough space for one more. Miéle, who had only one pair of pants (although it was a pair of dress pants), was becoming a permanent fixture in the apartment.

Despite this population explosion, João Gilberto made himself at home. For example, he would occupy the bathroom for at least two hours every time he went in. The others weren’t petty enough to be bothered by this and would go downstairs to a neighboring bar to use the facilities. They were even generous enough to share their toothbrushes with him, should he have needed them.

But his arrival upset the straightforward schedule of the apartment. As João Gilberto’s hours of activity were mainly at night, the others were awakened by him in the early hours, hearing him talk and sing as if he were planning to take a vow of eternal silence the following day. The difference was that, at nine in the morning, João Gilberto would decide to go to bed, while Ronaldo, Feitosa, and Miéle left for work. Bôscoli was a reporter for the magazine Manchete and freelanced at Odeon as a writer for record sleeve text and press releases; Chico Feitosa now worked at the magazine Sétimo Céu (Seventh Heaven). It was normal for João Gilberto to come in at four in the morning and wake them up to listen to a new harmony he had created for an old song, which he had just remembered, like “Doralice” or “Trevo de quatro folhas” (I’m Looking over a Four-Leaf Clover). The recital would continue until sunrise, until João went to sleep and the two journalists dragged themselves, half-asleep, to their jobs—humming “Doralice” or “Trevo de quatro folhas,” after having heard each one twenty times.

On one of the rare occasions when he managed to go to sleep and wake up at a reasonable hour—because he was attending a lunch with President Juscelino Kubitschek in the old Manchete building in Rua Frei Caneca—Bôscoli got a shock. As he was getting ready, he searched for his best suit and couldn’t find it. He also noticed João Gilberto’s absence. He hadn’t yet come home. There was no sign of him or the suit. When he found out that João Gilberto had needed the suit for a performance in São Paulo, Ronaldo did what he had to do; he put on his second-best suit (which he wore every day) and went to lunch with the President.

Roberto Menescal had warned him that if he allowed João Gilberto into his home, Ronaldo’s routine would be dramatically altered. He also warned Ronaldo that if he let João Gilberto speak his mind, he would discover the delights of being overshadowed by a superior intellgience. But Bôscoli, who had not yet completed his Ph.D. in João Gilberto, didn’t really believe him. By the time he finally did, he was already under his spell, and not just him, but also Feitosa, Miéle, Dragão, and anyone else who hung out in the apartment. It was made implicitly clear among all the roommates, for example, that João Gilberto would not be responsible for a single cent of household expenses, nor would they ever have brought up such a tedious issue. João made the odd contribution here and there, bringing home fresh fruit, almost always tangerines (apparently his favorite fruit).

Music was the only matter discussed in the apartment. Composer Marino Pinto, who was older than them and had written the lyrics to “Aos pés da cruz” (At the Foot of the Cross), lived on the floor above and had a canary. By the time the canary awakened, at that generally inconvenient time of day typical of canaries, they had already been listening to João Gilberto since the previous night and were in the mood to make comparisons. João Gilberto himself approached the window, strained to listen, and remarked disgustedly:

“Do you hear that? In Brazil, even the canaries sing off-key.”

With the success of “Chega de saudade,” Jobim opened his drawer in one go, and out flew a flock of beautiful birds. He had already lightened its load of the songs that Elizeth had recorded on Canção do amor demais, but plenty of the ones that he had composed with Vinícius were still left, and, more importantly, his piano remained open and was in production. Besides, the poet had gone to take up a post in Montevideo, which opened the way for Jobim to write with other lyricists. Between the middle of 1958 and the end of 1959, he released enough songs to keep a radio station in jobims for twenty-four straight hours, if need be: “Caminhos cruzados” (Crossroads), “Domingo azul do mar” (Blue Sunday of the Sea), “Meditação” (Meditation), “Discussão” (Discussion), “Desafinado” (Off-Key) and “Samba de uma nota só” (One Note Samba), all with Newton Mendonça; “De você eu gosto” (I Like You), “Dindi,” “Demais” (Too Much), and “Eu preciso de você” (I Need You), with Aloysio de Oliveira; “Esquecendo você” (Forgetting You), “Cancão da eterna despedida” (Song of the Eternal Goodbye), “Este seu olhar” (That Look You Wear), “Fotografia” (Photograph), and “Só em teus braços” (Only in Your Arms), by him alone; and “É preciso dizer adeus” (We Have to Say Goodbye), “A felicidade” (Happiness), “Canta, canta mais” (Sing, Sing Some More), “O nossa amor” (Our Love), “O que tinha de ser” (What Had to Be), “Sem você” (Without You), “Por toda minha vida” (For All My Life), “Brigas, nunca mais” (Fights, Never More), and “Eu sei que vou te amar” (I Know I Will Love You), with Vinícius. Anyone who had never heard of Antonio Carlos Jobim soon got to know and admire him. And whoever already knew his music had reason to be impressed: the man had become a fountain of beauty.

Sylvinha Telles released most of those songs. In 1959, she recorded two albums in barely four months, a total of twenty-four songs of which eighteen were Jobim’s. Other songs by Jobim appeared for the first time on albums by Agostinho dos Santos, Luiz Cláudio, Elza Laranjeira, Carlos José, Lenita Bruno, Norma Bengell, Isaurinha Garcia, Maysa, and, of course, João Gilberto. Just a short time before, he had been seeking out César de Alencar and Ivon Curi in an effort to persuade them to sing his songs, remember? Now he had singers at his door, begging for his songs. At thirty-two years of age, he was finally able to buy his apartment on Rua Nascimento Silva, no longer having to pay rent, and even bought his first car, a little blue Beetle, and thus no longer had to rely on people to give him a ride.

All those songs were written during the anxious years of 1958 and 1959. This rate of production alone would have been impressive, but Jobim somehow also found time to conduct TV Tupi’s orchestra on a weekly basis for the program Noite de gala (Gala Night); to write new songs for the film Orfeu do Carnaval (Black Orpheus); to write the music for an Italian film, Copacabana Palace, with Mylène Démongeot, and to have an affair with her; to present the program O bom Tom (Good Tone) on TV Paulista, São Paulo’s channel 5, for almost a year in 1959; and to produce Sylvinha Telles’s and João Gilberto’s albums and even put up with the latter’s abuse.

But all of this brought him much more than just money. Going to São Paulo to present the program O bom Tom every Monday at 8:35 P.M., for example, helped him conquer his fear of flying. O bom Tom was an easy program to do, despite being aired live. Jobim, sitting at the piano, performed a few songs and received his guests, who would sing other songs, accompanied by him. Agostinho dos Santos was a regular because, as well as being a billed star, he lived in São Paulo, which saved the sponsor, the Três Leões general stores, the cost of several airfares. Vinícius and Ronaldo Bôscoli were also frequent guests because they were extremely cheap: the poet traveled by train, the journalist by bus. On one of his journeys to São Paulo, Bôscoli felt ill on the bus and, not having much choice in the matter, carefully vomited into the overcoat pocket of the Japanese gentleman who was sleeping at his side.

Writing the music to the film Copacabana Palace didn’t contribute much to Jobim’s paycheck, either. If it hadn’t been for those evenings after work, playing guitar and singing for the French star Mylène Démongeot by the Rodrigo de Freitas lake, he would have considered it a waste of his time. During those open-air soirées, Jobim was accompanied by João Gilberto, Luiz Bonfá, and Os Cariocas, but the continuation of those evenings at the Ponta do Cocô (Shit Cape) in São Conrado beach, in the blue Beetle, were purely à deux. They were even better than winning the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival.

The other film for which he had just finished collaborating, Black Orpheus, won not only the Golden Palm at Cannes but also the 1959 Oscar for Best Foreign Film, but it brought him nothing but trouble. It was a French-Italian-Brazilian co-production, based on the play Orfeu da Conceição, which he and Vinícius had staged in Rio in 1956. All the songs from the original score, among which was “Se todos fossem iguais a você” (Someone to Light up My Life), had been purposefully written for Vinícius’s Greek tragedy, set during Rio Carnival. But the film’s producer, the Frenchman Sacha Gordine, informed them that he did not want to use any of the existing songs, and insisted that they write an entirely new score.

Jobim had no idea why it was necessary to again subject himself to such a tedious task. But Gordine was Vinícius’s friend from his Paris days, and if there was to be no discussion on the matter, the only thing left to do was open up the piano. The duo wrote three songs, mostly over the telephone, given that Vinícius was now working for the Itamaraty in Montevideo: “A felicidade,” “Frevo,” and “O nosso amor.” Marcel Camus, the film’s director, felt that that wasn’t enough and asked Luiz Bonfá—who played guitar on the soundtrack—to compose something for him.

Bonfá was about to leave for the United States, where he intended to pursue success with nothing more than his face, his wits, and his guitar, particularly the latter two, and didn’t have time to write anything new. So instead he opened up his own drawer and took out two songs for which he had not yet written any lyrics and showed them to Camus. The director was not impressed, but Gordine loved them and, at Vinícius’s suggestion, invited the famous columnist Rubem Braga to write the lyrics. The columnist admitted that samba lyrics weren’t his forte, and recommended his colleague Antônio Maria. It took Maria a while, but eventually he delivered the lyrics—which were surprisingly optimistic—and the two instrumental pieces became “Manhã de carnaval” (A Day in the Life of a Fool) and “Samba de Orfeu” (Orpheus’s Samba).

Once the songs had been compiled, who was going be the voice of Breno Mello (Orpheus) and Marpessa Dawn (Eurydice), the stars of the film? The two of them had to be dubbed, Marpessa, because she was American, and Breno, because he wasn’t much of a singer. (Unfortunately, he wasn’t much of an actor, either. He was a soccer player for the Fluminense team and had been suggested to Camus by Ronaldo Bôscoli because he was black, good-looking, and athletic.) Selecting a vocalist to be the voice of Eurydice was easy—Elizeth Cardoso, who had just recorded the album Canção do amor demais and who was currently Vinícius’s darling—but who auditioned to be the voice of Orpheus?

“Bingo” to whoever guessed João Gilberto. Had they hired him, he would have been the least dramatic Orpheus in the entire history of Greece, or at least to the Greece that Vinícius had adapted to the slums of the Babilônia hill in Rio. They argued that his voice did not have a black enough touch for what was required of Orpheus’s voice, and Agostinho dos Santos got the job instead. João Gilberto swallowed his diappointment, but it was regurgitated when Black Orpheus won a shelf-load of awards and Agostinho shot to international fame. (João Gilberto never got over that rejection. In August of the following year, when the film was released, he recorded “Manhã de carnaval,” “A felicidade,” and “O nosso amor” on a 45 r.p.m. seven-inch disc.)

Jobim also had his reasons for feeling that Black Orpheus was a Trojan Horse. With the success of the film and its songs, he discovered that, in addition to Vinícius, he had acquired a multitude of business partners who were taking a share of the money that the songs were earning abroad: the producer, Sacha Gordine, who retained the copyright to the songs in Europe and who, as editor, got 50 percent; and the director, Marcel Camus, and the two French lyricists, who had gone in as collaborating partners and split the remaining 50 percent authors’ cut with Jobim and Vinícius, which meant that they ended up with just 10 percent each, which would be further slashed by French taxes. It wasn’t fair. And where had those lyricists come from, if in the film the songs were only played in Portuguese? It was clear to Jobim that it was all going straight into Gordine’s pocket. This was why he had them write an entirely new score, because the copyright to the original songs had already been secured in Brazil.

During the entire time that Black Orpheus lit up the silver screen in 1959, nobody associated the film with something called bossa nova. Nor could they have done so; although, in theory, the primary ingredients for the recipe were there: Jobim’s music, Vinícius’s lyrics, even the guitar beat (produced by Roberto Menescal, accompanying Agostinho dos Santos on “A felicidade”). Orpheus was produced in 1958, when not even Jobim or Vinícius himself were fully aware of all that João Gilberto would come to represent. One year later, when the film made it to Brazil, the LP Chega de saudade had already been released, an “entire generation” was being influenced, and it was only then that Jobim, Vinícius, and João Gilberto were informed that they had invented bossa nova.

Father Laércio Dias de Moura, rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, was deeply troubled during that August of 1959. His law students were putting on a show at the university auditorium, and one of the featured artists was going to be Ziegfeldian impresario Carlos Machado’s star, Norma Bengell. As was its custom, the university encouraged initiative among its young students as long as it was constructive, but this was going too far. The presence of a showgirl with such a scandalous reputation within the confines of the campus would not be at all well received by the members of the congregation that financially supported the university. For Father Laércio, the billions of buttons on his cassock were few when he compared their number to the problems that this show was going to cause him.

During the first week in August, the academic gang, led by student Cacá Diégues, plastered the corridors of the university in Gávea with cardstock posters announcing in thick permanent marker pen, the performance of the “First Samba-Session Festival.” It would be the first time that the kids would hear, en masse and in the composers’ own voices, the modern songs that had infiltrated the university and that were like those that emerged from Lyra and Menescal’s academy. When João Gilberto sang several of them (“Lobo bobo” [Foolish Wolf], “Saudade fez uma samba” [Saudade Made a Samba], and “Maria Ninguém” [Maria Nobody]) from the album Chega de saudade), which was released just before the July vacation, it was as if there was a musical movement in which they, in a way, were taking part. One of the law students, Júlio Hungria, knew Roberto Menescal and Luís Carlos Vinhas from the jazz gatherings at the home of Renezinha, a girl from the Jardim Botânico neighborhood, and found out that they were taking their band—including their friends, the professionals Sylvinha Telles and Alayde Costa—to perform at the university.

The two magic words, bossa nova, were still not commonly used among the students, despite the University Hebrew Group show. So when it came time to give the show a name, they thought of the Jazz Festival that had just taken place at the Teatro Municipal—a giant jam session promoted by broadcaster Paulo Santos, who had brought Gerry Mulligan, Herbie Mann, and other American greats to Rio—and were unanimous in their decision: it would be a “samba-session” festival. And as there would inevitably be others, it would be as well for this one to be designated as the first.

The other singers would be Carlinhos Lyra, Nara Leão, Normando Santos, and Chico Feitosa. There were two groups: that of Menescal, with Vinhas, Bebeto, Henrique Montes, and João Mário; and that of the Castro-Neves brothers, with Oscar, Mário, Léo, and Iko. Neither one would be paid for their performance. It wasn’t a problem; the gang would have paid to be allowed to perform. But another, more important contact was made with André Midani from Odeon. He was not only supplying his contracted artists, Sylvinha Telles and Alayde Costa, who would be the main attractions of the show, but had also dragged the demanding Aloysio de Oliveira, a man of the old guard, to see it. Ronaldo Bôscoli, who would be emceeing, was also bringing Os Garotos da Lua. And he couldn’t promise anything, but he was still trying to secure the participation of Antonio Carlos Jobim, who had suddenly become famous; singer-songwriter Billy Blanco; Dolores Duran; and Vinícius de Moraes. It was then that Midani suggested including Norma Bengell.

He had good reasons for doing this. A few months earlier, at his suggestion, Odeon had used a photograph of Norma to beautify the sleeve of one of those obscure albums with recordings of phantom Brazilian musicians, which the public thought were American. The photo of Norma wearing a bathing suit was bought from Manchete magazine and was a sensation. Odeon had forgotten about just one small detail: asking Norma’s permission to use her image, which would have been, at the very least, a basic courtesy, given that there were people who would buy the record just because of the photo, for immoral purposes. On seeing her photograph lasciviously printed on the record sleeve, Norma went up the wall and marched to Odeon to make a fuss. She mentioned lawyers, suing, compensation, and other vernacular touchstones. Odeon got scared. But they were relieved when Norma finally agreed to compromise. She would forget everything, as long as Odeon helped her make her secret dream come true—to record a disc as a singer. (And if need be, she’d even pose for the cover!)

Odeon went overboard, because by 1959, Norma Bengell was practically a celebrity. In just four years, she had become the star of Carlos Machado’s lavish shows at the Night and Day nightclub, like Banzo-ayê and Rio de Janeiro a janeiro (Rio from January to January), and was now launching a career in the national film industry. She had just finished starring in Carlos Manga’s comedy O homem do Sputnik (The Sputnik Man), playing a tempting French spy with a Brigitte Bardot–style pucker, and her brief appearance stole the show. Odeon felt that Norma could be their very own Julie London and decided to invest in her record. They gave her a marvelous international repertoire—”Fever,” “That Old Black Magic,” “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” “You Better Go Now,” “C’est si bon,” “Drume negrita”—and prided themselves on their selection of Brazilian songs: three songs by Jobim, “Eu sei que vou te amar,” “Eu preciso de você,” and “Sucedeu assim” (It Happened Like That); the first recording of a song with lyrics by Ronaldo Bôscoli, “Sente” (Feel); and, astutely, “Hô-ba-lalá,” by João Gilberto. Additionally, they cloaked the songs with arrangements delicate enough to enhance her voice, which was soft but, like her, tremendously sensual. In order to leave no room for doubt, Chico Pereira photographed her for the record sleeve in such a way that she appeared to be naked, and Odeon gave the album a title that couldn’t fail: Ooooooh! Norma.

The end result was better than anticipated, and sensing a brilliant future for Norma Bengell, Odeon started including her in its events. The Catholic University show wasn’t being sponsored by the record company and, for this very reason, it seemed like an even better opportunity to sell her as a singer. As for the students, they had nothing against the idea and even thought it was great. For most of them, Norma was the unwitting protagonist of their wet dreams, and even if they had been old enough to get into Carlos Machado’s shows, they wouldn’t have been able to afford them. And all of a sudden, she was going to be part of their show.

Father Laércio was appalled; he could barely imagine the furor that Norma Bengell’s presence would cause among the students, but he had not the slightest doubt as to the disastrous consequences for the foundations of the institution. Two of the students were summoned to the rectory: Júlio Hungria, who appeared to be the organizer, and Cacá Diégues. Trembling slightly, they listened to his ultimatum: “You can do the show if you want, but not with Norma Bengell.”

Diégues and Hungria could have argued that by then all the advertising material for the show, which included announcement of Norma’s participation, had already gone to press and that any alteration would be an embarrassment. But there was no point in trying to discuss the matter. When they gave their colleagues the news, they reacted with the most indignant grumbling they could muster, but that was all. The revolt was placed into the hands of the musicians, led by Sylvinha Telles and Alayde Costa. Sylvinha was adamant: “If Norma isn’t allowed to sing, there won’t be any show.”

Diégues and Hungria went back to the rectory with this latest piece of information, but were informed that Father Laércio saw no reason to change his mind. So that was that. Or so they thought, but with the participants in such a state of uproar, the news that the Catholic University had banned Norma Bengell hit the newspapers—more precisely, the outrageous Diário Carioca. The day after the rector’s second refusal, the matter became front-page news, with a classic cheesecake shot of Bengell and a headline that spanned three columns: “NORMA BLACKLISTED.”

The other newspapers weren’t far behind, and Norma Bengell became the center of a city-wide scandal. In one fell swoop, she had leaped from Carlos Machado’s plumed outfits to join the austere company of Luther, Voltaire, and Darwin as enemies of the Holy Church. The situation was compelling for the era, given that no matter how subtle the euphemisms were, it was obvious what the priests thought of the artist. They didn’t know that the then meek and gentle Norma still lived with her mother and even had a curfew. In the midst of all the confusion, someone had an idea that saved the show—to move it to the amphitheater of the National School of Architecture in Praia Vermelha, a branch of the federal university and a much more liberal institution. The two academic boards agreed, and the fireworks created by the press, which had been involuntarily instigated by Father Laércio, generated within the city the kind of expectation that no other student production would ever have managed to incite. The date was set for September 22 and it became known as the “forbidden show,” which was considered obligatory to attend. Some could barely sleep, waiting for the day to arrive.

The show (which was free, of course) was scheduled to start at eight-thirty in the evening, but an hour and a half before, there was already a tremendous human bottleneck on Avenida Pasteur, where the School of Architecture was located. When the show finally started, at ten, legend has it that at least two thousand people were crammed inside, and another thousand protested loudly outside at not being able to get in. No one has ever explained how those numbers came about, but there is a general consensus that “it could not have been less than that.” The estimate is not as ridiculous as it sounds: the law, philosophy, and engineering classes alone comprised more than 900 students, who appeared en masse and brought their friends. (Despite the School of Architecture having provided the stage and contributed its own manpower, the show was still officially that of the Catholic University, which provided the sound and lighting.)

An unexpected gift to posterity was provided by photographer Chico Pereira, who set his Rolleiflex aside and concentrated on operating his Grundig recorder, connected to a single-channel Shure microphone, to record the show. Domestic copies of that tape have survived the years and have never been edited onto a record, but thanks to Pereira, today we are able to hear what happened that night, and at all the amateur bossa nova shows that followed immediately thereafter.

Norma Bengell, who was primarily responsible for that huge audience, stepped triumphantly into the center of the arena, escorted by one student from the PUC and another from the School of Architecture, whom she advised to “be good and behave.” She was dressed completely in black: hose, gloves, a long-sleeved tailored dress, and, who knows, in the boys’ fantasies maybe even black lingerie, too. It was not a symbolic protest against the prohibition that had been imposed upon her, but merely an attempt to appear as covered-up as possible. She received thunderous applause and whistles, and probably caused some quite intense salivating. She promoted her record, resisted all attempts to embarrass Father Laércio even more, and sang five songs. Everybody loved her.

But the huge hit of the night was Alayde Costa. She thrilled the audience with “Chora tua tristeza” (Cry Your Sadness), by Oscar Neves-Castro and Luvercy Fiorini, which months later would become the first bossa nova song to make it big outside the boundaries of the musical movement. That night, with the exception of Sylvinha Telles, Alayde had no competition. The amateurism and inexperience of almost all the participants was revealed at every turn, but the atmosphere was so student-y that even Luís Carlos Vinhas and Ronaldo Bôscoli were heard for the first, and thankfully last, time—singing! (Vinhas, who was practically shoved in front of the microphone by Chico Feitosa, was forced to stutter his way through “Desafinado” and “Chega de saudade”; Bôscoli, pressured by Carlinhos Lyra, performed his own composition, “Mamadeira atonal” [Atonal Nursing Bottle]). Normando Santos sang “Jura de pombo” (The Dove’s Promise), Menescal’s very first composition. No one who heard the song that night could have imagined that just three years later, the same Menescal would write “O barquinho” (The Little Boat).

The illustrous guests—the “older” ones—made an appearance, but did not sing. No one expected it of Vinícius anyway because, hindered by his own shyness and by the hawk-like shadow of the Itamaraty, he still did not sing in public. Dolores Duran, who would die of a heart attack exactly thirty-two days later, was barely seen at all. Billy Blanco was summoned on stage, praised the show (“Wonderful!”), and excused himself, saying he “wasn’t a singer.” But the arrival of Antonio Carlos Jobim, once the show had gotten underway, was a showstopper.

Norma Bengell was performing when Jobim came in. She stopped singing so that Bôscoli could introduce him as “the pope of Brazilian modern music,” which was probably the first time the expression was spoken about him over a microphone. They wanted Jobim to say something, and he announced, hoarsely, “I’ve been watching all of you. [Pause] It’s an amazing thing. [Pause] It really is. [Pause] Great.” [Applause]

He left right after, but his lightning-quick appearance was enough to paralyze Menescal’s bewildered musicians, who were accompanying Norma, for a few moments. The latter made the observation: “Tom has arrived and has finished with you guys. But he can’t finish—ever. Can I sing now?”

Os Garotos da Lua, who had been promised by Bôscoli, did not appear, except for one: Toninho Botelho. Introduced without formalities of any kind, he sang “Não faz assim” (Don’t Do That), by Oscar Castro-Neves and Bôscoli, and left without causing much fuss. None of the young people in the audience knew where that older gentleman had come from (in fact, Botelho wasn’t even forty years old), except that he was a member of some obscure vocal ensemble. They would certainly have been very surprised had Bôscoli identified him as one of the parties responsible for bringing João Gilberto to Rio years earlier and, indirectly, for the existence of that very show.

Perhaps even Botelho himself was not aware of this.

In the audience of the “First Samba-Session Festival,” two men, André Midani and Aloysio de Oliveira, were taking in what was happening in the amphitheater with very different sets of eyes and ears. The former was identifying, in both the artists and audience, the possibility of a new market, one that needed to be immediately explored. The latter identified a market merely in the audience, to be supplied with the creative genius of Jobim, Vinícius, and, perhaps, Carlinhos Lyra, as composers—but he insisted that the vocalists be experienced, like Sylvinha Telles, Alayde Costa, Lúcio Alves, and now, João Gilberto. The other guys were too novice for Aloysio, as either singers or musicians, and besides, none of them “had much of a voice.”

That was also where, for Aloysio de Oliveira, the difference between the young gang led by Ronaldo Bôscoli and the older gang to be led by himself originated. And he knew in which one of the two he preferred to invest. Midani wasn’t bothered: he had Menescal, Bôscoli, Nara, Chico Feitosa, Normando, Vinhas, the Castro-Neves brothers, Luizinho Eça, and whoever else seemed young and hip, to put his ideas into practice. The first idea would be to record a disc with the youngsters.

The newspapers gave ample coverage to the samba-session night at the School of Architecture, implying that none of the boys had committed a mortal sin by having drooled over Norma Bengell. A group of students from the Catholic University persuaded Norma to visit Father Laércio to strategically “ask his forgiveness for the trouble she had caused him,” in order to put an end to the matter. The issue continued to generate repercussions, and resulting interest was printed in the general news section for cultural events, together with discussions on the type of music that had been performed at the School of Architecture. Was it some kind of jazz? The expression samba moderno (modern samba), which had been used up until then, was finally and definitively replaced by bossa nova—used with significant marketing astuteness by Ronaldo Bôscoli in Manchete, assisted by his disciples Moysés Fuks, in Última Hora, and João Luiz de Albuquerque, in Radiolândia magazine.

Invitations for new performances in auditoriums began to rain down. When Bôscoli decided to put on a show at the Naval Academy at the seashore, on November 13, which was supposed to be just another samba-session festival, it became known as “the Second Command of Operation Bossa Nova.” When a quartet composed of Luizinho Eça and three of the Castro-Neves brothers started playing the upbeat “Menina feia” (Ugly Girl), Bôscoli, who was emceeing, came out on stage and felt he had to explain exactly what bossa nova was. Not managing to come up with a suitable explanation, he took the easy way out: “It’s what’s modern, completely new, and cutting-edge in Brazilian music.”

The audience at the Naval Academy understood just fine. It was composed of around one thousand Naval cadets and young officers, all with shaved heads, crammed into an auditorium that would have comfortably seated about six hundred. It was what Bôscoli classified as “bossa nova in a battlefield.” Bossa nova was an expression which was used and abused throughout the entire two-hour show, as if it were a prize that everyone there had just won. There was an even better prize: the privileged sight of the beautiful figure of Norma Bengell, wearing a precursor to the miniskirt.

Bôscoli roguishly thanked Odeon for the presence of their contracted artists, Lúcio Alves (invited by the bossa nova crew to join the movement), Sylvinha Telles, Alayde Costa, and Norma Bengell—as if Odeon, through André Midani, weren’t just as pleased with the turn of events. It was a great show, much more professional than the one at the School of Architecture. There was one more important show in 1959, to show the world that the guys were here to stay. It was held in the auditorium at Rádio Globo, in Rua Irineu Marinho, on December 2. For the first time, bossa nova was aired live, and placed within easy reach of thousands of people. The cast was the same as always, but this time, there was an important addition: the vocal ensemble Os Cariocas. Hortênsia was no longer a part of the group, and they were reduced to the members who became the official band, Severino, Badeco, Quartera, and Luís Roberto. They sang “Chega de saudade” and “Menina feia,” and put on a startling performance. With voices that were more velvety and finely tuned than ever, Os Cariocas were coming full circle from their start with “Adeus América” (Goodbye, America) in 1948 and were beginning another. Bossa nova was the music that they—and other Brazilian vocal ensembles of the past—had been dreaming of since the start.

12

Colorful Harmonies

At the famous apartment: Nara Leão, Roberto Menescal (guitar), Bebeto (flute), Dori Caymmi, and, in profile, Chico Feitosa

Collection of Roberto Menescal

João Gilberto had no time to take part in those student entertainments. He was on the road, looking after his career. Really. At the time when one of those shows was held, for example, he had gone to do two performances in Belo Horizonte, at the invitation of his friend Pacífico Mascarenhas. Both went off almost without a hitch. At the first, at the local Automóvel Clube (Automobile Club), he had already been introduced on stage by Pacífico and was receiving a big hand when he suddenly saw something wrong with his guitar and wouldn’t allow the curtains to be opened. Pacífico, unaware of what was going on, introduced him again. More clapping and still no singer. When Pacífico peeked behind the curtains to see what was going on, he discovered that João wanted him to tune his guitar. The show started somewhat late, but finished on time, and was only moderately successful. Belo Horizonte was still not all that enthusiastic for bossa nova, as they said in those parts.

The following night, João Gilberto locked himself in the bathroom at the Hotel Normandie two hours before the show at the Yacht Club and wouldn’t come out. Pacífico thought about breaking down the door, but this was very much against his nature—not to mention his name. He preferred to talk João Gilberto into coming out, as you do with someone who threatens to throw himself out of a window. Right when the show was due to begin, João sheepishly opened the bathroom door, went to the club, and delighted the three hundred people who were in the audience.

In those days in Belo Horizonte, he was capable of many other personal niceties. A local blind musician went to look for him at his hotel, and the two of them played the guitar together for several hours. On leaving, the young man praised João’s guitar. Without hesitation, the latter said, “It’s yours. Keep it.”

The opaque eyes of the young man appeared to shine with a beautiful and unparalleled luminosity. He did not want to take the guitar, but João Gilberto said, “I insist. Take it as a souvenir.”

The young man thanked him a thousand times, and left, very happy, with the guitar. In fact, the guitar did not belong to João Gilberto but to Pacífico Mascarenhas, who witnessed the entire exchange with disbelief—and who, of course, had no intention of intervening in João’s generous gesture.

The trip to Belo Horizonte had another positive aspect. Pacífico took João to the home of the pianist Talita Fonseca, where he met another member of Samba-Cana, the student Roberto Guimarães. Roberto sang “Amor certinho” (Sure-Fire Love) for him, and for João, it was love at first sight upon hearing the song. But obviously not at first hearing, because he made Roberto sing the entire song at least fifty times that night, until he could be sure that he had learned it. The student had no idea, meanwhile, that he would hear the song recorded by João Gilberto on his next album, O amor, o sorriso e a flor (Love, a Smile, and a Flower).

As it happens, João Gilberto wasn’t the first person to record this song. Jonas Silva, his predecessor in Os Garotos da Lua, did so before him. He was accompanied by a group that few other singers could boast: João Donato on trombone, Ed Lincoln on piano, Bebeto on double bass, Milton Banana on drums—and João Gilberto himself on the guitar.

In fact, it was João Gilberto who taught him “Amor certinho,” and Jonas recorded it that same year of 1959 for the minuscule record label Rádio, on a double 45 r.p.m. that also contained Jobim’s “A felicidade” (Happiness), Johnny Alf’s “Rapaz de bem” (Nice Guy), and the obscure “Se você soubessse” (If You Knew). His precedence was merely symbolic, because the record that Jonas made passed unnoticed, and the official release of the song came when it was recorded by João. The year before, when the only known samples of real bossa nova were “Chega de saudade” and “Bim-bom,” Jonas recorded another double 45 r.p.m., this time for Philips, on which he sang current hits like “Cheiro de saudade” (The Scent of Longing), by Luiz Antônio and Djalma Ferreira; “Saudade querida” (Beloved Longing), by Tito Madi; and even one of the first compositions by Chico Feitosa and Ronaldo Bôscoli, “Vocêzinha” (Little You). Again, he was accompanied by star performers, like Copinha on flute, the legendary Vadico on piano, Baden Powell on guitar, and Raul de Barros on trombone—none of whom were associated with bossa nova at the time, not even young Baden. But Jonas’s vocal style, which remained the same as he had always sung, was completely bossa nova. “I never knew how to sing any other way,” he would explain, almost apologetically.

It’s true. Since being kicked out of Os Garotos da Lua in 1950 to make way for João Gilberto, his career as a singer had declined until it was practically nonexistent. Someone who sang “softly” had few offers of work with vocal ensembles, and after that, Jonas joined Os Vocalistas Tropicais (The Tropical Vocalists), but only temporarily. He confesses that he never felt comfortable singing alone; he was “too scared.” As was common in those days, Jonas made a few private recordings on acetate, around 1954. On one of them, he recorded “Pra que discutir com madame?” (Why Fight with Madame?) by Janet de Almeida, accompanied only (which was a luxury) by Johnny Alf on piano. On another, he sang his own composition, “Rosinha,” again with Johnny Alf on piano and Jorginho on alto sax (both songs would be recorded by João Gilberto thirty years later). It is interesting to note that although Jonas was a semi-obscure singer, great musicians always made a point of playing with him. None of those acetates was ever released commercially.

However, in keeping with his impressive modesty, he never complained about being left behind. During the rest of the decade, he concentrated on his work at the Murray, which continued to be, for a good long while, the largest importer of records in Rio, and he later opened his own record import business. In 1958, when João Gilberto released “Chega de saudade,” the generous Jonas made sure that no other record was played in the Murray for the entire day—or else, that it was merely flipped over to play “Bim-bom.” The proof that, from that moment on, it was possible to sing softly like João encouraged him to return to making records, and in 1958 and 1959 he recorded his two 45 r.p.m.s. But the similarity of vocal styles, Northeastern accent, and way of singing was so marked that for anyone who didn’t know the background story, Jonas Silva was just another of those João Gilberto imitators who had begun to surface.

“I don’t understand this bossa nova stuff,” remarked Dr. Jairo Leão, Nara’s father. “Where’s the bossa? And what’s so different about these songs?”

Jairo the lawyer was very competent in his own field, but not very discerning in musical matters or at recognizing his English socks on Ronaldo Bôscoli’s feet. Nara’s apartment in Copacabana had become the headquarters of bossa nova—not the bossa nova of Jobim and João Gilberto, who rarely went there (and Vinícius would only go for the first time in 1963), but of Ronaldo’s gang. For the latter, who was scared to walk down the street, the apartment was a kind of bunker. In his role as Nara’s boyfriend (and now fiancé), he settled in as if it were his mother-in-law’s house and made everyone come to him. After a while, he began to go out in a group and eventually risked going out alone, but the custom of gathering at Nara’s house continued.

They were, in fact, primarily guitar parties, although Bill Horn helped out on French horn, and Bebeto on double bass. Hélcio Milito didn’t always bring his drums, but it was easy to improvise; all he needed was a dust brush and a telephone directory. But it had to be the right directory:

“Pass me the address listing, Nara,” Hélcio would say. “The Yellow Pages are off-key.”

Contrary to popular belief, there was no piano in the apartment. Or at least, not on a regular basis. Menescal remembers seeing one there for a while—”An electronic keyboard, that sounded like a Solovox”—but it disappeared without anyone noticing. It wasn’t missed: all the pianists in the group—Luizinho Eça, Luís Carlos Vinhas, Oscar Castro-Neves—also played the guitar. This was the main instrument; it was played by Menescal, Nara, Carlinhos Lyra, Normando, Chico Feitosa (whom João Gilberto considered his best student), and two occasional participants, Sylvinha Telles and her ex-husband Candinho, who played the instrument like an expert. Only Ronaldo Bôscoli did not play anything, and that was because his hands were always permanently occupied: one caressed Nara’s much-coveted knee and the other helped himself to Dr. Jairo’s Scotch. Nara was Ronaldo’s fiancée and an inspiration for everyone else there—they called her the “muse of bossa nova.”

They drank Scotch or guaraná, and sometimes Scotch with guaraná, which was a heresy. There were occasions on which Dona Tinoca, Nara’s mother, tried to impose a curfew on her seventeen-year-old daughter—”Go to sleep now, Nara, it’s late. There’ll be more bossa nova tomorrow”—but it was easy for her to give in. When João Gilberto, for example, made an appearance, he only showed up after midnight. On Thursdays, Dr. Jairo held his poker parties, attended by regulars like the theater critic Paulo Francis and humorists Millôr Fernandes and Leon Eliachar. On poker nights, bossa nova was forced out onto the street.

Or to one of the many other apartments that were already fighting for the privilege of hosting it.

Luiz Bonfá pulled his green Pontiac up to the corner of Rua Visconde de Pirajá and Rua Montenegro, in Ipanema, and honked at João Gilberto and Pacífico Mascarenhas, who were waiting for him on the sidewalk. The two of them got in. That evening, they were all—and I really mean all—going to the pianist Bené Nunes’s enormous apartment in Rua Osório Duque Estrada, in Gávea. It was the last week of 1959, and the magazine O Cruzeiro wanted to gather together everyone connected with bossa nova for a big story—the first about the musical movement. The magazine had the power to do this, given that it had a circulation of 700,000 copies per week. And if O Cruzeiro was choosing to do a story on bossa nova, this meant complete victory, a triumph for the young men and women who had pulled modern music into the limelight.

That evening/night, Bené Nunes’s apartment played host to Tom Jobim, João Gilberto, Luiz Bonfá, Ronaldo Bôscoli, Carlinhos Lyra, Roberto Menescal, Sylvinha Telles, Nara Leão, Oscar Castro-Neves, Iko Castro-Neves, Luvercy Fiorini, Luizinho Eça, Luís Carlos Vinhas, Sérgio Ricardo, Chico Feitosa, Normando Santos, Alayde Costa, Walter Santos, Pacífico Mascarenhas, Nana Caymmi, Elizabeth Gasper, Bebeto, the double bass player Henrique, drummer João Mário, the girls who comprised their entourage—and veteran Ary Barroso, whose “Brazil” had been a worldwide hit during World War II and afterward.

Ary was there to symbolize that bossa clássica (classic bossa) recognized the excellence of the young men and women of bossa nova. Already tanked up with Scotch, and with a voice (full of bossa) that the O Cruzeiro article called “astringent,” the man who wrote “Brazil” asked, “Hey, Lyyyra, sooo whaaat exactly iiis Booossa Nooova?”

Lyra was left speechless and unable to reply, so he passed the buck to Bôscoli: “Go on, Ronaldo.” The latter deliberated that, well, “Philosophically, bossa nova is a state of mind” (this expression would later catch on) and that Chaplin, Picasso, Prokofiev, Debussy—”maybe even Beethoven,” Ronaldo ventured—all of them “had been bossa nova in their time.” Jobim gave Ary a demonstration and played “Fotografia” (Photograph)—only with a foxtrot rhythm. And Alayde Costa, whom the others called Ameixa (Plum), spoke from the heart: “I think that bossa nova is any music that contains flats and sharps.”

Ary Barroso, with exceptionally good humor, given the circumstances, sighed deeply: “Ahhh … Now I understand …”

They all played, sang, or gave their opinions to Ary and O Cruzeiro. The meeting swallowed up the hours and was only interrupted, as usual, around midnight, when Bené’s wife, Dulce Nunes, served her traditional stroganoff—a popular dish at the time that had been introduced to Brazil by Baron Von Stuckart at the Vogue nightclub. The stroganoff was a must on Thursdays at Bené and Dulce’s house, when the bossa nova crowd gathered in the couple’s well-equipped music room. While it was being digested, the music continued, with the additional participation of the lady of the house as a singer—she was much admired by everyone, including for her voice.

Bené Nunes, an old-time pianist, was the godfather of bossa nova. (He was also President Juscelino Kubitschek’s private pianist: he livened up all of the soirées at the Palácio do Catete). That was one of many gatherings he hosted for the gang and perhaps, most importantly: it got bossa nova a sensational ten-page spread in O Cruzeiro.

Dulce and Bené were the first and best-loved hosts of the new musical movement. But it didn’t take long for others to appear, eager to receive in their own drawing rooms what they considered to be the Brazilian music that best complemented their carpets and wood paneling. In no time at all, bossa nova could be seen and heard in the apartments and homes of socialites like those of Irene Singery, in Avenida Atlântica; Bianca Janner, in Rua Marquês de São Vicente; Baby Bocayuva Cunha, in Avenida Rui Barbosa; Senator Vitorino Freire, father of the future lyricist Lula Freire, in Jardim Botânico; the lawyer Nelson Motta, father of the young Nelsinho (also a future lyricist), in Rua Paissandu; and even the poet Augusto Frederico Schmidt, who would make complex comparisons between bossa nova and a live white rooster that he had in his living room. “Bossa nova is modern man’s encounter with eternal mankind,” Schmidt pontificated. “He’s like this rooster: calm and peaceful, except when he looks at himself in the mirror.”

None of the young men and women really understood what the poet was trying to say, but even if there had been the slightest possibility of comprehension, it was soon obliterated by the silver trays, laden with colorful dishes and sparkling beverages, that the waiter balanced above the heads of the guests. Within a short time, bossa nova became so fought over that its protagonists began to enjoy certain luxuries, before really learning how to handle them. One of the problems was the miscellaneous class of people who comprised bossa nova: there was a diplomat (Vinícius), serious musicians like Jobim, a painfully shy young girl (Nara), and musicians who had a wide scope of experience in the nightly inferninhos (little hells).

Of course, these musicians tried to do the best they could. At a reception at the Argentine embassy in Botafogo at the beginning of 1960, drummer Milton Banana found himself sitting between two ladies from the diplomatic corps at dinner. As he had nothing to say to either one of them, he kept his eyes on his plate. The lady on his right began to talk with the guest seated on her other side and casually turned her back to him. When the food began to be served, Banana, realizing that the lady hadn’t seen the waiter, tried to attract her attention. But he did so by well-intentionally, but painfully, elbowing her in the ribs, while asking politely, “Would you like some chicken, ma’am?”

There were also rumors that at the smart bossa nova gatherings, belongings such as silverware, ashtrays, and other assorted objects would habitually vanish from the apartments. The journalists who were part of the bossa nova “in” crowd denied that the musicians were responsible for those disappearances, which did in fact happen. And it’s likely they really were innocent, because many of them were already dazzled enough by the fact that they could now walk into a party using the front door, like normal guests. The liberal attitude of the bossa nova hosts even permitted guests at the most intimate gatherings to sit on the floor, where the young men and women were most accustomed to playing. This inspired the envious baião composer, Humberto Teixeira, to disdainfully define bossa nova as “carpet music.”

Teixeira was not the first to oppose the movement. Antônio Maria loosed his dogs on the new music, but he had his reasons for doing so. In all the interviews that were requested of them—and at first, this seemed to happen just about every fifteen minutes—Bôscoli, Menescal, Lyra, and even Jobim would brand the music “of the past” as somber, glum, and melancholic, as well as downright defeatist. For them, bossa nova had come to free them from “Não, eu não posso lembrar que te amei” (No, I can’t remember that I loved you) (from “Caminhemos” [Let’s Walk] by Herivelto Martins) with the manly and emphatic affirmation by Vinícius in “Eu SEI que vou te amar / Por toda minha vida eu VOU te amar” (I KNOW I will love you / For the rest of my life I WILL love you). The example not to be followed, which they loved to quote, was the inevitable “Ninguém me ama / Ninguém me quer” (Nobody loves me / Nobody cares), by Antônio Maria.

Maria was annoyed not just by this; he also did not appreciate being suddenly relegated to an obscure corner of the past. Hell, in 1960 he was just thirty-nine, which didn’t exactly make him a contemporary of Methuselah. And besides, he wasn’t able to discern the kind of musical talent in those kids that gave them the right to belittle the work of their elders, like João Pernambuco, Fernando Lobo, Haroldo Barbosa, Wilson Batista, Sílvio Caldas, Herivelto Martins, and well, why not he himself, Antônio Maria. And when had his very old friend Vinícius stopped wearing short pants? It must have been back at the end of World War I, since he had been born in 1912! Maria was hooked by the controversy and challenged the entire bossa nova crowd to a debate on his program Preto no branco (Black on White) on TV Rio.

Vinícius was abroad, in Montevideo, which freed him from getting involved in this awkward situation. But everyone else who could defend the bossa nova flag withdrew one by one: Jobim, João Gilberto, Menescal, even Bôscoli. The burden ended up falling on the shoulders of none other than André Midani. He went to the television station, and in a Portuguese whose every word appeared to be accented on the final syllable, he faced the enormous and not very well groomed Maria. Midani justified the new music in terms of a “new market” and spoke of how the bossa nova musicians were talented, exemplary youngsters with no vices, who were merely a little eccentric. Practically the only thing he didn’t say was that they all bathed daily and that Menescal’s favorite flavor of chewing gum was cinnamon.

Antônio Maria was not convinced, and continued with his jibes in his daily column in O Jornal. Ronaldo Bôscoli retaliated by inventing two terrible nicknames for him which began to circulate around the nightclubs. The first was “Galak,” after a brand of white chocolate that had just come out. The other was “Brown Eminence.” Both were references to the fact that Antônio Maria wasn’t exactly one of the world’s fairest people. The nicknames must have been construed by Maria as an affront to his white soul because, one night, he went to look for Ronaldo Bôscoli in Beco das Garrafas (Bottles Lane) to ask him to explain himself.

To face Maria with nothing more than his own bare hands meant that Bôscoli would have more than likely ended up in a funeral chapel. And that was what was indeed fated to happen when the ample columnist brushed past Ronaldo in the doorway of the Little Club, threatening to push him around a little, and Bôscoli considered the implications of reacting. Just as the two of them were about to come to blows, Aloysio de Oliveira, who was amusing himself by watching the spectacle, decided to intervene: he unzipped his fly and urinated on Antônio Maria’s shoe. It was the last thing Maria was expecting. He looked down at his shoe as if he were wearing gaiters. It was like a scene from Laurel and Hardy. The three of them exploded into hysterics and went into the Little Club to have a drink. But Maria continued to dislike bossa nova, and Ronaldo went on calling him “Galak.”

The fuss made by the press over bossa nova had the downside of branding all music that came before it “old,” and it was natural for those who had written it to feel as if their toes were being stepped on. When asked his opinion, Sílvio Caldas tried to sound superior: “It’s a passing phase, initiated by kids who are the very model of the disobedience and ill manners of the current era. It will pass, because it lacks the value that only authenticity confers.”

But he must have been worried, because when Cyro Monteiro, another true representative of the old guard, declared his support for the young people, Sílvio, offended, branded him “a samba deviant.” He also made a point of announcing his retirement for the twelfth time.

In São Paulo, the conductor Gabriel Migliori, composer of the sound track to O cangaceiro (The Bandit), was noncommittal: “To me, bossa nova seems to be all about the third sex.”

The society women in Rio de Janeiro obviously didn’t agree with him, because they engaged in catfights among themselves in order to attract the attention of the movement’s leading men, like Jobim, Menescal, Bôscoli, Lyra, and Normando, who at the time were no longer attempting to disappoint André Midani as much in that department—at least Bôscoli wasn’t.

Jobim, who was the most coveted, but was kept on a tight leash by his wife, Teresa, only strayed on rare occasions, as happened with French starlet Mylène Démongeot. Not all the girls knew that he was married. When one of them draped herself over his piano, like a crocheted runner, he was unable to resist saying to the girl: “I wrote this chord for you …”

The girl’s bosom heaved, but when she languidly suggested, “Tommm, take me hoooome?,” he quickly came to his senses.

“Just a minute, let me go and phone Teresa …”

The most classic incident of this kind in the annals of bossa nova is attributed to Normando Santos, who was by then an instructor at the Lyra and Menescal’s guitar academy, and who had as one of his students the Second Lady of the country, Maria Teresa, wife of Vice-President João Goulart. According to him, she invited him on one occasion to see “a little film at the Palácio at four o’clock.” All excited, Normando turned up at the Palácio cinema in Cinelândia at the appointed hour, bought two tickets and waited for her by the door. An hour later, he decided that his illustrous student had stood him up, and went home. The next day, he found out that she had evidently been waiting for him at the Palácio Laranjeiras (the Vice-President’s office/residence) and not at the Palácio cinema.

Bossa nova had adversaries in all walks of life, from the press to musicians, but even among the conductors, the offensive Gabriel Migliori was in a minority. The only important colleague of his to back him up was Oswaldo Borba, who lacked the courtesy to hide his aversion to bossa nova even in front of Aloysio de Oliveira, who hired him at Odeon. Everyone else—Léo Peracchi, Lyrio Panicalli, Radamés Gnattali, and, of course, Lindolfo Gaya and Moacyr Santos—openly supported or approved of the new music. The young conductors of São Paulo, like Rogério Duprat, Diogo Pacheco, and Julio Medaglia, were wholehearted fans, perhaps because, like Jobim and Severino Filho, of Os Cariocas, they had been students of the German composer, Hans Joachim Koellreutter, who was based in Rio. And another conductor, Guerra Peixe, Menescal’s former teacher, provided wholehearted endorsement when he expressed his opinion: “Bossa nova is like a harmonious insecticide against the harshness of batuques and the castrating quality of boleros.”

The unfortunate bolero was the greater villain, and bossa nova employed the strategy of pointing its weapons at the musical genre. By doing so, it made a point of saying that it was on the side of the purists, and thus neutralized the attacks that were being launched upon it, accusing it of being nothing more than a jazz rip-off. Ronaldo Bôscoli even went as far as to announce in public: “It’s ridiculous that the most popular singer in Brazil should sing boleros.”

The target was Anísio Silva, who caused tears to flow like waterfalls with sentimental songs like “Sonhando contigo” (Dreaming with You). At the time, words like tacky and show-off didn’t exist, and the most insulting thing you could call a singer was Shanghai—an expression coined by society columnist Ibrahim Sued meaning unrefined, tasteless. Anyone who had any taste had to agree with Bôscoli’s opinion of Anísio Silva, even if they privately didn’t feel, as he did, that João Gilberto should have been the most popular singer in Brazil. What Bôscoli wasn’t expecting, however, was to hear a surprising statement from João Gilberto himself, under his breath and almost embarrassed: “I like Anísio. He’s not like the others.”

What he meant to say was that Anísio Silva, although he undeniably sang boleros, did not have that same tiresome consistency that seemed to be the trademark of his genre. But João Gilberto went on. He was also a fan of Dalva de Oliveira. “Dalvinha has perfect pitch,” he said. Bôscoli heard him and was appalled, and felt it best not to spread João Gilberto’s unorthodox opinions. They wouldn’t be good for bossa nova business. If anyone had told him in 1960 that less than ten years later João Gilberto would be recording downright Mexican boleros like “Farolito” (Little Lighthouse) and “Bésame mucho” (Kiss Me Often), he would have denied it with the utmost vehemence—but deep down, perhaps he wasn’t really so sure.

But however hard Bôscoli tried to deflect the bullets, the old guard had bossa nova in its sights, and the new genre had to be careful not to bring the entire artillery down on its head at once. After all, the recording companies—including Odeon—were in the hands of men whom he had labeled “moldy figs.”

“We’re not criticizing the old guard for being old, but for what they did wrong,” Bôscoli argued. “You’re the reason we’re here,” Menescal fawned. Tom Jobim cited the late Custódio Mesquita as one of his heroes, and explained: “Bossa isn’t new or old. Ary Barroso and Dorival Caymmi are fine examples of bossa from all the eras.” Except for the gentle Ataulpho Alves, who remained upset at being called “antiquated” by André Midani, the rest of them calmed down for a while.

The soft-soaping of Ary Barroso, however, was interminable. The old composer went on television several times to announce that Tom Jobim was “the greatest Brazilian composer in the last few decades.” It’s a fact, though, that in the Fiorentina restaurant, after many whiskeys, Ary’s opinion did seem to change. But everyone knew that, sitting at the table that was saved for him in the restaurant, Ary’s opinion didn’t count for much. Like on the many occasions he insisted on driving home, even though this meant almost certain death. One night, a friend of his had to confiscate his car keys and rage: “Hell, Ary, you’re in no fit state to even direct a Brazilian film!”

As for Caymmi, he was a natural ally of bossa nova because João Gilberto had revitalized his music, singing it in a modern style. He was also João and Bôscoli’s neighbor. Bôscoli would pick up Caymmi at home to take him to the television station. On one of those occasions, Caymmi awoke late and practically went from his bed directly into Bôscoli’s car. The latter asked him, “Aren’t you going to comb your hair?”

And Caymmi replied, “No, I combed it before I left Bahia.”

“Doralice,” by Caymmi and Antonio Almeida, was one of the songs that João Gilberto was going to include on the record that he would start recording at the end of March. Os Anjos do Inferno had released the song in 1945 and it was a huge hit at the time—at least, it was one of the most-requested records played over Mr. Emicles’s sound system in young João Gilberto’s Juazeiro. (He loved it, and played it until the town reached for the Alka-Seltzer.) But since then, “Doralice” had not been recorded very often and had almost been forgotten. Except for by João, who still remembered Léo Vilar’s arrangement well, especially the end with that pa-rum-pa-pa which the Anjos did, which he wanted to reproduce.

Another song that became a part of his discography was “I’m Looking over a Four-Leaf Clover,” by Mort Dixon and Harry Woods. It was an old hit from 1927, but had made its way back into the charts with Al Jolson in 1950. João heard it every day at the Murray, first sung by Jolson, then by Russ Morgan, and finally by Nilo Sérgio, his friend at the Murray, who made a Portuguese version and recorded it under the title “Trevo de quatro folhas” (Four-Leaf Clover). Nilo Sérgio would later become famous with another cover song, “Cavaleiros do céu” (Ghost Riders in the Sky), and now had his own recording company, Musidisc. But what João Gilberto was really anxious to record was a little thing he had remembered, and had been practicing for six months: “O pato” (The Duck).

“Ronaldo, see if you can hear me: ‘O pa-to. O pa-to.’”

João Gilberto left the door of Ronaldo Bôscoli’s apartment open and went to the far end of the hallway, by the elevator. Bôscoli had to stand at the other end, inside the apartment, in order to be as far away from João Gilberto as possible, and see if he could hear him, while the latter whispered as softly as he could, “O pa-to. O pa-to.”

João Gilberto wanted to find out how softly he could enunciate and still be heard, using the hallway as a type of megaphone. And this was how he practiced “O pato.” But Bôscoli’s neighbors weren’t to know that, and at first, they were startled by that man who hung around at the end of the hallway interminably whispering, “O pa-to. O pa-to.”

But they got used to it. The one who took longer to get used to it was Bôscoli, who remarked to his three or four roommates, “If that duck isn’t recorded soon, he’ll die of old age.”

“O pato” was a relic from the 1948 repertoire of Os Garotos da Lua. It had been brought to Rádio Tupi and shown to Milton, the leader of the group, by one of its writers, a tall, elegant, and pleasant mulatto named Jaime Silva. Milton had never seen him before, either at the radio station or at any of the other hangouts of singers at the time, like the Café Atlântida or Zica’s bar. Silva said that the samba had been written by him and his collaborating partner, Neuza Teixeira, who wasn’t with him. Milton listened to the song and liked it immediately. “O pato” was incorporated into the repertoire of Os Garotos da Lua, who sang it innumerable times at Rádio Tupi and at their performances, when Jonas was still their crooner. But they never recorded it, not even on acetate. When Jonas had to leave the group to make way for João Gilberto, the song remained on the group’s books for a while, and João sang it to death with them until they decided to retire it. Now he was finally going to record it.

Bôscoli thought he would go mad from hearing “O pato” so often in the apartment, but he had already resigned himself to it, it was for a good cause. Before this happened, though, he unwittingly postponed his suffering when he went with João Gilberto to Nara’s apartment and introduced him to a friend of hers named Astrud Weinert. On meeting Astrud, João felt a sound deep inside, like the gong that opened films produced by the Rank organization. “O pato” suddenly had to compete with the instant passion he felt for the girl. Bôscoli thought this was great and decided to try and play match-maker. After all, everyone in the bossa nova world had paired up. He was Nara’s fiancé; Menescal was dating Norma Bengell; Carlinhos Lyra had various love affairs; Vinícius had already started his rotation of wives. Only João was partnerless.

It wouldn’t be easy to encourage this love affair. Astrud, who was twenty years old, was a former student of the demanding Colégio de Aplicação and one of the three daughters of Mr. Weinert, a retired Rio-based German professor who gave private English lessons. Astrud’s sisters were named Eda and Iduna, and they were all named after goddesses of German folklore. Astrud was born in Bahia, when her father worked there, but moved to Rio when she was eight years old and had always lived on Avenida Atlântica. No Bahian had ever caught her attention simply for being Bahian, and João Gilberto, who wasn’t Siegfried, impressed her even less than any of Nara’s friends. But she wasn’t prepared for the persuasive powers of that particular Bahian. It was easy for him once he learned that she also liked to sing.

One of his ploys was to form an imaginary vocal trio with himself, Astrud, and Chet Baker, gathering around the stereo and singing incessantly “There’ll Never Be Another You.” Another was to do what he no longer ever did (at least, not for free) for anyone: accompany her on his guitar. João had other things going for him, like Astrud’s mother thinking he was the best singer ever, and the fact that Astrud was also starting to consider a career. He won her over, and the two of them were married at the beginning of 1960. It was a quick, simple civil ceremony, at a registry office in Copacabana, with author Jorge Amado as the best man. The future would reveal that João might change wives, but he would always be faithful to his best man.

With his new responsibilities as a married man, which included a child on the way and the obligation of paying rent (for the couple’s apartment in Rua Visconde de Pirajá in Ipanema), João Gilberto found himself doing things that later would seem unimaginable, even to him. Like, for example, singing on television at the slightest request of popular programs of the time.

It was usual for him to be one of the regular guests on O bom Tom, Carlos Thiré and Walter Arruda’s weekly show on São Paulo’s channel 5, “hosted” by Jobim. But it wasn’t quite as common for him to be on TV Rio’s showy Noite de gala (Gala Night), despite the fact that one of the producers was Abelardo Figueiredo, the orchestra was conducted by Jobim, and one of the production assistants was his former roommate, Miéle—all friends of his. TV Rio took itself far more seriously than it really deserved, and didn’t feel that the bossa nova gang met their stringent requirements of seriousness. But in a production slip-up, Miéle cast João in a sketch adapted from The Red Balloon, a recent French film for children that everyone loved. In the sketch, João starred opposite a little girl and sang for her. One of the songs he sang was, strangely enough, “Day by Day,” an American song by Axel Stordahl and Sammy Cahn—in English. He did this because he was convinced that the blonde girl was American. It wasn’t in the script, but as it had been a Sinatra hit, Miéle let it go, and even thought it was good. Besides, the sketch was aired live, so once they were on the air, that was that.

Musical productions that were aired live on television gave the producers gray hairs because many musicians had the terrible habit of not showing up. When this happened, a substitute had to be roped into doing the show, even if he or she was literally lassoed and brought into the studio. This is what happened when they were one guitarist short on the Cássio Muniz Show, directed by Maurício Sherman on TV Tupi. The guitarist was going to accompany one of the many anonymous singers that Tupi had “discovered,” who usually remained anonymous nevertheless. Another production assistant, Carlos Alberto de Souza, asked for twenty minutes to find a substitute. Sherman agreed and, shortly afterward, Souza returned with João Gilberto, who accompanied the singer and left with cash for his performance in his raincoat pocket. Unfortunately, he had had to play wearing his raincoat because underneath it he was still in his pajamas.

His marriage to Astrud forced João to do things that today he’d pay not to have to do. During his engagement, he also had a weekly television show on Sunday nights in São Paulo; Musical Três Leões (Three Lions Musical), that was also on TV Paulista. The producers were the same as those from O bom Tom: Carlos Thiré and Walter Arruda, who scheduled the show so that for four weeks, a particular musician or singer was the only featured artist, around whom the half-hour program would revolve. That year, 1959, João Gilberto’s attendance was flawless during his entire four-week run. He caught a plane in Rio right away and went to São Paulo, where he stayed at the Hotel Lord, which was almost right next to TV Paulista in Rua das Palmeiras, and did everything they asked him.

Mind you, they only asked him to do one thing: sing. On the air, a voice offscreen (that of Arruda himself) asked him about his career or current events, and João Gilberto gave his replies in the form of songs —the entire repertoire of Chega de saudade and bits and pieces that he was preparing for his second album. In the four shows in which he starred, a total of two hours on the air, he didn’t have to say a single word that wasn’t part of the lyrics of his songs. “The remuneration was a joke,” remembers Walter Arruda, “but to João, it must have been a fortune. The show bombed in the ratings, but this never seemed to inconvenience the sponsor, Abraão Kazinsky, owner of the store Lojas Três Leões.” João Gilberto gave them fewer headaches than the next artist featured on Musical Três Leões: the pianist and sensation of Beco das Garrafas, Sérgio Mendes. Every week, Arruda had to leave São Paulo and go and fetch him from Niterói (near Rio but across the bay), where the timorous Sérgio lived, get on the plane to São Paulo with him, and then take him back again, holding his hand during the flight.

Neither the spectre of the rent nor Astrud’s pregnancy prevented João Gilberto from continuing to do things for the simple pleasure of doing them, or from settling accounts with the past. Like the Lux soap jingle he recorded for an advertising agency one time he went to São Paulo for Tom’s show. A PR man and composer, Heitor Carrillo, was one of the guests on O bom Tom. He sang his hit “O vendedor de laranjas” (The Orange Seller) on the air, and, behind the scenes, he showed João the piece of music he had written for the soap commercial: “Movie stars use Lux / It’s the soap you should use / Radiate more beaut / Be your own movie star / Use Lux soap.” The agency’s campaign called for three versions with different singers, and two of them had already been chosen: Agostinho dos Santos and Tony Campello.

To Carrillo’s surprise, João Gilberto insisted on being the third. He was already famous for “Chega de saudade,” and singers with his status didn’t usually offer their talent for promoting soap. When remuneration was mentioned, João Gilberto even changed the subject, merely wanting to know the time and place for the recording. The next day, he arrived punctually at the Magisom studio in Rua Barão de Itapetininga with the little song learned by heart.

The recording of the thirty-second jingle took almost four hours to complete, because João kept continually interrupting to whisper: “This song is so pretty …”

Carrillo lowered his eyes modestly, but the studio hours were mounting, and the agency directors were getting nervous on the other side of the glass partition. Finally, one of the versions was deemed perfect by both João Gilberto and the agency. When they mentioned money, he insisted that it was nothing. The director of the agency argued that this would cause them problems, because the client had already paid and the money had to be used. If it wasn’t, they would have to explain why. But João refused to accept anything. Someone had a brilliant idea: why not give him a present? When they saw that he would perhaps not put up quite as much resistance to this, they took him to the Di Giorgio guitar store in Largo do Arouche and told him to choose one. They were unaware that João Gilberto was merely enjoying the luxury of being able to record a jingle for free—and not for his lunch, as he had a few years earlier.

At any rate, he must have kicked his heels when he found out that his jingle and that of Tony Campello were approved by the client—and that of his rival Agostinho dos Santos was rejected.

While João Gilberto’s voice and guitar were touting the excellence of “the soap used by the stars” on Rádio Nacional, during commercial breaks between soap operas, the very same voice and guitar were in the Odeon studio recording the album that would be called O amor, o sorriso e a flor, which would put the stamp of authenticity on bossa nova. On March 28 he recorded “Meditação” (Meditation), by Jobim and Mendonça, “Só em teus braços” (Only in Your Arms), by Jobim alone, and “Se é tarde me perdoa” (Forgive Me if It’s Too Late), by Lyra and Bôscoli. All three were recorded with an orchestra. And he might have recorded others had he not received a phone call from Astrud telling him that his cat (a beautiful black cat, a stray, called simply Gato [Cat]) had fallen out of the window.

Gato had dozed off on the windowsill and fallen several floors down. João had been afraid this would happen one day and had continually asked Astrud to keep the window closed. João was heartbroken by the accident, interrupted the recording, and flew home in a taxi. Astrud had picked Gato up, still breathing, and they took him to the vet, but the little creature died on the way. That day, in the studio, the orchestra musicians spread the tale around that João Gilberto’s cat had committed suicide because it could no longer stand to hear him practicing “O pato.”

Two days later, having recovered from the shock of losing Gato, he returned to the studio and recorded “Corcovado” (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars), by Jobim, and “Discussão” (Discussion), by Jobim and Mendonça, with the same orchestra. But João didn’t hear the musicians’ tale about Gato (which, much to his disgust, would haunt him forever) right away—he only learned about it years later in Mexico, when it was recounted to him by the singer Leny Andrade. It was just as well that the musicians respected his mourning for Gato because in the days that followed he completed the album in just four sessions: on April 1, he recorded “Um abraço no Bonfá” (A Hug for Bonfá), an instrumental tribute to his friend (“Have you ever noticed the size of Bonfá’s hands?,” he used to remark), “Doralice,” and the song he had learned in Belo Horizonte, “Amor certinho” (Sure-Fire Love). On April 4, he recorded “Samba de uma nota só” (One Note Samba) and, finally, “O pato.” On April 5, he recorded Jobim’s “Outra vez” (One More Time), which Dick Farney had released in 1954 and which Elizeth had recorded in 1958 with João on guitar. And he finished the record on April 8, with “Trevo de quatro folhas,” “in an atmosphere of peace and birdsong,” as Jobim wrote on the album sleeve.

And indeed it must have been. While preparing “Corcovado,” whose first verses would be the most remembered and best loved in bossa nova for the next thirty years, something bothered João Gilberto. He started to sing and soon stopped: “Um cigarro e um violão / Este amor, uma canção” (A cigarette and a guitar / This love, a song). He tried it again and couldn’t do it. Then he finally realized what was going on and said to Jobim: “Tom, this thing about ‘a cigarette and a guitar.’ It shouldn’t be that way. Cigarettes are bad for you. What if you change it to ‘a little corner, a guitar’?”

Jobim, who smoked about three packs a day, agreed to João’s suggestion, as it had been years since the latter had smoked anything. In fact, since his first stay at Dadainha’s house in Diamantina, João had become extremely anti-marijuana, blaming it for all his initial failures. He wanted nothing more to do with it. One of Bôscoli’s friends, a funny guy nicknamed “Ilha Rasa” (Flat Island), used marijuana. João Gilberto didn’t like it when Ilha Rasa came to the apartment and lit up a fino, but he never said anything; he’d lock himself in the bathroom or go outside. He had become a good boy.

Of the six songs by Antonio Carlos Jobim on O amor, o sorriso e a flor, three were his alone and three had been written in collaboration with Newton Mendonça: “Samba de uma nota só,” “Meditação,” and “Discussão.” Few people noticed, but it was a record made without Vinícius’s collaboration. There were no problems between Jobim and Vinícius. The poet had merely spent most of 1959 in Montevideo, working for the Itamaraty, torturing himself for being abroad while the music scene was taking off in Rio. This was the only reason the two of them hadn’t done much together. It was great for Mendonça, though, because without Vinícius there to hire him out, Jobim was able to return to working with his oldest partner and friend, from whom he had been somewhat distant over the last few years.

“One-Note Samba,” like “Desafinado” (Off-Key), became a bossa nova anthem from the outset—a type of bill of principles that musicologists examined in minute detail. It’s a mystery how it ever became a popular hit. Never had so few beats inspired such long discussions. The concept of “only one base” (an expression used in the lyrics) was João Gilberto’s idea, to explain where the syncopation of his beat fell. But what, then, did “only one note” mean, if João Gilberto didn’t play notes, but chords? And for some, “Samba de uma nota só” inconveniently resembled the little-known verse of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.” In short, it was very confusing. For heaven’s sake, why didn’t they just go and ask coauthor Newton Mendonça?

Because nobody knew who he was.

13

Love, a Smile, and a Flower

In with the in crowd: João Gilberto at the last amateur bossa nova concert.

Manchete Press

Newton Mendonça was bossa nova’s greatest mystery. When he died on November 11, 1960, only thirty-three years old, many of the movement’s participants realized that they had barely gotten to know him. Few had even seen him, and almost nobody was close to him. To the public, his was just another name that appeared in parentheses next to that of Jobim on several of the songs on João Gilberto and Sylvinha Telles’s records. (And even then, on the 78 r.p.m. label of “Desafinado” [Off-Key] by João Gilberto, his name appeared as Milton Mendonça.) Not even his fans could have confirmed that he had brown hair and brown eyes, was slightly overweight, was not very tall, wore glasses, and preferred peteca to soccer. Nobody saw him in the university shows and he didn’t participate in the bossa nova social life. (Carlinhos Lyra only spoke to him once, at Bené Nunes’s house.) His photograph never appeared among the dozens of articles about bossa nova in 1959 and 1960. Reporters did not seek him out for interviews. When he died, his obituary fit in a single short column on the national news pages. His burial, at the Caju cemetery, was uneventful.

Years passed. “Desafinado” and “One Note Samba” became classics, resistant to the effects of time and even to the “death” of bossa nova. For many, they were just Jobim’s songs. Nobody ever made much of an effort to ensure that the name Newton Mendonça emerged from the shadows.

Until now.

With the rebirth of interest in bossa nova in the last few years, people have begun to wonder who Newton Mendonça was, why he wrote so little, and why he died so young. As few of his contemporaries are able to answer those questions—and not all of them have the patience to impart the information—the fantasy of a possible curtain of silence surrounding his life has evolved. “Why do people change the subject whenever Newton Mendonça is mentioned?”—frequently garners the response, “You’re right. Why indeed?” With such fertile ground for rumors, even the circumstances surrounding his death have become suspect.

To make matters worse, unchallenged theoreticians, who were more lazy than truly investigative, radiographed the challenging formats of “Desafinado” and “One Note Samba” and thought they were doing Newton Mendonça a huge favor by reviving him as “the first great bossa nova lyricist.” They took it as a given that, if Jobim wrote the music, then Mendonça wrote the lyrics. And in doing so, they put an academic seal of approval on the theory that Mendonça was only a lyricist, which isn’t true by any means. It never occurred to these theoreticians that, although unlikely, it could have been the other way around, that is, that Mendonça had written the music and Jobim the lyrics to these songs. Or that they could have had a different arrangement altogether, that Jobim and Mendonça had an equal hand in writing both the music and the lyrics. And that by canonizing Mendonça as a lyricist, they were being unfair to both Mendonça and Jobim.

At the end of the fifties, Newton Mendonça wasn’t making any progress as an evening pianist. According to his employment book, the Mocambo nightclub was paying him six thousand cruzeiros a month in 1953—not a vast fortune. The last entry in the book, by the Caroussel nightclub in 1958, records that Mendonça was making two hundred cruzeiros a night, which theoretically adds up to the same six thousand a month, had they been worth the same as they were five years previously. And that’s only if he didn’t miss work once. The other difference is that, in 1958, at least his work was being acknowledged outside the nightclubs. He had already been recorded by several singers; his collaboration with Jobim in “Foi a noite” (It Was the Night) was a hit by Sylvinha Telles; and before he died in 1960, he witnessed—and “witnessed” is indeed the appropriate term—the frenzy caused by João Gilberto with “Desafinado” and “One Note Samba.”

But Mendonça did not participate in that frenzy, not even peripherally. For several reasons, including his unsociable manner and overwhelming pride, he didn’t know how to capitalize on the craze for bossa nova in order to increase his fee for his evening services and make the nightclubs pay him a decent salary—given that he insisted on continuing to work at them. And in those days, Brazilian copyright laws were little more than a rumor. The fact is that none of Newton Mendonça’s hits made him any real money while he was still alive.

He was a private and introverted man who kept his diplomas under his mattress and whose only pastime during the day was to play peteca on the beach—a very popular sport in those days. He was jealously protective of his friends and did not like strangers in his circle. In 1959, bossa nova attacked him on all those fronts. His best and oldest friend, Jobim, over whom he had, up until that point, considerable influence, became a mini-celebrity. From that moment on, it became difficult for Mendonça, on finishing his nightclub shift at four in the morning, to persuade Jobim to defy his wife Teresa and get out of bed to meet him at a bar in Rua Teixeira de Melo in Ipanema like he used to. Newton had already resigned himself to sharing Jobim with Vinícius, who had also become a friend of his, but after “Desafinado,” Tom became everyone’s property in the competitive world of bossa nova. And to cap it off, it was Tom, and not him, who became the darling of the press—as if it could have turned out any other way. But Mendonça resented it and was accusatory toward the journalists: “They only want to know about Tom,” he complained to his wife, Cyrene. Later, she would have a different explanation: “Newton frightened reporters.”

Had he been interviewed by one of them, Mendonça probably would have had a lot to say. Like the things he would tell Cyrene when he was chastized by her for the state of financial hardship in which they lived: “I don’t write music for the cleaner to sing as she’s sweeping the room.”

This could only be a malicious reference to the story of the maid who had inspired Jobim to write the dazzlingly successful “Chega de saudade.” But he also acknowledged that his ambition to make a name for himself was undiminished and that he was growing increasingly irritated at Jobim’s jokes, like the one the latter made in 1956 at the Posto 5 nightclub, where Mendonça worked. Jobim walked in with the young journalist José Carlos Oliveira, took Mendonça’s place at the piano and said, in all seriousness: “Carlinhos, listen to this samba-canção that I’ve just finished writing.”

He then played “Foi a noite,” which was his and Mendonça’s, of course. Ronaldo Bôscoli, who was present and recognized the music, made an effort not to laugh, but Mendonça didn’t think it was very funny. This could have become some sort of sick game between the two collaborating partners. A few years later, in 1959, Mendonça ran into Tito Madi in Beco das Garrafas and made him go into Ma Griffe nightclub, where he was now working. “Tito, look at what I’ve just finished writing,” Mendonça said. He sat down at the piano and played him a revolutionary samba. Tito Madi was practically motionless. He couldn’t have known it, but he had just heard, firsthand, “One Note Samba”—the melody, harmony, and rhythm, complete except for the lyrics.

Jobim and Mendonça wrote “One Note Samba” at the end of 1959, once again at Mendonça’s apartment. But this time they did so with a more serious attitude, without all the fun and games that had surrounded the writing of “Desafinado.” Even so, they were unable to resist poking a little fun at Ary Barroso, by starting the lyrics with the line “Eis aqui este sambinha / Feito numa nota só” (This is a little samba / Composed of only one note). Barroso, who truly believed in the nationalistic bragging that he penned, was perhaps the only Brazilian composer from the old guard who never flirted with foreign rhythms. In his amateur night radio shows, Ary vigorously defended the sanctity of the samba, and became a tiger whenever some poor, ignorant fool announced that he was going to sing a sambinha (a little samba), sometimes one of his, Ary’s, very own great big sambas. Both Jobim and Mendonça admired Ary, but they resented the blows that the man who wrote “Brazil” directed against bossa nova at the tables of the Fiorentina. They didn’t want to provoke him. By understating their own achievement, classifying their samba as a sambinha, they actually hoped to win him over—and neutralize his opinion of bossa nova. They succeeded.

When “One Note Samba” was recorded by João Gilberto in April of the following year (1960), bossa nova had already become a national craze, but this didn’t change Newton Mendonça’s lifestyle. His name was relatively well-known on record labels—despite receiving acknowledgment as Milton on “Desafinado”—but his presence remained as much in the shadows as it had in the days of “Foi a noite.” “Desafinado” was now played on all the radio stations, but Mendonça was not basking in his success to the fullest extent. The Ma Griffe was practically a whorehouse and was still paying him poorly. Everything could have been different had he not suffered his first heart attack in May of 1959. The evening before, having returned home in the early hours, he had complained of pains in his arm, and a tingling sensation in his hands. “Last night, I played for business’s sake,” he told Cyrene.

It wasn’t the first warning signal, and he knew that his family, his father and sister in particular, had a history of heart problems. But those alarms did not prevent him from continuing to participate in abysmal alcohol marathons with his gang in Ipanema. One evening, after draining the supply of Georges Aubert cognac that he had at home, he sent his maid out to buy another bottle at the corner liquor store. The girl returned with the news: “They said they don’t sell João Gilberto.”

It was a natural mistake to make. João Gilberto was the name that was most often repeated in that house. After his shift at the nightclub, Mendonça would go to someone’s house, booze it up, smoke the second-to-last cigarette of his four daily packs of Lincolns, and collapse onto a sofa. He was treating his heart like a punching bag.

Mendonça wasn’t able to thwart his obvious symptoms and had a heart attack while leaving work at the Ma Griffe. He was rushed to the first-aid clinic in Praça do Lido and the following day was admitted to the Civil Servants’ Hospital. He stayed there for three weeks. When he was discharged, the doctors gave him a prescription that he felt was excessive: he had to immediately stop smoking, drinking, and playing peteca on the beach; moderate the amount of sex he had; and not work for six months. Mendonça more or less fulfilled the first requirement—he stopped smoking whenever anyone was watching—and violated all the other recommendations with religious fervor. Less than two months after his heart attack, he returned to playing piano in the late evenings again, at the Carrousel nightclub; he chose the Veloso, in Rua Montenegro, as his mandatory bar stop on the way to work or wherever; and he continued to play peteca, although now in secret, in Copacabana. The very idea of the mature composer of “Meditação” being forced to play peteca in secret is tragically sad, but that’s what happened.

Regarding sex, Newton was even less Solomonic. He accepted the doctor’s advice that he and Cyrene should sleep in separate rooms to spare his heart from turning somersaults. But he did not spare it from the intense hammering it took on the occasions, either real or imaginary, when he went to see a prostitute outside his home. His work colleagues were ladies of the night, which opened up a large range of choices for him when he wanted a little fun. But what probably overloaded his emotional senses was his capacity for fantasizing about having love affairs, like the torch he carried for the sambista Francineth and especially for the rock starlet Sônia Delfino, who presented the show Alô, brotos! (Hey, Teeny-boppers!) on TV Tupi. At seventeen, a rival of Celly Campello and, according to her, a virgin, Sônia was the most coveted nymphet in the music business—and she knew it. Cyrene suspected that the two of them were having an affair, which Mendonça neither confirmed nor denied. (Sônia would later admit that she much admired Newton “from a distance,” but denies that they ever had an affair.)

To be on the safe side, Cyrene thought it best to take her husband far away from Ipanema. They went to live in a duplex in Rua Torres Homem in the Vila Isabel neighborhood, where she thought she would keep him relatively safe from any temptations. They ended up isolating themselves, which wasn’t good for Newton. The only friends who bothered to go all the way to faraway Vila Isabel to see them were Jobim and a young man named Cariê (Carlos Alberto Lindenbergh, later a TV personality in the the state of Espírito Santo). But, as he continued to work in the nightclubs of Beco do Joga-a-Chave-Meu-Amor (Throw-Me-the-Key-My-Love Lane), Mendonça was a regular visitor to the Copacabana social scene and began coming home later and later, taking the precaution of buying some candy for his wife beforehand to appease her.

On Tuesday, November 11, 1960, Mendonça went out on a rainy night to meet some friends at the Ponto dos Músicos (The Musicians’ Meeting Place) in the center of the city. He wasn’t going to work that evening. When he returned in the early morning, Cyrene had already gone to bed. She heard him struggling with his key in the lock, and thought he was drunk. She got up and went into the living room to look for him. The fumes of alcohol coming from her husband could be detected a mile away, but he was also chalk-white and was clutching at his chest. He had managed to put the candy on top of the piano and tried to hang up his umbrella, which fell to the ground. There was an armchair close by, and he collapsed into it with a heavy sigh. Cyrene realized that he was having another heart attack, and ran to get the doctor who lived on the floor above. When he arrived, Newton Mendonça was dead.

The breakup in the bossa nova world sent shock waves through Copacabana and Ipanema in the first few days of 1960, and people spoke as if they were screaming headlines: Carlinhos Lyra has split from Ronaldo Bôscoli! He took back ten songs that he had given him to write the lyrics for! Carlinhos isn’t doing any more bossa nova! He’s doing sambalanço—he’s even trademarked the term! He’s signed with Philips and told the others to go to hell! He’s going to record a solo album! Their mutual friends are also splitting up! Sylvinha Telles, the Castro-Neves brothers, and Alayde Costa are going with Carlinhos! Menescal, Nara, Normando, Claudette Soares, and Sérgio Ricardo are staying with Bôscoli!

What could have caused all of this?

There were a thousand theories. Lyra was eaten up with jealousy when Bôscoli started composing with Menescal. Lyra discovered that Ronaldo had right-wing sympathies. Lyra was seduced by Philips into signing a contract and making a solo album, without waiting for the promised record that the gang was going to record at Odeon. This last theory was the correct one.

André Midani had been promising to make the record A turma da bossa nova (The Bossa Nova Gang) since the show at the School of Architecture in September, but continued to meet with resistance at Odeon. The “contract” that he had made them sign at Chico Pereira’s house was never legally binding, and now that they were on the verge of turning professional, it was even less so. Midani managed to get them into the studio at the end of 1959 and started to make the record, but without a well-thought-out, legal contract, it would never be released. Lyra considered himself, rightfully so, the star of the gang—even more so than Bôscoli, who was the leader. If the parameter to be measured by was the album Chega de saudade, both of them had written two songs recorded by João Gilberto, but “Maria Ninguém” cast the vote in Lyra’s favor because he had written it by himself. And besides, Lyra also sang and Bôscoli didn’t. He had more reasons than the others to get annoyed with that Odeon turncoat regarding the contract.

That was when Philips (through João Araújo, according to Lyra; through Marino Pinto, according to Bôscoli) waved a contract under his nose, with the promise that they would record his album immediately—solo—and that they would make him a João Gilberto in his own right. The contract flashed in neon before Lyra’s eyes, but he loyally revealed that he had already committed himself to participating in the Turma da Bossa Nova album at Odeon. Philips assured him that without a contract, that committment meant nothing. So Lyra signed with Philips, and João Araújo quickly made sure that a photo commemorating the event was published in every newspaper the following day. The news exploded like a one-megaton bomb (the largest bomb in existence in those days) in the bossa nova neighborhood.

André Midani, purple with disgust, summoned reporters to announce that Odeon would boycott Lyra’s record with Philips. Philips thought this highly amusing. Odeon then withdrew the Turma da Bossa Nova project and scaled it down to a seven-inch disc with Menescal’s group, who had also already recorded with them. Some members of the gang, like the Castro-Neves brothers, were upset by this and stuck by Lyra. Alayde Costa was also unhappy with Odeon. Philips came running to sign them and started blasting apart the group that Odeon had been carelessly protecting. Suddenly, bossa nova became the fuse for a war between the two recording companies—and, coincidentally, between a powerful multinational (Odeon) and a courageous binational company (Philips, formerly the Companhia Brasileira de Discos [Brazilian Record Company], which was formerly Sinter, bought out by the Dutch, but still run by Alberto Pittigliani).

The nationalistic boils still weren’t quite as inflamed in 1960 as they would become two or three years later. But they had already begun to break out at the UNE (União Nacional de Estudantes—National Students’ Union) headquarters, in Praia do Flamengo, where the young men who were forming the CPC (Centro Popular de Cultura—The People’s Center for Culture) gathered. Among them were Ferreira Gullar, Leon Hirszman, Carlos Estevam, Oduvaldo Viana Filho, and Carlinhos Lyra. The CPC was created to “revive” the “roots” of “authentic popular culture” which had been “suffocated” by the “tentacles” of General Motors, Esso Standard Oil, Coca-Cola, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and other giant American corporations.

Lyra didn’t agree with everything that was discussed at the CPC. For example, he disagreed with the noted Hungarian philosopher Gyorg Lucáks, whose very word was law at the CPC. Lucáks ridiculed Kafka, whom Lyra thought was tops, and only liked Thomas Mann, whose books Carlinhos considered boring. Before this, however, Lyra had already demonstrated slight dissent by disagreeing with the original name they had wanted to give the CPC, which was the CCP (Centro de Cultura Popular—Center for Popular Culture).

“I vote against it,” he declared. “I’m part of the bourgeoisie. I don’t create popular culture, I create bourgeois culture, so it doesn’t make sense.”

Some of the kids looked at him in horror. How could someone so intelligent and so much in tune with popular aspirations say that he was “bourgeois”? Lyra explained that just because he liked samba de morro (samba written in the hills) didn’t mean that he wanted to move to the slums, and that, consequently, he wouldn’t know how to reproduce the kind of music those sambistas played. Besides, he wore blue jeans and Navy shirts just because they were in fashion. But he was in favor of a people’s center for culture, which would be open to people from all walks of life. The influential poet Ferreira Gullar felt he had a point. And he really must have thought so, because less than a year before, Gullar was still writing concretist poems, one of which, entitled O formigueiro (The Anthill) was written to be buried—physically buried—in a patch of wasteland, with who knows what purpose.

“And that was how the CCP became the CPC,” Lyra would later remember.

Lyra’s rebelliousness also became apparent when he went to São Paulo for the first bossa nova performances on occasional TV shows, and the shows’ producers tried to get him to say something nice about their sponsor. On one show, on TV Excélsior, sponsored by Mentex chewing gum, he finished singing and a girl dressed up as a bunny, complete with ears and a pom-pom tail, with a signboard around her neck, approached him, smiling, and asked him on the air, “Would you like a Mentex?”

“No. I hate it,” he replied, live.

Lyra took advantage of those trips to São Paulo to participate in the founding of a cell of the Communist Party in the Higienópolis neighborhood. But his contract with Philips began to get too demanding, and the collaborations he had with Viana, Flávio Rangel, Chico de Assis, Cleide Yáconis, Stenio Garcia, and Gianfrancesco Guarnieri really only made him wish that their songs dealt with less unfamiliar subjects than those he had written with Ronaldo Bôscoli. Ironically, the first person from whom he heard the expression “left-wing,” some years earlier, had been Bôscoli—speaking out against it, of course. The two of them clashed on this particular issue. He, Lyra, was “left-wing,” but this did not prevent them from writing “Canção que morre no ar” (Song That Dies in the Air), which wasn’t either left-wing or right-wing but merely pretty.

For someone who was left-wing, Lyra really had a remarkable head for capitalist business. At his initiative, the guitar academy he ran with Menescal had expanded to include a branch in Rua Maestro Francisco Braga, also in Copacabana. It was Lyra who had fought the hardest to try to get Odeon to honor their blessed contract. And it was he who tried to convince Ronaldo Bôscoli to register a trademark for the expression bossa nova, in both their names.

Lyra had foreseen, with good reason, that by the amount of fuss being caused by the term—which had definitively hit the streets—soon everything would be called bossa nova. Unfortunately, this was already starting to happen; now and again, a new brand of refrigerator or the opening of some new building would be billed in the newspapers as “Bossa Nova.” He felt, due to the prolific use of the term, as if someone were stealing his property. But to his surprise, Bôscoli wasn’t interested. He said he didn’t think it would be fair; nobody knew who had invented the expression and if it had to be attributed to someone, then it belonged to the anonymous secretary at the University Hebrew Group, where the expression had first appeared. He, Bôscoli, had merely contributed to popularizing it, together with Moysés Fuks and João Luiz de Albuquerque. Besides, who had invented bossa nova? João Gilberto? Tom Jobim, Newton Mendonça, Vinícius? Johnny Alf, João Donato? Or everyone?

There were many differences between Lyra and Bôscoli, whom their elders dubbed “the Jobim and Vinícius of the younger crowd.” When the contract with Philips caused his separation from the rest of the group, Lyra felt he no longer had the right to say he wrote bossa nova. He searched for another name to call his music and found it: sambalanço (samba-beat, or sam-beat). Of course the music was the same bossa nova, but the name at least was his. Lyra was so confident in the success of sambalanço that, before any opportunists had the chance to steal his idea, he spent the time and money to register the term with the Registry of Trademarks and Patents. (In fact, in practice, nobody was interested in stealing sambalanço, and the only use of the term by someone other than Lyra was done so inadvertently by the pianist César Camargo Mariano, who years later gave the name to his trio, who played bossa nova.)

Philips allowed Lyra to play around with sambalanço, but when it came to naming his first album they didn’t hesitate for a second. They called it Bossa Nova Carlos Lyra. And they even asked Ary Barroso, who was at the time practically institutionalized as the main supporter of the movement, to write the text for the album sleeve. Whether he liked it or not, Carlinhos Lyra continued to be classified as bossa nova, and bossa nova would never dispense with its (in the words of Jobim himself) greatest melodist.

Philips honored their word and released Bossa Nova Carlos Lyra at the beginning of May. The conductor Carlos Monteiro de Souza did his best to ensure that the arrangements were like those that Jobim did for João Gilberto, but the album gave one the impression of containing more bossa nova on the sleeve than in the content of the record itself. Half of the songs were his old samba-canções, or sounded as if they were. Lyra was also clearing out his drawers. But, obviously, as a singer he was no João Gilberto, and as a guitarist, even less so. (Baden Powell, who was much better suited to jazz than bossa nova, played the guitar for Johnny Alf’s “Rapaz de bem” [Nice Guy], which Lyra sang on the record.) But the repertoire (“Chora tua tristeza” [Cry Your Sadness], “Ciúme” [Jealousy], “Barquinho de papel” [Little Paper Boat], “Gosto de você” (I Like You), “Quando chegares” [When You Arrive], etc., not to mention “Maria Ninguém”) was very pretty, and more than tried and tested at bossa nova shows the year before.

A show? That’s right! There would be another big one that month, at the very same School of Architecture where the first one had taken place. Bôscoli had booked it months in advance and promised that this would be the consecrational show, the glorification of bossa nova. But now, with his breakup with Carlinhos, how would things turn out?

Lyra’s gang gave their reply: they would do their own show, at the Catholic University, that same night. Rio de Janeiro would soon find out if it was big enough to host both bossa novas.

The young people of Rio got moving that Friday night in May 1960. Many were disappointed at being unable to be in both places at the same time. The school in Praia Vermelha would host A noite do amor, do sorriso e a flor (Night of Love, a Smile, and a Flower), with Bôscoli’s entire gang and João Gilberto’s promised attendance (for the first time at a bossa nova show), as well as Vinícius. The school in Gávea would hold the “Noite do Sambalanço” (Night of Sambalanço), with Lyra’s gang, featuring a debatable guest performer: Juca Chaves, who was popular at the time for his ballads and modinhas, all of which were better suited to medieval Avalon than to bossa nova–flavored Arpoador beach in Ipanema.

The newspapers, led by Última Hora, did their best to put out the fire with gasoline. They openly sided with Bôscoli’s gang, revealing day-to-day details of the rehearsals and the team’s setup, together with the lineup of all the stars: João Gilberto; Vinícius; Os Cariocas; Johnny Alf (flown in from São Paulo by the newspaper); Norma Bengell; and three more contributions from Odeon—beautiful Rosana Toledo, sparkling black sambista Elza Soares, and Trio Irakitan. Whenever they mentioned the other show, Última Hora loved to quote a comment made by Nara Leão: “The others are Carlinhos Lyra, Juca Chaves, Alayde Costa, and a group of amateur guitarists.”

It was clearly Odeon’s show versus that of Philips, but not all of the participants were aware of this fact. As for the public, they had no idea. Odeon supplied all the equipment for the performance, set it up in the School of Architecture, and even provided station wagons to transport the artists. Philips did the same at the Catholic University. Once again, crowd estimates were three thousand people inside the School of Architecture and almost the same number outside. At the Catholic University, which was also packed, the crowd was a little smaller, but only because they had less space. The show at the School of Architecture was, predictably, much better, and those who had elected to go to the other one regretted it the following day. That particular battle was won by Odeon—so triumphantly, in fact, that nobody there could have guessed that Philips would eventually win the war.

Ronaldo Bôscoli announced into the microphone, “This is the night of love, of the smile, and of the flower. It’s the first bossa nova festival—true bossa nova, that is.”

The implication was that the other show at the Catholic University was not—and that the one which had taken place at the Teatro Record in São Paulo the week before wasn’t really either, given that it had been performed by members of Lyra’s entourage and local singers. The genuine bossa nova was there at the School of Architecture, and had as a backdrop a screen painted by the student Mauro Halfeld dos Guaranys, depicting a rose and the impressive list of featured artists.

One of those artists was Johnny Alf, whom the Rio public had not seen for five years. While he was away, in São Paulo, bossa nova had taken off and he had been left behind. The younger generation, who made up the majority of the audience, were unaware that it was from his piano at the Plaza nightclub that some of the primary ingredients for the bossa nova recipe had emerged. Bôscoli tried to be didactic in introducing him: “True experts on bossa nova couldn’t forget his name. He has been playing bossa nova music for ten years and because of it was often branded a fraud and a madman. Here’s Johnny Alf!”

Alf sat down at the piano and played “Rapaz de bem” and “Céu e mar” (Sky and Sea), his two greatest hits—quavering badly out of tune, his voice failing, seemingly frightened and trembling. And indeed he was. Tearing him away from São Paulo for the show was quite an achievement. He had never sung for so many people at one time, and his overwhelming shyness threatened to engulf him. In order to fuel himself with courage, he drank an enormous quantity of booze before, during, and after the trip, and arrived at the School of Architecture completely wasted. One of the students, Luís “Chupeta,” and two other members of the Athletic Association convinced him to go with them to a bathroom in the School of Architecture. There, they stripped off his clothes and gave him a strong shower in an effort to sober him up. Taking this into account, his performance wasn’t bad at all.

Prudently, Norma Bengell didn’t sing in an outfit that showed her long, spectacular legs. Nor did she need to do so. She came on stage squeezed into a tight jersey that accentuated every curve of her figure, and carrying a white poodle. It must have been a delight to hear her, with such a visual feast, singing, “Come, ugly girl / Let your fear disappear / You are ugly / But you will find beautiful love.” The boys in the audience went crazy, but the girls—the first bossa nova groupies, like the young Wanda Sá, who was fifteen—didn’t as much. For them, Norma Bengell was too much of a big woman to be really bossa nova.

It’s a mystery how, but there was room for everyone: the house staff (Normando; Luís Carlos Vinhas, who came on stage riding a tricycle; Chico Feitosa; Nara Leão; Claudette Soares; Sérgio Ricardo; and Menescal’s group—with Eumir Deodato on piano—which accompanied practically everybody) as well as the two representatives from São Paulo, Pedrinho Mattar and Caetano Zama. Vinícius was the only one who didn’t sing. He came on stage leading his daughter Georgiana by the hand, and brought the house down. Última Hora maliciously dubbed him “Grandpa bossa nova,” although Vinícius was only forty-seven years old, and Georgiana, seven.

The two biggest stars closed the show: Mr. and Mrs. João Gilberto. He came on stage to an abyss-like silence, and before three thousand mouths and noses that were trying desperately not to breathe, sang “One Note Samba” and “O pato.” He then accompanied Astrud on the guitar, providing vocal harmony, in “Lamento” (Lament) and “Brigas, nunca mais” (Fights, Never More), both by Jobim and Vinícius. People thought that Astrud sang very well, but if anyone had hinted that only four years later she’d be selling millions of records in the United States, they would have been admitted to the psychiatric hospital next door to the school. Astrud left the stage and João closed his performance with the theme of the show: love, a smile, and a flower, from the lyrics of “Meditação” (Meditation), by Jobim and Newton Mendonça—who, by the way, was not seen at the School of Architecture, and nobody could guarantee that he had even been invited. (When he died six months later, they must have felt some remorse.)

Three days after the Night of Love, a Smile, and a Flower performance, the American star Lena Horne sang “Bim-bom” in Portuguese in the Golden Room of the Copacabana Palace and had to give a threefold encore. She had learned the song by listening to João Gilberto’s album, and now wanted to meet him in person, if possible. The reporter João Luiz de Albuquerque made it possible, taking João Gilberto to Lena’s suite at the Copacabana Palace, where she was rehearsing with her musicians. As soon as she saw the singer, Lena threw herself at him and started firing off how he was absolutely this, that, and the other. João Gilberto sensed that Lena Horne was enthusiastic about something, but began to feel a little desperate: “I don’t understand a word this woman is saying!”

When she finally stopped squawking, João picked up his guitar to sing. Lena’s musicians tried to accompany him, hesitantly at first. But after a few minutes, the music they produced sounded as if it had been rehearsed for weeks.

Other American singers started to discover bossa nova. The year before, Sarah Vaughan had come to Brazil for the first time, heard Johnny Alf at the Baiúca nightclub in São Paulo, and invited him to go back to America with her. Alf froze and pretended not to understand. Imagine going to America with Sarah Vaughan, if Sarah Vaughan was everything he wanted to be! Nat “King” Cole was also in Rio, performing at the Copacabana Palace and gathering material for his Latin records. Sylvinha Telles recorded two tracks with him. Nat Cole was one of João Gilberto’s idols, and João made a point of seeing him up close. He hung around in a hallway at Odeon studios and waited around for two hours next to the door of the studio Cole was in. Nat “King” Cole finally came out, smoking a cigarette in a holder, and swiftly—in a matter of seconds—passed within millimeters of João Gilberto, without stopping for a hello. That night, at Tom’s house, the mesmerized João Gilberto commented, “He’s not black. He’s blue!”

João Gilberto wasn’t as friendly as that for everyone. One evening, he was peacefully at home with Astrud and a friend, Alberto Fernandes, when Jorge Amado, who had been the best man at his wedding, phoned him. Famous French authors Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were visiting Brazil, and were at his home in Rio, and wouldn’t it be great if João swung by there with his guitar? “OK, Jorge. I’m on my way.”

Sartre and De Beauvoir are long dead, and João Gilberto still hasn’t made it.

14

It’s Salt, It’s Sun, It’s South

Fisherman-songwriter Roberto Menescal and the 792-pound jewfish

Collection of Roberto Menescal

After returning Carlinhos Lyra’s ring, Ronaldo Bôscoli entered into musical nuptials with Roberto Menescal. That was the beginning of what Bôscoli classified as “the long holiday” in all their lives. It was a marriage between music and the sea. Today we can deduce that bossa nova was born with the taste of salt in its mouth, because beach songs like “Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl from Ipanema), written by Jobim and Vinícius in 1962, and “Samba de verão” (Summer Samba), written by Marcos and Paulo Sérgio Valle in 1964, were huge hits and have come to symbolize the movement so well. But it wasn’t always that way. The sea only began to be explored in the summers of 1960–1961, when Menescal and Bôscoli put their harpoons and pens together to make it happen.

Menescal did not compose until that summer. His only previous attempt, “Jura de pombo” (The Dove’s Promise), was such a painful labor for both him and his lyricist, Bôscoli himself, that Menescal decided to settle for just being a guitarist, like Barney Kessel, Charlie Byrd, or Jim Hall. (Alayde Costa recorded the song, but that didn’t count because Alayde was a friend.) Without a doubt, the shadow of Carlinhos Lyra at Bôscoli’s side weighed heavily on him. Menescal didn’t think he could ever be as spontaneous, tuneful, and lyrical as Lyra. But now that he had fallen out with practically the entire gang (they had even broken up the guitar academies), the entire sea opened up for Menescal to compose with Bôscoli. And after diving in, the following songs emerged, almost on the first try: “Nós e o mar” (Us and the Sea), “Rio,” “Ah! Se eu pudesse” (Ah! If Only I Could), “Mar, amar” (Sea, Love), “A morte de um Deus de Sal” (The Death of a Salt God) and—does it really need mentioning?—”O barquinho” (The Little Boat). They were all part of the salt/sun/south theme.

One decisive event that made this possible was when Menescal managed to tear Bôscoli from dry land and entice him to go on fishing expeditions in Cabo Frio, Arraial do Cabo, and Rio das Ostras with his crew: Chico Pereira, Henrique Peropeba, Jomico Azulay, Ronaldo Cientista, former Garoto da Lua Toninho Botelho, and occasionally Luizinho Eça and Luís Carlos Vinhas. Bôscoli and Chico Feitosa joined them, and sometimes Bôscoli’s girlfriend Nara would also go. At the beginning, Menescal and Chico Pereira rented a trawler with a gasoline engine, the Thiago II, with a capacity for ten people, which became the “little boat” in the song. Afterward, they bought a share in a sailboat, the Luanda. So that they didn’t have to sleep out in the open air, they rented a fisherman’s house in Arraial de Cabo and took iron-framed canvas cots with them, or slept on beach mats, the kind where the sand seeps through the weave and stitching and tattoos the body of whoever happens to be lying on one. But they were young and it was all in the name of adventure.

Menescal and the others went harpoon fishing, but nobody could match his skill. His fishing companions agreed that Menescal seemed unbeatable. He would find fish, either in their burrows or swimming around, in all sorts of places—yellowtail, marlin, and grouper. These were gentle fish, which made the whole affair distasteful, because although the fish were in their element, Menescal had the weapons—the harpoons—and a simply lethal aim. His every shot stained the ocean floor with blood. It’s hard to believe that such savagery spawned the bossa nova songs that eulogized the sea as an idyllic setting.

The underwater battles were only fair when the fish he caught were jewfish or giant manta rays, fish that refused to kowtow to anyone. But Menescal always won; a photograph of him with an 800-pound jewfish, humiliatingly hooked, was published in several newspapers, much to the shame of the fish. Despite his celebrity status, his talents as a fisherman were still fodder for mockery in Ipanema—nobody who went fishing truly believed in his achievements. Until one day at the Ipanema beach, in front of Rua Farme de Amoedo, Menescal put on his wetsuit, grabbed his harpoon from the car, and said to his friends: “I’m just going to go and get a fish.”

The others laughed, but he dove into the water and within a few minutes was back with a grouper. It’s worth noting that, in 1960, big fish still frequented the waters by the beach at Ipanema.

Bôscoli was very impressed when Menescal tried to prove to him that God did in fact exist, by introducing him to the bottom of the sea and making him realize that there was an entire “city of lights” down there. It was possible that God did indeed exist, but Bôscoli preferred to discover this in the safest way possible: putting his mask on and immersing his head in the water merely a few feet, while his legs were held inside the boat. In fact, his main job on the fishing expeditions was as the “coach,” according to his own definition. He would place himself at the highest point on the boat and shout instructions to the gang—and the fish—down below: “Go, Chico! Pull back, Menescal! Hey fish, look out!”

They wore wetsuits to dive, but Chico Feitosa chose to wear women’s underwear beneath his. He said they were more comfortable. On the beach, they were the first ones in Rio to wear the printed shorts now worn by surfers, which were not yet in the stores, but made for them by the wife of one of the doormen at Menescal’s building. But the fishing trips weren’t always peaceful. Menescal would not allow alcohol on board, which forced Bôscoli and Toninho Botelho to sneak Scotch or rum onto the boat, disguised in bottles of guaraná with a dark exterior.

Ceci, the boatman who steered the Thiago II, did not believe that Bôscoli and Menescal were recording artists “on the radio.” Radios were rare items in fishermen’s homes, and televisions were nonexistent. The two of them could not accept that Ceci refused to show their success the reverence it deserved, so one weekend they brought a battery-operated radio onto the boat. Within a few minutes, Rádio Jornal do Brasil played “The Little Boat,” and the disc jockey announced the name of the song and its authors: “Sung by Maysa, and written by Menescal and Bôscoli.”

“See, do you believe us now or not?” Menescal challenged him. “You heard what the guy said: ‘The Little Boat’ by Menescal and Bôscoli.”

“So what?,” argued Ceci. “You’re not the only Menescal and Bôscoli in the world.”

Perhaps not, although the duo’s songs about the sea became the talk of the town in Rio. But Ceci, for sure, probably wouldn’t even believe in João Gilberto if he saw him.

Bôscoli and Menescal also found it hard to believe in João Gilberto. The only time they had ever managed to take him to Cabo Frio, he refused to get on board the boat and take part in the fishing trip. The others went out to sea and João Gilberto sat down on a rock to wait for them to come back—fully clothed and all, in the kind of sun that would melt cathedrals, although there were a few trees in the vicinity. When they returned, it was almost nightfall and they found him sitting in the same place—completely puce, blistered from exposure to the sun, and moaning, “Why did you do this to me?” It was lucky that when this happened in 1961, he had already recorded “The Little Boat.”

Long before João Gilberto actually recorded it, the song had already become his way of announcing himself at the window of his friends’ homes, late at night. On hearing him whistling “The Little Boat,” the man or lady of the house would know who it was and would go down to tell him who was there. Depending on the list of attendees, João Gilberto would either come in to join the gathering or leave to go and whistle under another window. He wasn’t very available. His presence at a party became more coveted in Rio than that of the state governor himself, Carlos Lacerda—perhaps because, unlike Lacerda, he accepted only one of every hundred invitations. It became a matter of pride for any hostess to be able to tell her guests, “João Gilberto is coming!,” although there was never the slightest guarantee that it really would happen—and more often than not, it didn’t.

A large number of hostesses would also tell their guests that João Gilberto would be coming—even if they had never laid eyes on him in their life—just to guarantee the attendance of all the invitees. But even at the parties at which he did make an appearance, nobody was ever sure if João Gilberto would stay very long, or if he would even stay at all. One night, he arrived at Billy Blanco’s apartment and greeted everyone in the room, one by one, with his eyes—he knew 99 percent of them—and on completing his sweep of the living room, turned and walked back out of the door without saying a word. “The remaining one percent must have scared him off,” Blanco assumed. At the same time, he was liable to turn up at friends’ houses without being invited, when he was least expected, and sing until people started taking turns falling asleep in order to go on listening.

At that time, João Gilberto’s main means of communication with the outside world was the telephone. He would phone his friend Laurinha, the wife of producer Abelardo Figueiredo, and talk to her for six straight hours, with a mere forty-minute break so that he could eat something—during which he would ask Laurinha to stay on the line. Which she would do, of course.

Many began to adhere to the bossa nova style. Some adhesions could be considered perfectly natural, like that of Wilson Simonal, who sang cha-cha at the Top Club, a nightclub in Copacabana; Wilson Miranda, ex-samba, ex-rock, ex-twist, and ex-hully-gully; and Jorge Ben, who sang things like “Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini” and whose idol, besides João Gilberto, was the Brazilian rock star Ronnie Cord. Despite their dark pasts, they were all merely marking time, just waiting for bossa nova to come along. But it was best not to talk about the past because Alayde Costa had originally sung bolero, before being converted by João Gilberto, and Claudette Soares had sung baião. Far more natural was the approach to bossa nova by ex-romantic singers, like Sérgio Ricardo, Rosana Toledo, Sílvio Cesar, and Pery Ribeiro, or by jazz singers, like Leny Andrade, Flora Purim, and, years later, Rosa Maria. They made the transition very smoothly.

Meanwhile, names that had been worshipped by the kids in the fifties, like Dick Farney, Lúcio Alves, and Tito Madi, were left by the wayside, despite all attempts at integration. The three of them, who had sown the seeds of the original bossa nova, became its greatest victims—not to mention Johnny Alf. Dick Farney and Lúcio Alves even recorded at Elenco, the bossa nova label founded by Aloysio de Oliveira in 1963, and Lúcio took part in the first bossa nova show at the School of Architecture in 1959, but both of them felt as though they didn’t belong. At the height of bossa nova, already living in São Paulo, Dick preferred to concentrate on his piano, doing shows and making instrumental jazz records, as if he didn’t want to be mistaken for being part of the movement. Lúcio, in turn, admitted several years later that he felt “cheated” on witnessing the recently acquired liberty enjoyed by singers—which was due, in part, to him—and which was limiting his opportunities for work. And the reclusive Tito Madi was invited to Nara Leão’s apartment on several occasions, but something always prevented him from going.

15

Bossa Nova for Sale

The little boat: Maysa and the gang sailing the waters of Bossa Nova

Collection of Roberto Menescal

While the known universe was getting acquainted with bossa nova in 1961, the latter hung out in Rua Duvivier in Copacabana, in a dead-end alleyway that humorist Sérgio Porto years earlier had christened Beco das Garrafadas (Flying Bottles Lane). The name was rapidly simplified to Beco das Garrafas (Bottles Lane), which was far more dignified, yet still refered to the residents’ annoying habit of throwing bottles at nightclubbers. The grenadiers were never identified, but they must have been extremely bad shots, because there is no record of anyone actually being hit on the head. They were more successful when they threw water or urine. One such victim was the minister of the Supreme Labor Court, Carlos Coqueijo, a friend of Vinícius de Moraes, a sometime composer, and the writer of “É preciso perdoar” (It’s Necessary to Forgive), which João Gilberto would record in 1973.

In 1961, the nightclubs in the Lane were, in order from the inside of the alleyway out, the Little Club, the Baccara, the Bottles Bar, and the Ma Griffe. Of the four, only Ma Griffe dedicated itself primarily to the business of prostitution, although it also had a piano that, until recently, had been the charge of Newton Mendonça. The other three merely hosted the best music that could be heard south of Guanabara bay. Two of them, the Little Club and Bottles, had the same owners, the Italians Giovanni and Alberico Campana, who were always willing to support young talent, as long as they drew a full house.

This wasn’t hard. The two nightclubs each had a maximum capacity of seventy people, as long as they didn’t wear shoulder pads in their jackets—and there were far more than this who were interested in seeing the “pocket shows” staged nightly by the new duo, Miéle and Bôscoli. They introduced Brazil to a new kind of show: that of “deluxe” poverty. Just like Miéle, who two years previously had only one pair of pants, but they were dress pants, the Lane shows had great music provided by artists whom shortly thereafter money couldn’t buy, but everything else about the shows was poorer than poor, starting with the production. Miéle and Bôscoli planned the entire show, organized the artists, wrote the repertoire, did the lighting (with a single spotlight and empty toilet paper rolls), projected the slides, looked after the sound (with the help of Chico Pereira), and directed the performance—all without remuneration, and they even thought it was fun.

Instead of money, they settled for free Scotch, but even then they had to drink it straight up because none of the nightclubs had refrigerators. The ice, bought in blocks by Giovanni and Alberico, was for the customers. In order to have their drinks on the rocks, Miéle and Bôscoli would arrange for pianist Sérgio Mendes to play a thunderous introduction—Oscar Peterson– style—to certain songs, during which they would chip off a few chunks of ice without the owners (who were also the waiters) noticing, or noticing only when it was too late. The only ones who were paid properly (in cash, at the end of the show) were the artists, but they didn’t get to drink for free. And there was one who, at the beginning, actually paid for the privilege of playing: Sérgio Mendes.

At the age of twenty in 1961, Mendes was not only unpaid, he was expected to buy drinks and pay for what he consumed. “You’re still learning,” Alberico would say, with his Italian accent. “So you have to pay to learn.” Mendes submitted himself to the experience because he could now afford to do so. In the mid-fifties, while still in short pants, he caught the ferry in Niterói to go to the Lojas Murray and hear his idols’ records for free: Stan Kenton, who was still the craze, and a young pianist named Horace Silver. At the end of the afternoon, the Murray customers would all chip in and pay his fare for the return ferry back to Niterói. It wasn’t as though he was poor. His father, a doctor, wouldn’t give him any money. His childhood had been gloomy, ravaged by scoliosis, which for years forced him to wear a plaster cast while he studied the piano. His parents would shave his head when he got bad grades in school. In order to make some pocket money, he formed a trio with his friend Tião Neto, also from Niterói, who played the double bass, and a rotating cycle of percussionists. The three played at all sorts of dances—only they played jazz, which nobody could dance to. When they were asked to play waltzes at graduation dances, the only one they knew was “Lover,” by Rodgers and Hart. After all of this, Sérgio Mendes, who was already an accomplished pianist, thought it child’s play when some idiot threw firecrackers under his piano at Bottles during a verse of “All the Things You Are.”

Around 1960, he started leading impromptu jazz and bossa nova jams on Sunday afternoons at the Little Club, which served as rites of initiation for hundreds of Rio teenagers and many amateur musicians. The jams were good business for everyone. The kids got in for free and filled the place to capacity, but paid for the rum-and-Cokes they consumed. The professional musicians also played for free, but in their case, they could drink more or less what they wanted and were able to play the music they really liked, far from the constraints of their square work at the dance halls, at nightclub dances, or in the orchestras at TV Tupi or TV Rio. What they loved was jazz, until bossa nova provided them with a series of modern and unrestrained themes that were marvelous for improvising: songs like “Menina feia” (Ugly Girl), “Não faz assim” (Don’t Do That), “Desafinado” (Off-Key), “Batida diferente” (Different Beat), and “Minha saudade” (My Saudade), which became the first jazz standards of bossa nova.

A veritable Who’s Who of great musicians participated in those afternoon jam sessions at the Little Club and, afterward, in Bottles at night: trombonists Raul de Souza (at the time already highly acclaimed, and known as Raulzinho) and brothers Edmundo and Edson Maciel; saxophonists and flutists J. T. Meirelles, Aurino Ferreira, Paulo Moura, Juarez Araújo, Cipó, Jorginho, and Bebeto; trumpet players Pedro Paulo and Maurílio; pianists Toninho, Salvador, Tenório Jr., Luizinho Eça, and Luís Carlos Vinhas; guitarists Durval Ferreira and Baden Powell; double bass players Tião Neto, Tião Marinho, Otávio Bailly, Manoel Gusmão, and Sérgio Barroso; drummers Dom Um, Edison Machado, Vítor Manga, Chico Batera, Airto Moreira, Wilson das Neves, João Palma, Hélcio Milito, and Rafael; and experts who played those instruments that Down Beat magazine categorized as “miscellaneous,” such as harmonica players Maurício Einhorn and Rildo Hora, vibraphonist Ugo Marotta, French horn player Bill Horn, and percussionist Rubens Bassini. Compared to the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club, the Lane was to bossa nova what Minton’s Playhouse, the club on 118th Street in Harlem, was to bebop in the early forties.

From 1961 on, this crowd divided into several permanent groups, like Luizinho Eça’s Tamba Trio, Luís Carlos Vinhas’s Bossa Três, Sérgio Mendes’s Sexteto, Meirelles’s Copa Cinco, and Tenório Jr.’s Quinteto Bottles, but its stronghold remained in the Lane. What they played wasn’t exactly the featherweight bossa nova played by Jobim, João Gilberto, Roberto Menescal, and Milton Banana, but a variation approaching bop that jazz columnist Robert Celerier of the newspaper Correio da Manhã termed “hard bossa nova,” which was a lot heavier. So heavy, in fact, that had João Gilberto dropped by the Lane while those groups were performing their own themes, like “Quintessência” (Quintessence) and “Noa-noa,” he would have fled in terror. All the drumsticks he thought he had eliminated from Brazilian drumming were there in full force, making more noise than ever. And in the hands of drummer Edison Machado, they were even worse; he had been a machine gunner in the Army and at times played as if he were facing the Germans.

Transformed into a mere bauble, displayed as merchandise, and starting to become commonplace as a result of so much propaganda, bossa nova was already starting to suffocate by the middle of 1961. Menescal and Bôscoli hated seeing their music regulated by figures, contracts, and invoices; they needed to fight back. They had the vague feeling that the money they were making was “dirty.” In order to keep their hands clean and in a fit state for composing, they appointed a musical editor, Umberto Marconi, who became their assignee to take care of the business side of things. They weren’t the only ones to do this.

João Gilberto, Carlinhos Lyra, Luiz Bonfá, and Chico Feitosa also left their guitars at home and went to Marconi’s downtown office in Rua Evaristo da Veiga, where they signed letters giving him the authority to resolve absolutely any matter relating to their musical production: publishing, selling, licensing, supervising, protecting, and, of course, receiving what the songs were already making in Brazil and abroad—and paying them any income. It was like allowing Marconi free access to their bank accounts, but why not? Marconi was like a father to them. The first time he was summoned to Marconi’s office to collect a check, Menescal was astonished; he never imagined that a song like “Tetê” would make so much money. (After all, he and Bôscoli had only written it because Jobim had just finished composing “Dindi,” and they had decided to write something along the same lines.) As Menescal would soon discover, the money he received was in fact a small percentage of what he should have gotten, but being ignorant of that fact, he was perfectly happy. He spent it on a new pair of flippers.

So when Marconi tried to convince the gang to give a performance at the Copacabana Palace to play some of their songs for a French editor who had come to Brazil for the express purpose of meeting them, they didn’t need to be asked twice. The Frenchman was a friend of Vinícius, Sacha Gordine, the producer of Black Orpheus. Gordine had a publishing house in Paris, Sacha Music, and wanted to launch bossa nova in France. So what did the guys have to show him? They picked up their guitars and sang their stuff, while Gordine, drinking Pernod, told them yes or no according to the rattle of coins in his ears that the musical notes from each song produced: “Je veux ça” (I want that one) or “Pas ça, jouez autre chose” (Not that one, play something else).

For each song approved by Gordine, his representative in Brazil, Lidia Libion, copied a contract at a small table off to the side. There was one contract per song, giving Gordine the right to resell them “in all the countries of the world” and “for as long as they are legally protected.” This meant that the boys were transferring to him all rights of “sheet music publishing, representation, execution, phonomechanical reproduction, and dissemination by radio” in exchange for percentages that ranged from 10 percent to 75 percent (in biannual installments) of whatever the song earned. As a bonus, they would get an additional thirty copies of each song that was printed “absolutely free.”

In order to prove that the arrangement was legitimate, Gordine gave them all an advance payment, which he explained corresponded to 50 percent of what he would earn for the sublicensing of the publishing rights to the songs in the United States. Those explanation were deathly boring to the boys, especially Menescal, who was itching to jump in his car and go fishing at Cabo Frio. Lidia handed them their contracts, which they signed without reading. Some hours later, each of them went about his own business, with his advance check in his pocket. One can only hope that they made good use of that money, because during the years that followed, it was the only money they would receive for those songs. Want to know which ones they were?

For “Lobo bobo” (Foolish Wolf), Gordine paid Carlinhos Lyra and Ronaldo Bôscoli the equivalent, at the time, of ninety-two dollars—that is, forty-six dollars each. For the same price, Menescal and Bôscoli also sold Gordine the rights to “O barquinho” (The Little Boat), “Errinho à toa” (Worthless Mistake), “Panorâmica” (Panorama), “Lágrima primeira” (First Tear), and “Nós e o mar” (Us and the Sea). He paid the same for four of Bonfá’s songs and three of Chico Feitosa’s. The worst deal was made by João Gilberto, to whom at that time it seemed too good to be true. He alone received the equivalent in 1961 of three hundred seven dollars for “Bim-bom,” “Hô-ba-la-lá,” and “Um abraço no Bonfá” (A Hug for Bonfá)—for all three. With these songs Gordine opened up, for himself, the international market for bossa nova, sublicensing them to the Leeds Corporation of the United States. The money made by these songs would be paid to him through Umberto Marconi, in his capacity as paternal trustee.

News of the international success of “Le petit bateau,” “The little boat,” and “El barquito” (and other songs) reached Brazil, but Menescal and Bôscoli never saw a single cent of it. One of two things was happening: either the money wasn’t leaving Paris, or it was being lost in some safe in Rua Evaristo da Veiga, where Marconi had his office. But the boys weren’t that persistent in their quest to recover their money. Luvercy Fiorini, Oscar Castro-Neves’s partner and one of the first in the bossa nova gang to have a song published and recorded by a dozen U.S. artists (“Chora tua tristeza” [Cry Your Sadness]), had no idea at the time that he was owed any money for this and remained uninterested in actively seeking out payment.

Jobim and Vinícius had already been scalped by Gordine for the Orpheus film. One year after the musical display at the Copacabana Palace, Gordine talked songwriter-guitarist Baden Powell into signing a contract to the effect that whatever he produced in the next twelve months would become the property of Gordine. Baden must have thought that there was something amiss, because he continued to compose but told Gordine he wasn’t writing anything. During this period, Lidia Libion quit working for Gordine and became a huge fan of bossa nova. She came to believe that the money from those songs never reached Rio.

Perhaps not. But at the end of the sixties, Menescal was one of those who had reason to be disappointed with Marconi. According to Menescal, upon a visit to Marconi’s office, he discovered a tape recorder under the desk that had recorded all their conversations. Strangely enough, it didn’t take Marconi long to vanish from Rio for good, perhaps even from Brazil. Nobody was ever able to find him again, not even if they had wanted to know where to send flowers.

This would be a good first chapter for a mystery novel that could be entitled The Great Bossa Nova Robbery.

“To save bossa nova, I’d even make love to the Trio Irakitan,” remarked Ronaldo Bôscoli, Nara Leão’s fiancé.

Someone had jokingly suggested to Bôscoli that if he had an affair with the luscious singer Maysa, she might switch to singing bossa nova—given that in 1961, bossa nova was sorely in need of a singer with national prominence. João Gilberto may have been a god to many, but they were part of the privileged elite, like the fans of Sylvinha Telles, Alayde Costa, Carlinhos Lyra, Johnny Alf, Sérgio Ricardo, and Os Cariocas. Bossa nova was now a name fought over by refrigerator manufacturers, but the music of the genre, which was what was important, wasn’t played on Rádio Nacional, for example (not that they were particularly crazy about Rádio Nacional’s taste in music).

Maysa was a household name as a singer and also as a celebrity. She was performing at the Blue Angel nightclub in New York, and it was said that Marlon Brando had all her records. From 1958 on, her drinking binges became public news, and she made the tabloid pages about as often as she did the music charts with songs like “Ouça” (Listen) and “Meu mundo caiu” (My World Fell). The reasons were always the same: she’d throw her shoe, glass, or microphone at the head of anyone who was talking loudly in the nightclub where she was singing; she would come to blows on stage with the pianist Pedrinho Mattar over a simple chord; she had to be tied to the piano to keep her upright during a live performance on the TV show Noite de gala (Gala Night); she was seen stumbling around barefoot in the street at four in the morning, saying that it was in an effort to lose weight.

It wasn’t, but it should have been, because she ballooned grotesquely once she became famous. In April 1960, Maysa weighed ninety-six kilos (211 pounds) when she decided to lose weight via the favorite method of stars at the time: surgically. Eight doctors in São Paulo worked on her over a ten-hour period, like in the famous Rembrandt painting, and completed several plastic surgery procedures simultaneously, the main one being to relieve her of the belly she had acquired during her pregnancy. Immediately afterward, they put her on a strict diet, which included the radical replacement of Scotch with milk. Maysa lost twenty-eight kilos (sixty-two pounds)—or “twenty-eight liters,” as she put it. She decided to do something worthwhile with her life, but overdid it somewhat. To everyone’s astonishment, she volunteered as a nurse at the Nossa Senhora do Carmo hospital in São Paulo, where she allowed herelf to be photographed in a white uniform, knitting and reading Pearl S. Buck novels. Everyone thought she must be keeping a promise to the saints.

If that was the case, she must have settled accounts fairly quickly, because within a few months, she was celebrating her return to the work-force. She gained weight all over again, moved to Rio, and in 1961 was persuaded by Bôscoli and Menescal to sing their songs. Bôscoli didn’t think that with her dark temperament Maysa would be suited to songs that were more typically bossa nova, like “The Little Boat,” which they had written for Nara Leão. But she would be perfect for the more sober songs, like “Lágrima primeira,” which they had both written, or “Depois do amor” (After Love), which Bôscoli had written with Normando, and “Melancolia” (Melancholy), with Luizinho Eça.

But Maysa wanted to give her career a modern image, and fell in love with “The Little Boat.” She also fell in love with Bôscoli, who was never one to reject an advance, and they all left for a trip to Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay—Maysa, Menescal, Bôscoli, Vinhas, and a new trio that was being formed: Luizinho Eça, Bebeto, and Hélcio. That is, the Tamba Trio. On the tour, they tried out the new repertoire, and Ronaldo also tried out an affair with a real woman, Maysa. He wasn’t exactly naïve, and he really liked Nara, his girlfriend of four years. The two of them were engaged to be married, and had already exchanged rings. But in those pre-pill days, sex was a problem, and they were obliged to take risks with a sort of “Vatican roulette.” That was when Maysa came onto the scene, with all her experience, charm, beauty—and problems.

Since divorcing her husband, she had had affairs with the singer Almir Ribeiro, who died at Punta del Este, and with Sylvinha’s brother, Mário Telles, among others. As Bôscoli found out, Maysa threw herself into her private life with greater sensuality than she did her songs, if this were possible. It was a revelation even for him, but had it been up to Bôscoli, their torrid relationship would have ended there, in Buenos Aires. When they returned to Brazil, he planned to go back to Nara, keeping the affair with Maysa going for just a short while longer. Only she didn’t give him a chance to firm up his plans. At the Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires, a few minutes before they were due to leave to return to Brazil, Maysa phoned Columbia in Rio: “Send reporters to Galeão airport. I’m going to make a sensational announcement,” she promised.

This time, Bôscoli was the last one to find out about it. When the plane landed, he was astonished to see such an enormous crowd of his press colleagues waiting for them at the airport, and just about had a stroke when Maysa announced: “This is the news. I’m going to marry Ronaldo Bôscoli, who’s right here, and nobody can stop me.”

The cat appeared to have swallowed Bôscoli’s tongue. He did not react. Having made her announcement, Maysa grabbed him by the arm and steered him with the greatest of ease toward the airport buildings. Photographs of this event show a gigantically fat Maysa, huddled inside an overcoat with buttons the size of saucers, staring firmly with those eyes that were like two non-Pacific oceans, with the determination of one who was about to leave for the battle of Normandy. At her side was a disheveled and sheepish-looking Ronaldo, carrying his suitcase and overcoat, slightly off-balance by the weight of Maysa’s heavy arm clamped over his, apparently contemplating life with an air of sad resignation.

Anyone who knew Nara Leão can imagine how the sky must have fallen in on her when the reporters phoned her from the airport to ask her what she thought of her fiancé marrying Maysa. Nara’s denial was broadcast through the most official channel possible: Ibrahim Sued’s society column in O Globo. There wasn’t going to be any wedding, she assured. The following day, Maysa contradicted her denial in the other newspapers: there would indeed be a wedding, no matter what anyone said. Nara then confirmed that her own engagement was off. Throughout those entire few days, the reporters were unable to locate the groom. He was hiding in the Hotel Plaza.

Bôscoli merely wanted to bide his time to see if things would cool down. Until Nara forgave him for his affair with Maysa, he would stay with Maysa, by whom he was, despite everything, completely fascinated. He didn’t stay fascinated for very long, but during the slightly more than a year that they were together, she recorded a great album at Columbia, Barquinho, which finally gave bossa nova a national boost and put the song that was meant for Nara on the map. She also took part, with Ronaldo Bôscoli, in some of the best and worst moments in the battle of the sexes.

Almost all their daily fights were about drinking. Bôscoli, who was not exactly teetotal, was stupefied by the amount of alcohol that Maysa put away. He spent the whole day hiding booze from her, at least before a show—or there wouldn’t be any show. She would react, and blows were exchanged. During one of their fights, a few minutes before she was due to go on stage at a nightclub in São Paulo, one of Maysa’s tooth implants flew out and landed quite a distance away, on the dance floor. Despite the dark lighting in the nightclub, the gap in her mouth could be clearly seen. Suddenly, there was a team of men—Bôscoli, Vinhas, and others—crawling around on their hands and knees in the middle of the dance floor, looking for the tooth.

All of his fights with A Gorda (The Fat One), as Bôscoli called her, seemed very funny the next day when he told his friends about them. But they weren’t quite as funny while they were happening. When he grabbed his jacket to leave Maysa’s apartment in Copacabana—”for good”—she swore that she would stop drinking—”for good”—and emptied her bottles down the toilet. Bôscoli thought her drinking days were over, until he noticed a piece of twine hanging out of the bathroom window. He pulled on it and hoisted up a bottle of Scotch. He had already seen a scene like this, only it had been in a film with Ray Milland.

But Maysa did manage one achievement: getting Ronaldo to overcome his fear of flying. He, in turn, dragged her to Cabo Frio one time, although admittedly only to prove to Ceci the boatman that they were the Menescal and Bôscoli mentioned on the radio—because after all, Ceci knew who Maysa was. Finally, in 1962, she convinced Bôscoli (and Menescal, Vinhas, and the Tamba Trio) to move to Vitória, in Espírito Santo state, far from this crazy world. The amazing thing is, they went. Until, some weeks later, when Bôscoli finally grew tired of watching Maysa trying to destroy herself, took the car in secret, and returned to Rio, without even leaving her a note.

Everyone was affected by the Maysa/Bôscoli affair. The two of them, obviously, and Nara Leão also. Nara took years to forgive Ronaldo, and did so only once there was no longer any hope for the two of them. Bôscoli’s friends confirm that for a long time, he continued to look for Nara in all the women he dated—actresses Betty Faria, Joana Fomm, Mila Moreira. Bossa nova also suffered, because during the affair, Menescal and the others became Maysa’s companions, and obviously could no longer go to Nara’s apartment. An important cohesion among the gang had been lost. But only for that particular gang, because almost immediately Nara made peace with Carlinhos Lyra, got her head straightened out by her new boyfriend, the Mozambican filmmaker Ruy Guerra, and began to get interested in a type of music that, compared to bossa nova, would make her radically change her mind.

“Be patient, Waltinho,” João Gilberto implored pianist-arranger Walter Wanderley, who was already showing signs of wanting to be somewhere other than the studio.

It was the recording of the third (in fact, the last) album by João Gilberto for Odeon—which was to be called merely João Gilberto. He wanted Wanderley to make a particular sound on his keyboard that would mimic the roar of a ship, for the introduction to “The Little Boat.” Wanderley couldn’t get the right sound, and João Gilberto showed him—with his voice—exactly the kind of roar he wanted. Walter’s musicians (Papudinho on trumpet, Azeitona on double bass, Toninho Pinheiro on drums) were astonished: João Gilberto was capable of producing any sound with his voice.

The day before, March 9, 1961, he had recorded the first track on the album “Bolinha de papel” (Little Paper Ball), by the late sambista Geraldo Pereira, another hit by the Anjos do Inferno in 1945. It was the third song in the Anjos do Inferno’s repertoire that João Gilberto had recovered, dusted off, polished up, and re-recorded, putting into practice the miracle of doing it even better than them. (The other songs were “Rosa morena” [Brunette Rose] and “Doralice”). And he did it while removing hardly anything from the original version—in “Bolinha de papel,” for example, he made sure that the “nasal trumpeting” by Harry Vasco de Almeida in the introduction of the Anjos’ recording was re-created by a real trumpet.

Nobody really paid much attention to those details, but he didn’t care. The most modern music in Brazil was undergoing a renaissance of influences from the Brazilian musical past, and on that day alone he recorded three songs that fell into the old-timer category: “Saudade de Bahia” (Longing for Bahia) and “O samba da minha terra” (Samba of My Land), both by Caymmi, and “Trenzinho,” by Lauro Maia. And he even intended to include on the album another old samba by the duo Bide and Marçal, “A primeira vez” (The First Time), which had been a hit for Orlando Silva in 1940. Where were the bossa novas?

João Gilberto was at odds with bossa nova. He had never liked labeling his music, but now that bossa nova had come to represent just about anything and had been adopted by people he didn’t even know, he had started to say that he didn’t play bossa nova—he played samba. His relationship with Jobim was also in a terrible state. Jobim “had no patience,” and Aloysio de Oliveira’s departure from Odeon the previous September had complicated everything. João didn’t much like Aloysio (he merely referred to him as “that American”), but when he started having difficulties with Jobim over work issues, Aloysio came to the rescue. Without him on the scene, Jobim had no wish to participate in the production of the album, so João was recording with Walter Wanderley.

Former sales director Ismael Corrêa had taken over the artistic directorship at Odeon and gave João Gilberto the freedom to do whatever he wanted. He would have taken this liberty anyhow. Chega de saudade had already sold thirty-five thousand albums, and O amor, o sorriso e a flor was heading the same way. The third album couldn’t fail. But it was failing. João had done the arrangements himself—or rather, he had tried to explain to Walter what he wanted—but he was extremely dissatisfied with what he was recording. The next day, March 11, he recorded “Presente de Natal” (Christmas Gift) and put the album on hold. He only returned to it five months later, in August, with Jobim in charge once again. It was the only way to save it. Jobim and João appeared to be incapable of achieving what they both most wanted out of life: freeing themselves from each other.

From August 2 to September 28, they recorded the rest of the album in fits and starts, with a splendid bossa nova repertoire. Jobim managed to produce the sound of a ship’s roar that João wanted for the introduction to “The Little Boat” with trombones, and, where possible, simplified the amount of work that went into the other songs: “O amor em paz” (Love in Peace) and “Insensatez” (How Insensitive) by himself and Vinícius, “Este seu olhar” (That Look You Wear) by him alone, and “Você e eu” (You and Me) and “Coisa mais linda” (Most Beautiful Thing) by the new and surprising musical partnership, Carlinhos Lyra and Vinícius de Moraes.

It was merely by chance that, on looking for Vinícius at his huge apartment in Parque Guinle in 1961, Carlinhos Lyra didn’t find him in the bathtub. It was where Vinícius spent most of the time, submitting himself to an involved ritual. The water had to be scalding when he got in. Around him, on benches, stools, and footrests, would be scattered what in those days were still termed “paraphernalia”: coffee, bottles of Scotch, ice, cigarettes, sandwiches, books, newspapers, magazines, a notepad, a pen, and the telephone. Nobody would have been surprised at seeing a rubber ducky in there somewhere, too. If anyone came to see him—a guest, or even reporters and photographers—Vinícius would invite them to take off their clothes and get in, and he would meet with them right there, in the bathtub. There was no hanky-panky involved, even with the steady flow of luscious female reporters who came to interview him. It was to prove the restorative properties of taking a bath.

And Vinícius needed to be restored every day. His favorite saying, that man’s best friend wasn’t the dog, it was whiskey, wasn’t just a joke. “Whiskey is bottled dog,” he said—in all seriousness. But the image that remains for posterity, that he was merely an extension of his glass, isn’t quite accurate. In the forties and fifties, he could even have been considered a moderate drinker, compared to the professional carousers. Jobim placed Vinícius’s escalating alcohol consumption (and his own) in 1960, beginning at their vacation in Brasília to write “Sinfonia da alvorada” (Dawn Symphony). Up until that point, he was merely warming up. Tom himself was sometimes startled: “Are you sure you can handle it, Vinícius?”

And Vinícius replied, “The body has to endure. The body is the laboratory which has to distill the alcohol and transform it into energy. Because blood only flows smoothly in the veins when there is alcohol.”

The stories of his admittance to the São Vicente Clinic in Gávea for treatment to sober up were true, as much as they seem made up. Vinícius was given the key to the clinic and had permission to come and go as he pleased. “I have a taste for some snacks,” he told the nutritionist, as he was putting on his pants to go out on a binge. Also true was the story that he would rock himself to sleep, softly singing children’s songs like “Tutu marambaia.” The irony is that, without this naïve and almost childlike side to his character, Vinícius, being the great poet that he was, might not have liked popular music. (He also didn’t like the fact that his poetry was becoming “a formula for sappy sweet nothings whispered between lovers.”)

It was that childish side of him that, although he had diabetes, made him raid the refrigerator in the middle of the night in search of papos-de-anjo—and be found out the following morning, having left his eyeglasses inside the refrigerator. Papo-de-anjo, an ultra-sweet homemade candy, was his downfall. He eulogized it as if the entire world shared his taste for it. During the show he did with Dorival Caymmi at the Zum-zum nightclub in 1964, Vinícius announced that the best thing in the world was to “eat papo-de-anjo with the woman you love at your side.” His friend Rubem Braga, who was in the audience, shouted back: “You’re crazy. Don’t you think it’s much more fun to eat the woman you love, and have a papo-de-anjo by your side?”

Vinícius was also the great initiator of diminutives in the world of bossa nova, a musical milieu whose stars were always quarreling fiercely, but called each other “Tomzinho” (Tommy), “Joãozinho” (Johnny), “Carlinhos” (Charlie), and “Ronaldinho” (Ronnie). But Vinícius, quite naturally, addressed everyone like that. When he didn’t know a person’s name, he called him neguinho (“buddy”).

He was adamantly jealous of his collaborating partners, but would write lyrics even for teenagers who brought him small compositions. When Carlinhos Lyra went to look for him that day and Vinícius wasn’t in the bath, he had planned to ask him to write lyrics to one or two songs he had written and he felt went well with the poet’s style. Since splitting with Ronaldo Bôscoli, Lyra had been writing in collaboration with his CPC companion and roommate, Nelson Lins de Barros, who shared an apartment with him in Rua Barão da Torre, or else alone. But Lyra felt he needed something special for those two songs. Vinícius, who admired him for “Maria Ninguém” (Maria Nobody) and was following the ridiculous sambalanço vs. bossa nova affair with dismay, immediately agreed. Lyra became his parceirinho (“little partner”) and the two songs became none other than “Coisa mais linda” and “Você e eu.”

Vinícius also wrote the sleeve text for Lyra’s second album in 1961, in which he was cautionary and, alas, prophetic: “Carlinhos Lyra is a part of what might be called ‘the most nationalistic segment of bossa nova,’ which has led him, with the desire to differentiate his music, to create the term sambalanço for his compositions. I personally refute the necessity for such a term, and have told him as much. I think the term bossa nova characterizes perfectly adequately all that is good and wholesome about Brazilian popular music, which has to find its own place in the sun without interference from group rivalry and the spirit of division,” et cetera, et cetera.

Vinícius must have been guessing at that spirit of division, which became even more marked after 1964. Even he, who thought of himself “left-wing” and had considered joining the Communist Party in 1945, also wrote “social” bossa nova, but without the demagogic poverty that seemed to be the sub-genre’s indicator.

In 1961, while bossa nova was lending depth to arguments, two of the people most responsible for its existence were going on with their lives on opposite sides of the continent, and on opposite sides of the music. In São Paulo, Johnny Alf was finally recording his first album, Rapaz de bem, and showing how, back in 1955 in Brazil, he had already been keeping up with the Americans. In California, João Donato (or Joao Donato, due to the absence of tildes in local typography) was taking part in a revolution that pointed to the future—the reincorporation of Afro-Cuban music into jazz—and making one or two contributions himself. It’s amazing how two careers that appeared to run so parallel, such as those of Alf and Donato, could have taken off on run-ways that landed them at such different destinations.

Johnny Alf swapped his small-time glory at the piano of the Plaza nightclub in Rio for the prospect of success in São Paulo in 1955. He had only been at the Baiúca in Rua Major Sertório for a few months, and his piano-bass duo, the latter played by Sabá, already had a substantial following. One night in early 1956, he was in the middle of the eternally fascinating “Céu e mar” (Sky and sea, stars in the sand / Green sea, mirroring the sky / My life is a distant island / Floating in the sea), when he heard a series of shouts: “Stop the music! We’re closing you down!”

The cook, Lucila, who was frying shrimp in the kitchen, jumped. It was the Health Inspectors, who were shutting down the Baiúca for lack of hygiene and kicking out the Matarazzos, Pignataris, Marques da Costa, and other personalities from the society set who frequented the club. Those millionaires only went to the Baiúca to hear Johnny Alf and wisely kept their distance from Lucila’s crustaceans, but the Health Inspectors weren’t interested in that fact. Alf and Sabá were deemed unfit for human consumption, like the shrimp.

For Johnny Alf, it was the beginning of the usual pilgrimage by evening musicians, going from nightclub to nightclub, having to move on before managing to establish a regular clientele because the nightclub went under, or was converted to a whorehouse or a gas station. In the years that followed, until 1961, he played at the Michel and the Feitiço, also in Rua Major Sertório; the Golden Ball, on the corner of Rua Augusta with Avenida Paulista; the Tetéia, in Avenida Ipiranga; the La Ronde, in Praça da República; the new Baiúca, in Praça Roosevelt; and the After Dark, in Avenida Indianópolis. He played at several of them more than once. Wherever he went, he took his small but elite audience with him.

It’s possible to argue that he wasn’t ever out of work. Sometimes he had the honor of being invited to play at good clubs, like the nightclub at the Hotel Lancaster, on Rua Augusta, where he played with a trio. That was when the going was good. But when times were harder, he was forced to play at two whorehouses, the Stardust and the Club de Paris.

There was nothing very serious about all that bouncing back and forth, if his music, despite being popular, hadn’t remained the same. While Alf was hiding out in nightclubs in São Paulo, his former fans at the Plaza (Jobim, João Gilberto, Carlinhos Lyra) were making the music scene in Rio happen. (Newton Mendonça also hid out in nightclubs, only in Copacabana, and had Jobim there to keep his head above water.) So when Johnny Alf was finally able to record an album six years later in 1961, it was as if Brazil had moved up a year and he had been left behind to repeat. Formidable songs like “Rapaz de bem,” “Ilusão à toa,” and “O que é amar” (What It Is to Love) seemed to have lost their impact. On stage at the School of Architecture in 1960, at the invitation of Ronaldo Bôscoli to the Night of Love, a Smile, and a Flower, Johnny Alf could almost be classified as retro. And what good was it for him to hear Bôscoli announcing at the microphone that “Johnny Alf has been playing bossa nova music for ten years” if nobody was interested?

João Donato had a different experience. In 1959, he had no audience in Rio because everyone thought he played jazz, so he went to California to play Latin music—which was what in fact he was trying to do in Brazil, only nobody realized it. Upon his arrival there, he was immediately adopted by the cool cats of the genre, like the Latins Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, and Johnny Rodriguez, and the Americans Cal Tjader, Herbie Mann, and Eddie Palmieri. Without knowing it, Donato’s career had been similar to theirs: Santamaria and Tjader were, respectively, the conga and vibraphone players for George Shearing’s Latin super-quintet, whose records he had played nonstop on the Victrola in 1953; and Tito Puente was a kind of Latin Stan Kenton. In turn, Kenton was the major American influence on all Cuban musicians at the time, with his recording of “23°N–83°W,” whose title, by the way, represented Havana’s map coordinates.

Donato felt right at home in the middle of all those congas, timbales, and bongos of Latin jazz, with possibilities for splitting up the wind instruments and creating the craziest piano harmonies. Everything was allowed, given that the rhythm was an enchilada of mambos, rumbas, sambas, and—¿porque nó?—bossa novas. The West Coast, where these musicians were based, was then, even more than New York, the melting pot for Latin music. From 1959 to 1961, he played piano with Mongo Santamaria and participated in the first recording of “Para tí” (For You), played trombone and wrote the arrangements for Tito Puente’s brass instruments, recorded extensively with Cal Tjader, who was already famous, and with Eddie Palmieri, who wasn’t yet. His appearance on the scene was quite simply stunning.

In the years that followed, they all began to use Donato’s songs in their repertoire, such as “A rã” (The frog), “Amazonas” (Amazon), “Cadê Jodel?” (Where Is Jodel?), and they became standards for what was later called funk music. Donato himself soon started putting together his albums at prestigious Pacific Records—and had his songbook recorded by other corn-tortilla-with-chilies-loving jazz musicians, like vibraphonist Dave Pike. Donato had an entry in Leonard Feather’s Encyclopaedia of Jazz in the Sixties, an achievement that he was unable to repeat in the Encyclopaedia of Jazz in the Seventies, also by Feather—because as the Americans also discovered, he was still the little boy in short pants that he had been when he was a member of the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club.

16

“Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl from Ipanema)

Sigrid and LetÌcia (above, with Sérgio Mendes, seated) perform the bossa nova “dance” at Bottles Bar

Collection of João Luiz de Albuquerque

According to a widely circulated story, Vinícius de Moraes went into the Arpège nightclub in 1962 to support his friend Tom Jobim who was there at the piano, struggling to make some pocket money, and came out with his future partner: a young man who played electric guitar in the dance band, named Baden Powell. Vinícius, who had never heard Baden play before, was very taken with what he was playing—a broad range of songs that included everything from “My Funny Valentine” to “Stupid Cupid.” He sought him out after the show and asked him outright to be his partner, starting that very night. Baden was astonished—after all, this was Vinícius de Moraes! He nodded in agreement and, to the dismay of the poet, disappeared from sight. Days later, after getting up the courage, Baden went to his house. Then the two of them shut themselves up in Vinícius’s apartment, drank half of Scotland’s production, and only emerged three months later, with twenty-five finished songs.

Nobody knows how this story began, but it’s one of those typical bossa nova legends that make everything seem very unpremeditated in order to depict its protagonists as shy, frightened young men. Only the end of the story about Baden and Vinícius is actually true. In 1962, Jobim was already too famous for playing at the Arpège, a B-class nightclub in the Leme neighborhood. And the identity of Baden Powell, who did in fact play in a dance band, was no secret either. In fact, all singers and musicians in Rio knew him at least by his curious name (that of the founder of the Boy Scouts)—Vinícius included. It’s somewhat of a stretch to think that, for what he had in mind, the poet would invite him to be his partner based purely on what he had heard him play in the nightclub.

The two of them did meet about that time through a mutual friend, the businessman Nilo Queiroz, one of Baden’s guitar students. Nilo got them together at his apartment in Avenida Atlântica, on the corner of Rua Duvivier, with the hope that something would come out of their meeting. After listening to Baden Powell all night long, playing even Villa-Lobos, Vinícius made his offer. And Queiroz had no reason whatsoever to be nervous about the proposal, because he was waiting for it—Baden had already discussed it with him. What he didn’t know was that, on entering Vinícius’s apartment in Parque Guinle, he would spend the next three months locked up in there, enjoying the biggest and best drinking binge of his life, out of which would come twenty-five songs and a new career on the horizon.

That ethylico-musical retreat produced, among other songs, “Consolação” (Consolation), “Samba em prelúdio” (Samba in Prelude), “Só por amor” (Only for Love), “Labareda” (Flame), “O astronauta” (The Astronaut), “Bom dia, amigo” (Good Day, Friend), “Tempo de amor” (Time of Love) (later better known as “Samba do Veloso” in homage to the bar in Rua Montenegro), “Berimbau,” and almost all the afro-sambas, including the “Cantos” (Chants) for Ossanha, Xangô, and Iemanjá. It was an extraordinary production, both for the number of songs and their quality, especially taking into consideration how much they drank during those three months, and the fact that Baden managed to lend such a Bahian flavor to the afro-sambas without ever having been to Bahia.

How much they drank was proudly calculated by Vinícius: twenty cases of Haig’s Scotch whiskey, which worked out to a total of 240 two-liter flagons—or 2.666 ordinary-sized bottles per day. It seems like a lot, but it wouldn’t have been such a ridiculous quantity for two hardened drinkers like Baden and Vinícius if, at the beginning, they hadn’t also been swigging gin, which they didn’t include in the count. And there was no proof that one of their frequent visitors, former president Juscelino Kubitshcek, Vinicius’s friend, then senator for Goiás, contributed much to the depletion of their stock.

As for the Bahian flavor of the music, Baden was given an extensive briefing by Vinícius as he prepared to write that series of songs, and the two of them had an album of Bahian folksongs, which the poet had been given by his friend Carlos Coqueijo, to serve as an aural guide. From this record, they gleaned the recipes for samba-de-roda, pontos de candomblé, and berimbau melodies. Would it be possible to one day forgive Baden and Vinícius for popularizing the berimbau, the most annoying instrument in the world after the bagpipes? (Baden only went to Bahia, by the way, years later in 1968, when he spent six months there and came back with “Lapinha.”) As for Vinícius, he left the apartment after the three-month binge and immediately admitted himself to the São Vicente Clinic, where he and Baden, undaunted, wrote three more great songs: “Amei tanto” (I Loved So Much), “Pra que chorar” (Why Cry?) and “Samba da benção” (Benediction Samba).

Strangely enough, a large part of what they wrote was consigned to a drawer and took a long time to emerge. (The album Os afro-sambas [The Afro-Sambas] was only recorded four years later, in 1966.) But for Baden, his work with Vinícius was a turning point in his personal and professional life. With it, he ceased definitively to be the boy who lived in the Ramos suburb, who from the age of seventeen had commuted by train to and from the nightclubs, at which he played in dance bands, and occasionally was forced to spend twelve hours on a bus in order to accompany singer Ivon Curi somewhere in the interior of the state of Minas Gerais. At nineteen, in 1956, he managed to get a job with Ed Lincoln’s combo at the Plaza nightclub, where he was able at least to play a little jazz, his passion. It would have been great, if there had been anyone in the nightclub to hear him play.

In those days, Baden was so used to playing to invisible audiences that he could practically manage to play his guitar without even taking it out of its canvas case. Badeco, of Os Cariocas, used to go to the Plaza to see his friends, and would hang out with Baden into the early morning. Baden wanted to show Badeco a new technique he had learned on the guitar and just grabbed the strings beneath the canvas and produced the sound he wanted. In the years that followed, Baden made the rounds of the nightclubs, which included the Midnight at the Copacabana Palace, playing with Copinha’s orchestra, and ended up at TV Continental, accompanying singers. But within a short time the singers began to complain: unless the cameras focused only on their faces, viewers wouldn’t take their eyes off Baden’s guitar. Just imagine if he had been good-looking.

As a studio musician, Baden then began to get busier than he really wanted, recording at Philips with practically everyone, from Carlinhos Lyra to a small moldy-fig group called Lyra de Xopotó, without ever getting credit on the album sleeve. Just when he thought he would die undiscovered, Philips let him make his first commissioned album, in 1960, and his second in 1961, but with the kind of repertoire that at the time induced people to spare their needles—”Estrellita” (Little Star), “Ojos verdes” (Green Eyes), “Minha palhoça” (My Straw Hut). And with a name like his, people thought his albums were about scouting. (In fact, Baden Powell de Aquino was never a Boy Scout. But his father had been and, as you can tell, slightly fanatically so.)

Until Vinícius came on the scene, the only people who had shown any interest in writing with Baden had been Billy Blanco, in 1959, with “Samba triste” (Sad Samba) (which Lúcio Alves had been the first to record), and his student and defender Nilo Queiroz. It was unfortunate for the others, because Vinícius snatched Baden up in his prime, and with the decisive collaboration of Professor Clementino Fraga at the São Vicente Clinic, who kept the two of them alive, the three created the best duo the world had ever seen since Haig & Haig.

“Grow, baby!”—wailed Lennie Dale every thirty seconds in the empty Bottles Bar, at four in the afternoon, while rehearsing Wilson Simonal or Leny Andrade.

He didn’t just wail, he also gesticulated, waving his arms like a propeller, and spinning around in the air like an out-of-control helicopter. The Lane had never seen anything like it. Lennie Dale didn’t expect the singers to actually do this, of course (or did he?), but he wanted to give them an idea of how an artist should grow on stage, and be larger than life—although it was risky to try and be bigger than Bottles’s tiny stage, given than the entire nightclub wasn’t much larger than fifteen square meters.

Nobody really knew where the American dancer, whom impresario Carlos Machado had met in Rome—apparently at a party for Elizabeth Taylor in 1960, celebrating the beginning of the filming of Cleopatra, for which he was assistant choreographer—had come from. Lennie Dale had already been in Brazil for two years, and the filming of Cleopatra was still far from being finished, perhaps because he had left the production. Machado brought him in to inject some life into the choreography for his show, Elas atacam pelo telephone (They Attack by Telephone), at Fred’s nightclub, and was impressed at how he rehearsed the dancers almost to death. The dancers survived and Lennie, born Leonardo La Ponzina, decided to stay in Rio.

His arrival in the Lane caused a stir at the time, precisely for the innovative concept he introduced: rehearsal. Up until then, singers, musicians, and producers would only do a quick sweep of the nightclub before a show to try and steal a few drinks in the absence of the owners. Despite their improvisory nature, the shows were miraculously good, but only because Johnny Alf (having returned to Rio in an effort to make up for lost time) or the intrumental bands, like Sérgio Mendes’s sextet, the Tamba Trio, or Bossa Três, were good enough to make up for even those tinny-sounding microphones. Sylvinha Telles would be singing accompanied by a playback on which were recorded the fantastic arrangements that Nelson Riddle had written at Aloysio de Oliveira’s request, when suddenly the playback would fail to come on. It wasn’t terribly professional. But after all, nobody performing in the Lane had aspirations to make it to Broadway.

With Lennie Dale, the Lane almost became Broadway, even though it was a somewhat run-down version. He made the singer and the band rehearse as if they were beginners (which, by the way, they were), repeating each detail dozens, maybe even hundreds, of times until it became second nature to them. And they were complicated details, with sudden breaks and even more unexpected entrances, like a lighting change at the exact moment at which a cymbal was hit, colored spotlights flashing when the drumsticks rolled on the skin of the drums, and so on.

Some people thought the gringo was half-crazy; others attributed his cheerful disposition to his frequent pit-stops in his dressing-room to smoke something; and others couldn’t figure out why Lennie Dale was wasting his time in Brazil when he could have been a top choreographer, the new Jerome Robbins, Michael Kidd, or Bob Fosse, in his own country. “Oh, well,” he used to say modestly.

Some of Lennie Dale’s productions in the Lane required props worthy of Hollywood films, like his own show at Bottles, in which he sang “O pato” (The Duck), and came on stage with a live duck inside a glass. Obviously, the “glass” was a fruit bowl and the duck a duckling. The duck behaved itself and was very quiet, having been trained to exhaustion. But during the length of time that the show ran (largely due to the duck), Lennie was unable to prevent the duck from growing, and it would no longer fit inside the fruit bowl. It made more sense to substitute the duck than to find a bigger fruit bowl, but this meant that the new duck had to be trained to keep quiet. Don’t ask how, but each substitute duck seemed an even better actor than the one before.

The main problem caused by the duck was that Bottles didn’t have a suitable dressing room for it. Because of this, it was entrusted to Lidia Libion, Sacha Gordine’s former representative in Brazil. Lidia’s job was to keep the duck at her house, in Travessa Santa Leocádia, in Copacabana, and bring it to Bottles a few minutes before its entrance on stage. Once the number was over, Lidia would quickly take the duck home because, had the duck remained in that unbreatheable environment for even a few minutes, Lennie would have had to sing “O pato” by himself the following night.

The last duck was a great hit with the audience and critics alike while the show was running, but its subsequent career—prepared by Lidia in tucupi style for her husband Jacques and some friends—merely received mixed reviews.

Not all of Lennie Dale’s ideas were as successful, but his greatest flop was trying to invent a bossa nova dance. At the time, any new musical rhythm was mandatorily associated with a dance, even if the idea had never so much as crossed its creators’ minds—and if there was a rhythm with which to dance to the sound of João Gilberto, of course it had to be samba. But they imposed restrictions even on this, because among bossa nova musicians, almost all of whom had a strictly classical or jazz training, there was no worse indication that a colleague was having difficulties than when he was playing “music to dance to.” Jobim, who had never danced in his life, had just finished writing “Só danço samba” (Jazz ‘n’ Samba) with Vinícius, but it was without much conviction. So much so, in fact, that on hearing “Só danço samba” for the first time, João Gilberto asked him, “What’s this, Tomzinho? A boogie-woogie?”

The dances that were popular among young people were rock ‘n’ roll, the twist, and the hully-gully, which the young Nara Leão had already very properly defined as “stupidity times three.” (There was also la bostella, introduced in Fellini’s film La Dolce Vita, in which people threw themselves to the ground and contorted their bodies epileptically in time to the music. It didn’t last long.) As a form of music that was meant to be exclusively listened to, bossa nova was competing against all of those heavyweights challengers in international music—and was winning. But it might not withstand the siege for very long. The French singer Sacha Distel was already touring Brazil, after having heard in Paris the songs that his namesake Sacha Gordine had bought for an absolute steal in Brazil, and was looking for a way to turn bossa nova into a dance.

Lennie Dale, who was, after all, a choreographer and already considered himself to be part of the bossa nova scene, decided to jump the gun and invent a dance before some other gringo did. And he did in fact create one, but there were several small problems with it: men did not feel comfortable dancing it because it didn’t suit their masculinity terribly well; it suited Lennie Dale, but then he was a dancer. And the only women who were capable of executing such contortions, without ending up at a chiropractor, were Sigrid Hermanny and Letícia Surdi, who were also professional dancers. Lennie Dale’s greatest achievement with his dance was managing to perform it on the tiny stage in Bottles Bar, although this restricted the spins to a vertical plane only. Jumping to the side, one would land on top of millionaire Cesar Thedim’s table, or in the lap of photographer Paulo Garcez, two regular customers. Marly Tavares, another professional dancer, also danced at the Bottles, but reached a point at which she felt that the stage was better suited for just singing.

Without meaning to, Lennie Dale ended up being more influential as a singer than as a dancer. Not that he could really sing, mind you, but in his capacity as an American showman, he had to be able to do everything, including this. And naturally, he sang like the Americans of his generation who aspired to become the new Sinatra: Steve Lawrence, Buddy Greco, Bobby Darin, Frank D’Rone, and Julius La Rosa. It was very funny listening to him sing “The Lady Is a Tramp” in Portuguese, because everyone knew he wasn’t serious, but he ended up passing those vocal arabesques on to Wilson Simonal, Pery Ribeiro and, in the near future, Elis Regina. They all ended up singing like Johnny Alf had ten years before.

First voice: “This is a collaboration … “

Second voice: “… between Tom … “

Third voice: “… Vinícius … “

Fourth voice: “… and João Gilberto … “

Unison: “… with the special participation of Os Cariocas.”

The voices, which were almost like resonant stars twinkling, were those of Os Cariocas introducing, at the Au Bon Gourmet restaurant, the bossa nova show to end all bossa nova shows: Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinícius de Moraes, and João Gilberto—together on stage for the first and last time—with the efficient participation of Otávio Bailly on double bass and Milton Banana on drums, directed by Aloysio de Oliveira. It was also a show intended to get bossa nova back on track, after all the liberties that had been taken in its name, and to remind people that it continued to be a refined musical genre—the most refined and musical, in fact, of them all.

It was the idea of Flávio Ramos, the “man of the night,” who was then the owner of the Jirau nightclub, which was now a hi-fi club (one at which a disc jockey played records), where customers would digest the chicken stroganoff on the dance floor itself, to the sound of the twists and hully-gullies. Ramos, with good reason, considered those hi-fis to be poor entertainment, primarily because his self-confessed dream was to be a kind of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, and have a nightclub that was considered mandatory to frequent, like Rick’s in the movie. There was room for such a club in the Rio nightlife, which, in Ramos’s view, was restricted at the time to Sacha’s, which no longer had the same old glitter, and Baron Stuckart’s Top Club. (Bottles didn’t count, because more of its customers were outside than inside the nightclub.)

One night in 1962 Flávio Ramos went to see Sylvinha Telles’s show at Bottles, during which she sang with a playback of Nelson Riddle’s arrangements. Put like that, it sounds like it must have been the greatest, because Riddle was Sinatra’s arranger, and what greater privilege was there than being “accompanied” by him? In actual fact, the operator of the playback, Aloysio de Oliveira, was separated from the singer by a common shower curtain, working an ancient Webster recorder that was being undernourished by an RCA amplifier that had seen better days—during World War II. It wasn’t quite what Flávio Ramos had in mind when he thought of a show worthy of that music.

Fate gave him a hand. The caterer and restauranteur José Fernandes, a legend in Rio nightlife, was moving to Brasília and was practically giving away his restaurant, the Au Bon Gourmet in Avenida Copacabana, with all its red velvet. Flávio Ramos bid for the restaurant, changed the entire décor, and transformed its 6 X 40 meter space into a show house for three hundred people. He equipped it with a battery of spotlights, bought Shure microphones, and, together with Aloysio de Oliveira, planned the first show with none other than Tom Jobim, Vinícius de Moraes, João Gilberto, and Os Cariocas. And if Frank Sinatra happened to be passing through Rio, then he would also be included.

The show was originally planned to run for one month, but having a full house every night made Ramos extend its run by another two weeks. The show only closed due to the terminal fatigue suffered by all of its participants—the artists and producers. They were worn out on a daily basis. The show, scheduled to begin at midnight, never started on time because, just a few minutes before it was due to begin, there was always someone missing. It was almost always João Gilberto. Flávio Ramos would telephone him in a state of desperation and he would answer the phone, with the voice of someone who had just woken up: “Oh, Flávio, is it already time? Just let me take a quick bath and I’ll be on my way.”

Flávio was seized with panic: “No, don’t come! Don’t leave the house! Take a bath and stay where you are. The car is leaving right now to come and pick you up!”

Flávio Ramos’s black Cadillac went to fetch João Gilberto in Ipanema, and after several such instances, Ramos decided to make it standard practice in order to avoid unexpected surprises. Later—due in part to slight paranoia—he also extended the privilege to Jobim and Vinícius, who was staying at the São Vicente Clinic. Sometimes the Cadillac would go to pick up Vinícius and would fail to find him at the clinic. But he wasn’t far from the nightclub. In fact, he was already in the neighborhood, in a bar close to the Au Bon Gourmet, inexplicably drinking a domestic whiskey called Mansion House with Badeco—when they could have been helping themselves to the Scotch that Flávio Ramos left in their dressing room.

Vinícius needed official permission from the Itamaraty to take part in the show. As was completely understandable, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t consider it seemly for one of its vice-consuls to sing sambas in a nightclub with a glass of whiskey in his hand—and to be paid for doing so. But all would be forgiven as long as he refused the vile payoff that was offered to him. Vinícius arranged with Flávio that instead of being paid for his performance, his guests should be allowed to get in to see the show for free. Ramos agreed, but hadn’t counted on Vinícius dragging in a crowd of six or eight guests every night, who drank like fish and seemed to have insatiable appetites for the oysters and steak tartare that were the specialties of the house at the Au Bon Gourmet. By the time the show closed and accounts were tallied up, Vinícius ended up owing Flávio Ramos.

During the first performances, Vinícius retained his diplomatic decorum, properly dressed and drinking little, just as the Itamaraty had asked him to do. By the end, he was turning up in casual clothes and didn’t bother to count the number of shots he consumed, which was when he gave his best performances. (Which, of course, weren’t as relaxed as the ones he would later give, once he no longer worked for the Itamaraty.) The show owed much of its success to the novelty of being able to see the poet-diplomat-composer singing publicly for the first time.

The show made the magazine covers, and was showered with praise in all the newspapers. People would book for two or three nights a week; nobody was content with the mere forty-five minutes that the show lasted. Food and beverage service was suspended during the show, and everyone listened with rapt attention.

The loudest noise was the sighs of the entrepreneur Alberto Faria, and some shriek or other from a socialite—usually, “How beauuutiful!”—when Jobim, Vinícius, João Gilberto, and Os Cariocas performed (for the very first time ever) “Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl from Ipanema).

Five of the greatest bossa nova classics debuted at the Bon Gourmet show: “Só danço samba,” by Jobim and Vinícius; “Samba do avião” (Song of the Jet), by Jobim; “Samba da benção” and “O astronauta,” both by Baden and Vinícius—and the last, by order of performance on stage, “Garota de Ipanema.” On the night they debuted, nobody knew what would follow when Jobim played a few bars on the piano and João Gilberto sang: “Tom, what if you were to sing a song / That could tell us / What love is?”

To which Tom replied: “Hey, Joãozinho, I wouldn’t know how / Without Vinícius to write the poetry …”

The poet then picked up the theme: “In order for this song to happen / It needs to be sung by João …”

To which João Gilberto, unbelievably modestly, replied: “Ah, but who am I? / I am nothing without you. / It would be better if all three of us sang …”

And all three chimed in: “Olha que coisa mais linda, mais cheia de graça …” (“Tall and tan and young and lovely …”)

It was a key moment in everyone’s lives—a moment that would be repeated night after night, for forty-five days, until nobody would even remember that other songs also debuted during that show. And they were far less likely to have remembered that “Corcovado” (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars), “Samba da minha terra” (Samba of My Land), “Insensatez” (How Insensitive), “Samba de uma nota só” (One Note Samba), “Se todos fossem iguais a você” (Someone to Light up My Life) and, with Os Cariocas, “Devagar com a louça” (Go Easy with the China) were also performed. Luckily, the entire show was recorded, and in fact, on more than one night—this time by the lawyer Jorge Karam, someone else who was obsessed with the technical aspects of sound and with bossa nova. The combined recordings on those tapes would make a fantastic album, if the participants would allow it to be released.

The run time of the show at the Bon Gourmet was probably bossa nova’s greatest moment in Brazil. It succeeded in saving the music at a time when the innovative status of the movement was rapidly declining, during which it was being abandoned for other types of music with more commercial appeal. It was a show organized by Aloysio’s staff (not even the newest member, Baden Powell, was given a place, despite being Vinícius’s collaborating partner), and nobody there suspected that the older gang was on the verge of breaking up. In the introduction to “Samba da benção,” the poet described Jobim as “a dear collaborating partner, who has traveled with me through so many songs, and still has so many yet to travel.” Without a doubt, there truly were, but they remained firmly entrenched in the realms of wistful nostalgia, because following that fantastic production run in 1962, the two did not compose together again.

The reason given by both for this was their travels. In fact, at the end of the year, Jobim went to New York and only returned sporadically; and Vinícius returned to serve once again in Paris, although this did not prevent him from continuing to write with Baden Powell, Carlinhos Lyra, Moacyr Santos, and, briefly, Edu Lobo. It was the end of the Jobim-Vinícius partnership, although their friendship stretched out over thousands of drinking sprees yet to come. But if indeed they had to stop working together, there couldn’t have been a greater swan song than one of the last songs they wrote together: “The Girl from Ipanema.”

It’s already been explained, but people find it hard to accept the truth: Jobim and Vinícius did not write “The Girl from Ipanema” in the Veloso bar (today called Garota de Ipanema), which was on the street that used to be known as Rua Montenegro and is now Rua Vinícius de Moraes, at the intersection with Rua Prudente de Moraes (no relation). It was never the duo’s style to write music sitting at a table in some bar, although they had probably spent the best hours of their lives in them. Jobim composed the melody meticulously on the piano at his new home in Rua Barão da Torre, and it was originally intended for a musical comedy entitled Blimp, which Vinícius already had worked out in his head but not yet committed to paper.

Vinícius, in turn, had written the lyrics in Petrópolis, near Rio, as he had done with “Chega de saudade” six years earlier, and it took him just as much work. To begin with, it wasn’t originally called “Garota de Ipanema,” but “Menina que passa” (The Girl Who Passes By), and the entire first verse was different.

As for the famous girl, Jobim and Vinícius did in fact see her pass by as they sat in the Veloso bar, during the winter of 1962—not just once, but several times, and not always on her way to the beach but also on her way to school, to the dressmaker, and even to the dentist. Mostly because Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, better known as Helô, who was eighteen years of age, five feet, eight inches tall, with green eyes and long, flowing black hair, lived in Rua Montenegro and was already the object of much admiration among patrons of the Veloso, where she would frequently stop to buy cigarettes for her mother—and leave to a cacophony of wolf-whistles.

The song was released at the Bon Gourmet show in August. The first artists in Brazil to record it were Pery Ribeiro at Odeon and the Tamba Trio at Philips, both in January 1963, in order to keep both recording companies happy. (Claudette Soares managed to record it next.) And in May of the same year, 1963, Jobim himself released the song in the United States on the first record he made there, The Composer of “Desafinado.” After that, in just the first two years (which were also the first two years of Beatlemania), “Garota de Ipanema” was recorded more than forty times in Brazil and the United States, among which were recordings by Nat “King” Cole, Peggy Lee, and Sarah Vaughan.

The girl, Helô, whistled the song daily on her way to the beach, without realizing that she had been its inspiration. Although she must have already begun to suspect something because, since 1962, two well-informed young men from Fatos & Fotos (Facts & Photos) magazine—reporter Ronaldo Bôscoli and photographer Hélio Santos—spent every waking moment pestering her to allow them to photograph her on the beach, wearing one of those new bikinis that at the time seemed daring, but that today would make do for manufacturing several parachutes. They ended up succeeding, but only after the girl’s father, a hard-line army general, assured himself of their honorable intentions. It was only three years later, in 1965, when Helô was twenty-one and engaged to be married, that Jobim and Vinícius revealed to her—and to the paparazzi—who she really was.

There followed a veritable stampede, which generated a mixture of pride and anxiety in her father and her fiancé: everyone wanted to meet the “tall and tanned and young and lovely girl from Ipanema.” Rio was celebrating its fourth centenary that year, and no one was considered more appropriate than Helô to be the official symbol of the city, dressed in public school uniform. Her father and her fiancé would not permit it. Two years later, in 1967, Brazilian Cinema decided to film Garota de Ipanema—and who would be better suited to playing the title role, sunbathing in a bikini beneath the Rua Montenegro sun? But once again, her father and her now husband placed themselves firmly between Helô and the eyes of the rest of the world.

The song continued to inspire universal fantasies about the mythical girl, but the years passed and the world, weary of fighting, decided to get on with life and pursue other interests. In fact, it had almost forgotten about the affair when, twenty-five years after that evening in the Veloso bar, the world was finally able to appreciate, this time au grand complet, the attributes of the original Girl from Ipanema: in the May 1987 edition of Brazilian Playboy. But, you know, twenty-five years isn’t exactly twenty-five days.

“This is great music, Mr. Oliveira. I’m going to take it back to my country and make it a hit,” exclaimed the American disc jockey, Felix Grant, enthusiastically at the Bon Gourmet during the running of the Jobim-Vinicius-João Gilberto show.

It would have been great if Grant had done just that, but had he been listening a little more carefully to the what the other disc jockeys in his country were playing, he would have realized that in August of 1962, bossa nova was a far cry from being the best-kept secret in the world. In 1959, the year that bossa nova burst onto the Brazilian music scene, Sarah Vaughan, Nat “King” Cole, and Billy Eckstine were in Brazil—and Vaughan, at least, had heard bossa nova. In 1960, Lena Horne and Sammy Davis, Jr. went over there, and not only did Lena sing “Bim-bom” at the Copacabana Palace and smooch with João Gilberto, but Sammy Davis was accompanied, at the Record Theater in São Paulo, by Hélcio Milito and his tamba, the percussion section that would be the leading feature of the Tamba Trio. But the most important visit in 1960 was that of the least famous musician: guitarist Charlie Byrd. He came, heard, and took bossa nova back to the United States with him.

At the end of that same year, the American record company Capitol released the album Brazil’s Brilliant João Gilberto in the United States (O amor, o sorriso e a flor in Brazil). In May 1961, it was Tony Bennett’s turn to go to Brazil to perform. And he went already “in the know.” At a gathering at the home of entrepreneur Flávio Ramos, the future owner of Bon Gourmet, Bennett and his musicians listened to Luizinho Eça’s technical dissections of bossa nova’s beat and rhythmical division. One of them, double bass player Don Payne, took the records and gave advice to his friend, saxophonist Stan Getz. At the same time, Reprise released the album The Hi-Los Happen to Bossa Nova, which already included English versions of “Chega de saudade,” “O pato,” “Chora tua tristeza,” “Outra vez,” and eight other bossa novas.

In July 1961, a battalion of jazz enthusiasts converged on Rio and São Paulo for the American Jazz Festival, and the after-hours fraternization with bossa nova musicians was not restricted to drinking and joint-smoking marathons. One of the visitors, Herbie Mann, had spent the last two years hanging out on the beaches of California with João Donato and learning this and that about bossa nova. Mann was the first American jazz musician to record an album in Rio using local musicians. So when Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd recorded “Desafinado” in March of 1962 and sold an unbelievable one million copies, the United States had already more than done its homework on the matter.

It’s very strange that the disc jockey Felix Grant, a man who was paid to listen to records, should have been unaware of all this—and only sheer courtesy on the part of Aloysio de Oliveira could explain the fact that, on that night at the Bon Gourmet, the latter did not call his attention to the fact that Grant had missed the boat in that respect. But nothing can really explain why, following that incident, Aloysio de Oliveira insisted on repeating the story of his encounter with Grant as being of the utmost importance for the dissemination of bossa nova in the United States.

17

A Bite of the Apple

The historic concert: the cover of the Carnegie Hall program

The New York taxi driver turned around and asked his passenger, “Hey, aren’t you Agostinho dos Santos?”

Agostinho dos Santos almost looked around him to see who the man was talking about. He had just touched down at Idlewild airport, jumped into that yellow taxi bound for the Diplomat Hotel on 47th Street, and he was already being recognized in New York! The driver explained: his wife listened to the soundtrack of the film, Black Orpheus, from dawn till dusk. Agostinho’s photo wasn’t on the record sleeve, but on hearing the young black man speaking with the same accent, and in the same incomprehensible language as the singer on the record, he deduced that it could only be him. Pleased, Agostinho admitted that he was indeed himself, and thought that the taxi driver might waive his fare in exchange for an autograph. The driver accepted the autograph, but charged him for the ride—the autograph was for his wife, not for himself.

From the taxi also emerged João Gilberto (wearing a wine-colored Czech overcoat given to him by author Jorge Amado) and radioman Walter Silva, who was going to broadcast the bossa nova show in Brazil, via Rádio Bandeirantes, right from Carnegie Hall. João Gilberto set down his only suitcase in a corner of the hotel lobby, went over to the reception desk, picked up a phone, and dialed a number that he had taken out of his overcoat pocket: “Hello, Percy?” he said in Portuguese. “This is João. I’m at the Diplomat Hotel. Come on over.”

Twenty minutes later, an extremely elegant black man arrived at the hotel, exquisitely dressed from head to toe, with a goatee, looking like a Zulu diplomat. It was Percy Heath, the double bassist with the Modern Jazz Quartet. The two had met a few months earlier in Rio, when the MJQ played at the Teatro Municipal and Heath had made a point of being introduced to João Gilberto. They went over to a sofa in the lobby of the Diplomat Hotel and spent a good long while chatting in the language of musicians—because João spoke no English, nor Heath any Portuguese.

The bossa nova gang, with the exception of Jobim, was arriving that morning for the concert that had been scheduled, as the result of an unusual collaborative effort between an American record company, Audio-Fidelity, and a branch of the Brazilian government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to take place a few hours thence at Carnegie Hall. (Jobim was boarding a plane in Rio at that very moment, and only arrived in New York right before the show.) Theoretically, it was going to be a bossa nova show, although some of the featured artists whose appearances, were being advertised on the billboards outside the theater were guitarist Bola Sete, singer Carmen Costa, percussionist José Paulo, and the Argentine pianist Lalo Schifrin. The four of them had about as much to do with bossa nova as John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, Fidel Castro, and Dag Hammarskjöld.

The other names listed on the Carnegie Hall billboards were legitimately representative: Luiz Bonfá, Oscar Castro-Neves’s ensemble, Agostinho dos Santos, Carlinhos Lyra, the Sérgio Mendes Sextet, Roberto Menescal, Chico Feitosa, Normando Santos, Milton Banana, Sérgio Ricardo, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and João Gilberto. Although their names weren’t listed on the billboards, the audience would also be getting other bossa nova comparative unknowns like Caetano Zama, Ana Lúcia, and Claudio Miranda—which made the absence of artists like Sylvinha Telles, Johnny Alf, João Donato, the Tamba Trio, Baden Powell, Maurício Einhorn, Alayde Costa, Bossa Três, and Os Cariocas, with their vast stage experience, even more incomprehensible.

That’s right. Why some and not others?

Anyone who had been privy to the pandemonium in Rio that preceded bossa nova’s pilgrimage to Carnegie Hall would have had the feeling that not even the choice of sailors to join the caravels led by Pedro Álvares Cabral to “discover” Brazil in 1500 had caused such a commotion. It all started in September, when Sidney Frey, president of Audio-Fidelity, arrived in Rio to invite some Brazilian artists to perform in the United States. Who did he want? Just Jobim and João Gilberto (together with double bass and drums), for either one would make for a first-rate show. Frey, in the meantime, wasn’t merely focusing on sales from tickets to the show, or from the show’s recording. This was all peanuts compared to the real big fish, the release of the songs from the show in the United States through his two publishing companies, Matador and Eleventh Avenue.

Aloysio de Oliveira, the man who was certain to be enlisted for this task, thought it was perfect: Jobim and João Gilberto were going to perform in America in person. But there was an obstacle for Frey: all of Jobim’s vast former production was the property of Henrique Lebendiger, who had already edited the songs in Brazil through Fermata. And without Jobim, who had already achieved success in the United States as “the composer of ‘Desafinado,’” the show wouldn’t make sense.

But Frey wasn’t a stereotypical American; he wasn’t even an insensitive know-it-all. Among other things, he wasn’t totally ignorant about Brazil and Brazilians, as was widely thought. The first time he had set foot on Brazilian soil was as a sailor during World War II, and he knew well the goings-on of Praça Mauá. He was a huge fan of Brazilian folk culture, and his home in New York boasted an impressive collection of tambourines, cuícas, and reco-recos—more than two hundred fascinating Brazilian noisemakers. He was very aware of the difference between samba, old samba, and bossa nova, and how they could be combined to soothe the American palate.

That September, in Rio, he came and heard the cream of the crop. He managed to catch, for example, the end of the show with Jobim, Vinícius, and João Gilberto at the Bon Gourmet and, like everyone else, was slayed by “Garota de Ipanema.” He frequently went to the Lane, where Sérgio Mendes was performing with his fabulous sextet, with Paulo Moura on alto sax, Pedro Paulo on trumpet, Mendes himself on piano, Durval Ferreira on guitar, Otávio Bailly on double bass, and Dom Um on drums. He also heard all the new songs by young composers like Lyra, Menescal, Feitosa, Durval Ferreira, and Oscar Castro-Neves, played by Castro-Neves’s ensemble. It was first-rate material for release in the United States—and there must be more where that came from. Well, if he couldn’t spear the best of Jobim, he would just have to go trawling for other fish.

Frey was objective: he invited the press to a lavishly catered function in the Green Room of the Copacabana Palace, at which he announced that, following a suggestion by American photographer David Drew Zingg to the Brazilian vice-consul in New York, Dona Dora Vasconcellos, he was booking Carnegie Hall for a night of bossa nova on November 21, and was still trying to decide whom to invite to participate. In the days that followed, every inch of local newspapers and magazines was devoted to this bombshell news, and candidates for Carnegie Hall descended on his suite at the Copacabana Palace in hordes. It was like a cattle stampede. Anyone who had ever strummed a guitar at some amateur show considered himself qualified to take to the stage that had hosted not only classical music, but also Benny Goodman in 1938. It was as if nobody was bothering to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror. Carnegie Hall might have been liberal, but it still wasn’t a free-for-all. Besides, this was supposed to be a concert of bossa nova, not just any old Brazilian music.

The only trouble was suddenly everyone in Brazil started calling themselves “bossa nova”: serenaders, troubadours, lundu bands, harpists, and even well-intentioned jazz musicians—the conversions took place en masse at the very last minute. Sidney Frey might have been a fan of Brazilian music, but he wasn’t familiar with all its subtle forms, and risked buying a pig in a poke. Despite this fact, Frey had already begun drawing up contracts with musicians, in which the latter signed away the overseas marketing rights to this or that song. But as he had not yet begun to disseminate them, at least, according to him, he was not obliged to pay anyone for them. In view of the uncertainty surrounding the issue, people were already threatening to slap him around a little if he showed his face in the Lane again.

All of this, combined with the possibility of a disorderly performance at Carnegie Hall, could have negative consequences for Brazilian music abroad. This thought occurred to someone who was linked to bossa nova for several different reasons: the ambassador Mário Dias Costa, head of the Cultural Division at the Itamaraty.

One of Vinícius’s former drinking buddies at the Villarino, Dias Costa lived in Rua Viveiros de Castro in Copacabana, a few steps from the Lane, of whose nightclubs he was a devoted patron. As he was an ardent bossa nova fan, he offered Frey his services to participate in the selection of musicians. As the Itamaraty kept a small fund for these kinds of emergencies, he undertook to pay for a few fares and accompany the delegation to New York to make sure that, at the hotel, nobody would eat with their fingers or scratch their balls in front of the ladies. Frey was very grateful for his support, particularly for his payment of the airfares (Varig Airlines provided others), and felt he had been freed to address his own problems—especially because he now had a major one.

Aloysio de Oliveira was trying to sabotage the concert with the argument (which was, by the way, quite valid) that it was getting completely out of hand and could be disastrous for the artists’ future careers in the United States. By artists, he meant the two that really mattered to him: Jobim and João Gilberto. His hope was that if the big names boycotted the show, Frey would cancel the concert, and it could be rescheduled for another time and organized properly—that is, with just Jobim and João. Aloysio seemed to be convinced that the two of them had understood and were planning to follow suit, because he started issuing instructions to those closest to him: “Look,” he told Carlinhos Lyra, “Jobim and João aren’t going. So the deal is, nobody goes.”

Lyra and Menescal had both already swallowed the bait when Vinícius got wind of the conspiracy and told his parceirinho, Lyra, “Look, Tomzinho and João are going. So you’re going too.”

“Oh!,” exclaimed Lyra. “But we’ve just come from a meeting at Tom’s house where we all agreed to spare ourselves the embarrassment and not go.”

“That may be,” Vinícius went on. “But the two of them are going and you are, too.”

Carlinhos then realized that the boycott of Carnegie Hall was a ploy to oust those who were being labeled mediocrities (all of them, except for Jobim and João) and told Menescal. When Menescal announced that if that was the case then he also planned to go, the ploy broke down, and whoever wanted to go to Carnegie Hall went.

Not all of them wanted to go. Singers Sylvinha Telles and Nara Leão preferred not to open themselves up to possible embarrassment. Harmonica player Maurício Einhorn announced he was getting married. Johnny Alf, invited by Chico Feitosa, vanished from the Top Club, where he was playing, and no one really bothered to look for him. João Donato, living in California, conveyed his thanks for the invitation, but sent word saying he didn’t need the gig. The Tamba Trio, who had just returned from New York, weren’t interested. And Ronaldo Bôscoli, who, although he didn’t sing or play an instrument was an obvious invitee, refused on the grounds that he didn’t attend bossa nova concerts with samba dancers and folk percussionists.

Not all of them were sponsored by the Itamaraty. Those who came from São Paulo had their own sponsors. Agostinho dos Santos’s fare was paid by his recording company, RGE; Di Giorgio Guitars paid Caetano Zama’s way; Diários Associados, a TV, radio, and press chain, paid for singer Ana Lúcia to go. Songwriter-turned-movie director Sérgio Ricardo, who was in Los Angeles promoting his film O menino da calça branca (The Boy in White Pants), asked to take part.

At the meeting between the musicians and Sidney Frey, shortly before the show, Sérgio Mendes had announced, “I get to either open or close the show. And I’m not accompanying anyone.”

For someone who had spent the entire flight clutching a string of rosary beads, feeling that New York was a vast distance away compared to Niterói (across the bay), Sérgio Mendes’s business acumen was in overdrive. Sidney Frey felt it most appropriate for him to open the show. The grande finale–style closing would be down to—surprise, surprise!—João Gilberto. After all, it was to hear him that the audience boasted such illustrous names as those of Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Erroll Garner, and Herbie Mann.

They were among three thousand people who, according to calculations, packed Carnegie Hall. Another estimated thousand were forced to stay outside on that exceptionally rainy night in New York, November 21, 1962. Estimates vary as to the percentage of Brazilians in the audience. To Tom Jobim, who was on stage with hundreds of spotlights shining in his eyes, everyone looked Brazilian. To the O Globo journalist Sylvio Tullio Cardoso, who was also there, there were perhaps five hundred Brazilians at the very most. But what difference does it make anyway, when most of the audience, Brazilian or otherwise, were unable to hear a large part of what was played that night? This was despite the presence of a veritable “forest of microphones”: there were five for Audio-Fidelity alone, as well as those of CBS, Voz da América (Voice of America), the US Information Agency, the BBC, Rádio Europa-Livre (Free Europe Radio) (transmitting to Moscow), and even Rádio Bandeirantes, the only Brazilian broadcasting station present. All of the microphones worked well except for the internal sound microphones of the theater itself. Frey’s team, overly preoccupied with recording a disc of the show, had paid little attention to this particular detail.

The balcony audience (U.S. $2.80 per seat) heard the show better than those in the front stalls (U.S. $4.80 per seat) because they weren’t competing with the noise from the five thousand cups of coffee being served by IBC (Brazilian Institute of Coffee) in the vestibule, from which the clatter of saucers and spoons occasionally echoed throughout the show. All of the mishaps with the sound were almost opportune, serving to disguise to a certain extent the innumerable slipups and mistakes that the artists and technicians made during the show—that afterward would be expanded upon at length with sadistic satisfaction by the Brazilian press when referring to the “bossa nova disaster” at Carnegie Hall.

Today, some of those slipups and mistakes are hilarious. Almost all the singers tried to speak English with the audience, giving New York a very poor impression of the standard of education at Brazilian colleges. Normando Santos started singing “Amor no samba” (Love in Samba) into a disconnected microphone. When it was signaled to him that he could not be heard, he stopped, and right when the microphone came on, he could be heard asking, “No hear? No hear?” Caetano Zama, not satisfied with merely executing a few dance steps, sang something called “Bossa Nova in New York,” in a language that was very similar to English, but that only the Brazilians in the audience managed to understand—especially when he referred to a country named “Brey-zil.” And Roberto Menescal flubbed the Portuguese lyrics to “The Little Boat” so badly that he never sang anymore, not even in the shower—a wise decision, considering that, prior to the Carnegie Hall concert, the only place he had ventured to sing a little was in Nara Leão’s apartment.

Tom Jobim was perhaps the most concerned of them all. After Luiz Bonfá, he was the oldest performer on stage—he would be thirty-six in two months. Until then, he had never been out of Brazil, but had spent his life dreaming of the night that he would finally perform on stage in New York. He was also the one who stood to lose the most from failure (either his own or that of the show), because his songs were already circulating widely in America through the voices of several of his old idols. And to his complete despair, the night was already turning out exactly as he had feared: a group of talented but amateur kids, risking the reputation of a great musical genre as a result of their inexperience.

And that was without counting the nonsense that had already taken place. Bola Sete, Carmen Costa, and José Paulo performed “In the Mood,” with Bola Sete playing the guitar on his shoulders—what on earth did that have to do with bossa nova? A band of percussionists did a juggling act with tambourines during Bonfá’s set. All that was missing was a Bahian woman dressed in carnival costume throwing candy to the audience. And just a few minutes before, an American security guard the size of a closet had almost come to blows with Carlinhos Lyra in the wings, on catching him red-handed, smoking beneath a “No Smoking” sign. And had Carlinhos considered starting a fight, he could even had ended up in the electric chair, Jobim imagined.

That was the basis of his reluctance to board the plan in Rio that morning. His wife Teresa didn’t want him to go either. His friend, the columnist Fernando Sabino, frog-marched him onto the plane practically by force, and once he was airborne Sabino had to promise him that the plane would not crash. Jobim’s fear now was not that the plane would come crashing down, but that his career would. Sabino understood: “You’re going to succeed, Tom. Starting tonight, the entire world is going to hear you.” Well, a good part of the world was already hearing him, because “Desafinado” had already been recorded eleven times in the United States that year alone—and one of those recordings, the one with Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd, had sold one million copies. But Sabino’s natural instincts shone like a lamp when he referred to that night. The following morning would see a new Antonio Carlos Jobim.

However, when his time on stage at Carnegie Hall came, Jobim found he was all thumbs at the piano. He walked on to a resounding welcome, but Agostinho dos Santos, who had sung Jobim’s own composition, “A felicidade” (Happiness) shortly before, was a hard act to follow. Tom sat down at the piano, brushed back the lock of hair that was falling over his right eye (and that immediately fell back over the same eye), and began to sing “One Note Samba” and—even worse than Menescal with “The Little Boat”—totally messed up the lyrics. The words simply wouldn’t come to him, as if he had forgotten them back at the Veloso. He only managed to get back on track with the line “E quem quer todas as notas / Ré, mi, fá, sol, lá, si, dó” (And whoever wants all the notes / Re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do) and from that point on managed to sing the lyrics to the end, including in English. Delirious applause.

Jobim started the second song, “Corcovado” (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars) even worse, getting the key wrong. But it was then that Antonio Carlos Jobim truly began to come into his own. He stopped the music, made a gesture to Menescal and Milton Banana, who were accompanying him, that indicated “hold on a second,” and with great aplomb, started again—and played and sang it all the way through, without making a single mistake, in both English and Portuguese. He just about brought Carnegie Hall to its knees. Jobim got up from the piano, tripped over a microphone as if he did that sort of thing every day, bowed, and tried to exit the stage, but was called back by the thunderous applause. He then said, in the best English of the night, with the exception of that of the Master of Ceremonies, the critic Leonard Feather: “It’s my first time in New York and I’m very, very, very glad to be here. I’m loving the people, the town, everything. I’m very happy to be with you.”

For someone who had never been out of Brazil, his command of English was almost too perfect—and for someone who had seemed so shy, his self-confidence from that point on was indeed impressive. Perhaps everyone had been mistaken about his apparent fragility, when all was said and done. Perhaps, up until that moment, Jobim had even misled himself.

But nobody made that mistake with João Gilberto. He had also come to Carnegie Hall on business. The show had barely begun, and he was still dressing while the first artists were performing, when he noticed the crease in his pants: it didn’t run parallel to the side seam. He called council member Mário Dias Costa over and showed him: “Look, Mario. It’s not straight. I can’t go on like this.”

João Gilberto had good reason to be concerned. For a guitarist, a straight trouser crease was as important as his right shoe being polished to a mirror-like shine. Pianists didn’t need to bother about that because their legs and shoes were concealed beneath the piano, but guitarists sat there perched on a stool, and people notice that kind of thing. And besides, when João Gilberto played, he bounced his knee in time to the music. A crease that did not run parallel to the side seam of his pants would mean that when he stretched his leg out to one side, his pants would hang wrong, which, in his imagination, would end up compromising the whole image of Brazilian music abroad.

João told all of this to Mário Dias Costa. Mário thought about this unexpected problem and realized that João might be right, but he didn’t know what to do about it. He asked the vice-consul, Dona Dora Vasconcellos, for help. More experienced in the etiquette and customs of the city, Dona Dora knew that the pants had to be ironed, and the problem was going to be getting hold of an iron in Carnegie Hall at that hour. With great effort, they managed to locate the theater seamstress—there was always one on duty to mend curtains, sew buttons onto the shirts of tenors after a particularly enthusiastic note, and things like that. She and Dona Dora managed to force open the door to the ironing woman’s room, and as the latter had already gone home, grabbed the iron, and, right then and there, while Carlinhos Lyra was on stage singing “Influência do jazz” (Jazz Influence), the Brazilian vice-consul herself ironed João’s pants while he waited in his dressing room in his underwear.

Now sporting an impeccably ironed crease in his pants, João Gilberto was called onto the stage at Carnegie Hall by Leonard Feather. He came on with his guitar, a #3 Romeu, which had been loaned to him by Billy Blanco. For the first time during the show, the photographers and cameramen surged forward. Americans were the most anxious to hear him play, and he knew this better than anyone, although his humble manner made it seem otherwise. It was merely a matter of style. Sidney Frey, sitting in Carnegie Hall’s sound booth, didn’t frighten him any more than Mr. Emicles, the owner of the sound system in Juazeiro. In fact, he frightened him rather less.

The technicians doubtfully adjusted the microphones, and João waited for complete silence. Then he sang “Samba da minha terra” (Samba of My Land) accompanied by just Banana on drums, and “Corcovado” (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars) and “Desafinado” (Off-Key) accompanied by Jobim on piano. He received tremendous applause from those that were able to hear him, but the impression he made on Peggy Lee, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and other artists in the boxes was incomparably greater than on the ordinary people in the audience—who continued to hold the opinion that the high point of the show had been Agostinho dos Santos, with Bonfá on guitar, singing “Manhã de carnaval” (A Day in the Life of a Fool).

In the days that followed, some of the most influential names in the Brazilian press took great pleasure in making mincemeat out of the Carnegie Hall show, dubbing it a resounding failure. They were finally getting their own back on Bôscoli for his bragging, on Menescal for his arrogance, and on the young men and women of bossa nova for their independent streak over the past few years. Antônio Maria roared with laughter in his newspaper, Sérgio Porto made fun of them on television, and the bête noir of bossa nova, the critic José Ramos Tinhorão, was the author of the ultimate cruel jibe: a behind-the-scenes account in O Cruzeiro magazine, which was still the publication with the greatest circulation, of what went on at Carnegie Hall. The story he told revealed nothing more than the disorganization that characterized the show, and the nervousness of some of the participants. But Tinhorão used his vast verbal artillery to ridicule the event beyond belief, defining it as the “failure” of Brazilian musicians in their attempt to portray themselves as “diligent imitators of American music.” His sentiments were echoed by the rest of the press.

Tinhorão hadn’t even been there, which led Sylvio Tullio Cardoso to brand his article in O Cruzeiro “mediumistic.” In fact, it was as if Tinhorão had been not in the audience, but in the wings and even on the actual stage itself at Carnegie Hall. The information for the article (“Bossa Nova desafinou nos EUA” [Bossa Nova Not in Tune in the USA], published in O Cruzeiro on 12/8/62), was provided by the magazine’s correspondent in New York, the Cuban Orlando Suero—who got the facts from someone who was in fact there: singer-composer Sérgio Ricardo.

The article caused Dona Dora Vasconcellos enormous embarrassment in New York and in turn forced council member Mário Dias Costa to explain himself, “standing to attention,” to the Minister of Foreign Relations. Why on earth would the Itamaraty spend money to finance the affairs of an American businessman and submit Brazilian music to complete embarrassment abroad in the bargain? (This was the tone of the report.) But what bossa nova turn-coats and enemies weren’t expecting was that the show had been filmed by an American TV crew. The film, purchased by Dona Dora for $450 and sent back to Brazil in Walter Silva’s suitcase, was shown on TV Continental and TV Tupi, and revealed a very different scenario than that which had been supplied to Tinhorão by Orlando Suero, scribbled by hand on writing paper that the Cuban had sent to the editor of the magazine. For example, it showed the audience enthusiastically applauding Agostinho dos Santos, Bonfá, Sérgio Mendes, Jobim, and João Gilberto. (Unless they had only filmed certain sections of the audience—but it’s highly doubtful that the Itamaraty would have had the power to force them to do that.)

In fact, the applause continued throughout the entire show, as can be heard on innumerable pirated tapes of the complete audio recording of the show that still circulate among collectors in Rio and São Paulo. On these tapes, radio announcer Walter Silva can also be heard disclosing the participation of Sérgio Ricardo and reporting that his presence was made possible “under the auspices of the magazine O Cruzeiro,” for whom he was going to “write an article on the show.” Apparently, the composer of “Zelão” revealed that he was too careless to be a war correspondent—because shortly after the film of the concert was shown, the magazine was forced to recant in another article, published weeks later and written by its senior editor, David Nasser.

During the huge feijoada party thrown by Frey after Carnegie Hall, several Brazilians signed contracts to stay in America. João Gilberto signed a contract for a three-week run at the Blue Angel nightclub, and for the recording of a disc at Verve. Jobim was hired as an arranger by the Leeds Corporation, which paid him a $1,500 advance for the publishing rights to “Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl from Ipanema) (which, wisely, he had not played at Carnegie Hall, saving it for the near future). Oscar Castro-Neves’s ensemble went to the Empire Room at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, even though it’s true that they played “dance music.” Sérgio Mendes proved that he had international appeal. Even Sérgio Ricardo benefited: his song “Zelão” was published by Frey and started to appear on practically every record released by Audio-Fidelity. However, all of this was just a mere taste of what was to come.

Two weeks later, once most of the mediocrities had returned to Brazil, the bossa nova gang put on another show, on a smaller scale, at the George Washington Auditorium in Washington, D.C., with Jobim, João Gilberto, Lyra, Menescal, Sérgio Mendes, Sérgio Ricardo, and Caetano Zama. In the audience, bubbling over with enthusiasm, was the young Rio journalist Telmo Martino, who at the time was working for Voice of America. Having been out of Brazil for years, he was astonished: “How fabulous, Brazilian music with no tambourines …”

After the show, the bossa nova gang was invited to the White House by the First Lady, Jackie Kennedy, who made Carlinhos Lyra temporarily forget his aversion to imperialism by remarking to him that one of her favorite songs was “Maria Nobody.”

During the entire year and a half that preceded the Carnegie Hall show, João Gilberto’s career could be described as being just about anywhere except at its apex. His third record for Odeon, João Gilberto, had disappointing sales figures, compared to his first two—not to mention the hassles that had been involved in recording it. And he was beginning to suspect that Odeon harbored a somewhat pessimistic attitude toward him: nobody had mentioned doing another record in 1962 and there were no signs that they were desperate to renew his contract. The year before, Odeon had let Sylvinha Telles, Lúcio Alves, and Sérgio Ricardo go. As a gesture of solidarity to Sylvinha, to whom he was now married, Aloysio de Oliveira gave his notice. João Gilberto became the only singer of his genre left at the recording company, but with the relative fiasco of his third record, not even Our Lady of the Grottos could guarantee his continued employment. And given that his son João Marcelo would soon be two years old, he could no longer allow himself the luxury of being broke in Rio, as he had been in the good old days.

Jorge Amado, the best man at his wedding, and experienced in the ways of the foreign market, was forever giving him advice: “You’ve done everything you can here. It’s time to leave.”

As if things weren’t already bad enough, João started having problems on his trips. In Porto Alegre, he missed an appearance on Rádio Gaúcha’s Programa Maurício Sobrinho (The Maurício Sobrinho Show), hosted by the influential Maurício Sirotsky, and the latter launched a campaign against him that took care of the entire city. And Porto Alegre was one of his cities. They ended up forgiving him, but it cost him. However, nothing was on a par with the incident he had with Tito Madi at the Paramount Theater in São Paulo at the end of 1961.

It was a scene straight out of old Abbott and Costello comedies, only as if it had been directed by Grand Guignol specialist Roger Corman. João Gilberto and Tito Madi were two of the singers nominated by TV Record for the Chico Viola Award. The others were Elza Laranjeira and Isaurinha Garcia. The four of them were already in their places behind the curtains, waiting for their signal to come on. While the lesser prizes were being awarded, João, Elza, and Isaurinha were fooling around singing this and that, with João playing his guitar. Tito, peeking through the curtains at the stage, heard the production staff saying that the noise from their little party was echoing through the microphones. He went over to his friends and asked them to be quiet. There was a brief commotion from the four of them, and suddenly, exhortations to “ssshhhhh!” started coming at them from all sides. Tito Madi was one of the ones who went “ssshhhhh.”

João Gilberto got annoyed: “Don’t shush me, Tito.”

More shushes were heard, and Tito admits that he unconsciously let out another shush and gave João Gilberto a gentle shove. The latter didn’t blink: he raised his guitar, as one raises an axe, and brought it down on Tito Madi’s head. The resulting vibration produced a chord in E minor.

Although it was perhaps unintentional, the blow was delivered with the side of the guitar, almost the edge. Tito, with reflexes that were indeed enviable for a romantic singer, managed to duck his head an inch or two, but was unable to dodge the guitar striking him squarely on the top of his head. The blow opened his scalp, and blood gushed from the wound, soaking his black tuxedo jacket and the front of his white shirt. Tito passed out and a commotion ensued. The production team appeared, shushing, but when they saw the blood-soaked scene on Rua da Consolação, they ordered Tito to be taken out of there. They called João Gilberto onstage, handed him the award, and didn’t even want him to sing. He left without performing.

Tito also left, but to go to the Hospital das Clínicas, where he got ten stitches in his head, just one week before his wedding. From the hospital, he had to go to the police station to give a statement. He did so against his will, because he had no wish to register a complaint. But several witnesses told the police chief what had happened and he decided to open an inquiry. What followed was a long series of intrusive pestering of Tito Madi, which made him start to suspect that he didn’t really like João Gilberto very much.

As he lived in Rio, Tito was continually being forced to put his life on hold to go to São Paulo to give statements. João wasn’t, because he was always on the road and could never be found—and after the Carnegie Hall incident, forget it. It took him almost two years, but Tito finally managed to get the inquiry transferred to Rio, and there found an understanding police chief who closed the case.

On leaving Carnegie Hall for the feijoada party at Sidney Frey’s apartment, João Gilberto decided that Jorge Amado was right. He had already done everything he could in Brazil.

“Tom, tell that gringo he’s a moron,” João Gilberto instructed Tom Jobim in Portuguese.

“Stan, João said to tell you that he’s always dreamed of making a record with you,” Jobim told him, in English.

“Funny,” replied Stan Getz, derisively. “By the tone of his voice, I don’t think that’s what he’s really saying …”

The recording of the Getz/Gilberto album was not as peaceful as its fantastic eight tracks make it out to have been. Getz, whose normal interaction with humankind at the time was after three or four shots, was a little slow in all other regards. A few days after the concert at Carnegie Hall, they had all met for the first time—Getz, Jobim, João Gilberto, and producer Creed Taylor from Verve—in the Rehearsal Hall at Carnegie Hall. They wanted to sound out the possibilities of an album. João played and sang “One Note Samba” with Jobim on piano, to show Getz how it should be. Getz had already recorded the song on the album he had released the year before, Jazz Samba, with Charlie Byrd, but had never gotten it quite right. And by the look of things, he still wasn’t getting it.

Struggling with his impatience and rebellious locks of hair, Jobim told the American photographer David Drew Zingg, a mutual friend of his and of Creed Taylor, who had been the one to introduce the two of them, “David, run down to the deli on the corner and buy the man a bottle of whiskey. Maybe he’ll loosen up.”

Getz loosened up. The experience of playing bossa nova with Brazilian musicians intimidated him. On Jazz Samba, for example, he used two American drummers, Buddy Deppenschmidt and Bill Reichenbach, and they almost appeared to be suffering from lumbago when compared to Milton Banana’s swinging elasticity. But the two stars of the record didn’t always treat each other quite so courteously. As quietly as João Gilberto wanted to sing, Getz insisted on blowing as if he had a pair of giant bellows for lungs, or as if the microphone were deaf. (Later, João Gilberto also complained that Getz re-equalized the record and made his saxophone sound even higher, in order to remain in the foregound the entire time.) The two of them were also unable to come to an agreement in choosing the definitive take from among the several recordings of each song, and Creed Taylor was forced to settle the issue. It was a miracle that the eight tracks were recorded in just two days (March 18 and 19, 1963), including “Garota de Ipanema” with Astrud Gilberto.

The story that Astrud’s participation in the record was incidental is another tale that has been repeated with tremendous sincerity since its occurrence, especially after the seven-inch disc with “The Girl from Ipanema” sold two million copies. And in fact, it’s too good of a story not to tell the grandchildren. The singer’s wife, who up until then had only ever sung within the safe confines of their own home, was invited to sing on one of the tracks and became a worldwide success overnight, even more so than her husband. In the old days, Hollywood paid writers to invent stories like that.

In fact, the only incidental aspect of Astrud’s participation in the record was the fact that nobody there, except for her and perhaps João Gilberto, knew that this was going to happen. In Astrud’s mind, the idea of recording professionally wasn’t new. It wasn’t for nothing that she had rehearsed exhaustively with João Gilberto for her participation in the Night of Love, a Smile, and a Flower performance at the School of Architecture, two years earlier, and that he, usually so demanding, had deemed her ready to sing in public—and had even accompanied her. It’s more than likely that she would have continued to perform at other amateur bossa nova concerts, had they taken place. (The Night of Love, a Smile, and a Flower was the last of its kind, and from that point on, the gang broke up to concentrate on turning professional.)

The fact is that, on the second day of recording the Getz/Gilberto album, Astrud insisted to João Gilberto and Stan on participating in “The Girl from Ipanema,” singing the English version. João tried to redirect the conversation, but she persisted and was backed up by the others. Creed Taylor thought a female voice would sound good and it wouldn’t be a bad thing for someone on that album to sing in a less exotic language. Jobim had already heard Astrud sing before and knew that she could handle it; and Stan, quite frankly, wasn’t very interested. João Gilberto gave in and after four or five takes, even got excited about her participation.

The track ended up being very long (five minutes, fifteen seconds), and included João’s part, in Portuguese; Astrud’s entrance, in English; Getz’s solo; Jobim’s piano solo; and Astrud’s return with Getz to finish. It didn’t matter that it was so long, if it was going to be an album aimed at the jazz market, with no aspirations to making the Top Forty. Taylor liked the end result so much that he suggested repeating the formula on the last track left, “Corcovado.” But something must have been on his mind, because he asked them to make it a little shorter, and “Corcovado” ended up being four minutes, fifteen seconds.

Getz/Gilberto lingered in Creed Taylor’s drawer for months while he made up his mind what to do with it. It wasn’t the first record he had made that brought Stan Getz together with Brazilian musicians. In February, he had recorded Jazz Samba Encore!, uniting Stan and Luiz Bonfá, with Jobim on piano, and, on six of the tracks, Portuguese vocals provided by Maria Helena Toledo, Bonfá’s wife. It was an excellent album, much better than the one Getz had recorded with Charlie Byrd, but unfortunately, not even the exclamation point in the title managed to stir up much interest in potential buyers. He didn’t want the same thing to happen with Getz/Gilberto.

The more he listened to it, especially the two tracks with Astrud, the more Taylor convinced himself that it would be foolish to sell it merely as a prestigious album. At the end of the year, Taylor did what reason dictated he do, although it broke his heart: he wielded the scalpel and excised João Gilberto’s vocals from “The Girl from Ipanema.” In doing so, he cut out one minute, twenty seconds and shortened the length of the track to three minutes, fifty-five seconds, leaving it an appropriate length for being played on the radio. He packaged it as a single, released it under the recording label’s Latino collection, and crossed his fingers. Nobody knows why these things happen, but the single containing just Astrud’s voice helped to make the album a huge success, and brought it a collection of Grammys and lots of money in the bank for everyone involved. Well, almost everyone.

18

The Armed Flower

Nara Leão, with Zé Kéti (left) and Nelson Cavaquinho at the famous apartment, swaps bossa nova for the music of the “past”

Collection of Nara Leão

In 1961, Aloysio de Oliveira found a live cockcroach inside his drawer at Philips. “Oops!,” he exclaimed, slammed the drawer shut, and decided to leave. It wasn’t the cockroach, evidently, that led him to resign his position as artistic director of the recording company just one year after leaving the same job at Odeon. He had left Odeon because they had gotten rid of Sylvinha Telles, as well as Lúcio Alves and Sérgio Ricardo, with whom he had been developing a nucleus of modern, adult singers. But Odeon preferred to just keep João Gilberto. So he went to Philips, taking Sylvinha and Lúcio with him, and started doing the same thing there, but he felt he had no professional freedom. The cockroach merely reinforced his decision. The ideal solution would be to start his own label, at which he could reunite that entire crowd of talented people without a home base who were connected to bossa nova.

His resistance to singers “with no voice” had begun to crumble with an album he had produced at Philips shortly after his arrival: Bossa Nova Mesmo (True Bossa Nova), performed by the gang that hung out with Carlinhos Lyra after his split with Ronaldo Bôscoli. Almost nobody on that album could sing, including Vinícius de Moraes, who was making his first record. But the result was excellent, and André Midani was perhaps right when he said that they should take advantage of what the young gang had to offer.

The result of those ruminations that filled Aloysio de Oliveira’s mind was the small label Elenco, which he spent the year of 1962 organizing, while producing shows for Flávio Ramos at the Bon Gourmet. Aloysio’s original idea was for Elenco to be a label within a recording company, in order to ensure guaranteed marketing and distribution. He sent a proposal to CBS, but they weren’t interested. As he wasn’t particularly keen on approaching either Odeon or Philips, he decided to start it up anyway, in partnership with Flávio Ramos, manufacturing the records at RCA Victor. Ramos contributed the capital, his administrative experience, and his spacious apartment in Rua Marquês de Abrantes in the Botafogo neighborhood, to serve as the temporary office and rehearsal site of the recording company. Aloysio contributed his ideas, his dedication, and a gang that would follow him wherever he went.

Once the label was up and running and the first titles had been released, the two partners quarreled and Ramos withdrew his investment. The money could be obtained from another source, but now Aloysio was left to care of the business side of things, for which his capacity was zero. André Midani described him as “a master—but only inside the studio.” And that must really have been the case, because against all adverse factors, he made Elenco the only Brazilian recording company whose records were sought out in stores for the label alone. Buyers would habitually ask store clerks, “Has Elenco released anything?”

They had good reason to ask because during the three years (1963–1966) that Elenco was directly under Aloysio de Oliveira’s leadership, it produced or released almost sixty records, featuring Jobim, Sylvinha Telles, Dick Farney, Lúcio Alves, João Donato, Sérgio Mendes, Sérgio Ricardo, Baden Powell, Roberto Menescal, Quarteto em Cy; first albums by Nara Leão, Edu Lobo, Rosinha de Valença, Sidney Miller, and even Billy Blanco as a singer; recordings of live shows by Maysa, Lennie Dale, Vinícius, and Caymmi; a series of collaborations, such as those of Caymmi and Jobim, Vinícius and Odette Lara, Sylvinha and Lúcio Alves, Dick Farney and Norma Bengell; and extremely successful comebacks by old guard singers, like another album by Mário Reis, and an exceptional one by Cyro Monteiro singing compositions by Baden and Vinícius. Sometimes Aloysio slipped up on an idea that seemed good at first but didn’t work out, such as recording Carlos Lacerda, who was governor of the Guanabara state at the time, reading his own translation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar—the surplus of which still, years later, remained piled high in the bathroom of Elenco’s tiny office on Avenida Presidente Antônio Carlos, in the Center.

Elenco’s records could be recognized at a distance by their sleeves: they were always white (with only two or three exceptions), with Chico Pereira’s black-and-white photographs processed in high contrast by the art director, César Villela. To theoreticians, this style of album cover—economical, no-nonsense, without fanfare, just like the music printed on the disc itself—was revolutionary. Chico Pereira attributed their economical appearance to a pure and simple lack of funds. On one of the most amusing album sleeves published by Elenco, Surf Board, Menescal’s musicians appear dressed as acrobatic water clowns. But there was no money with which to buy the costumes, so they had their picture taken in their underwear—and César Villela drew their nankeen outfits on over their photograph.

According to Chico Pereira, Elenco’s record sleeves would have been more colorful than those of Odeon, had they had the resources. But like it or not, the high-contrast photos ended up becoming a bossa nova trademark, and the other recording companies shortly followed suit. (Philips was the first, with Tamba Trio’s records, followed by RCA and RGE.) Even more serious than the lack of resources, however, was the lack of information on thecovers. Aloysio, in trying to do everything, didn’t always remember to give due credit on the album sleeves—for which he himself wrote the texts. It was commonplace for the list of musicians that made up a singer’s backing band to be missing, and sometimes he would even distractedly omit the name of his main collaborator: the assistant artistic director José Delphino Filho, a man who was capable of finding a tuba or bassoon player at three in the morning at the slightest whim of one of the arrangers, generally Lindolfo Gaya.

Elenco did not have any staff to handle publicity. Aloysio himself wrote the press releases, mimeographed them, licked the envelopes, and mailed them to the newspapers and magazines. He was eventually assisted in this task by the young Guilherme Araújo, who would later become an important show business entrepreneur. It was also down to Aloysio to burn the midnight oil in the Rio-Som studio, equalizing and mixing the delicate combinations of voice and instruments. He wouldn’t allow anyone to do anything that he knew—or even didn’t know—how to do.

Nobody at Elenco had a contract, not even the artists. They all received royalties, which would have been a major bonus had Elenco’s records sold millions of copies. But this wasn’t the case. The initial production run was two thousand copies, and the recording company’s greatest fear was that one of its records would be successful enough to reach the ten thousand mark and they would have no way of meeting demand. Some of them hit the goalpost—Vinícius e Caymmi no Zum-zum (Vinícius and Caymmi at the Zum-zum), Dick Farney & Norma Bengell—but none of them actually made it into the net. But it was irrelevant whether Elenco cut two or ten thousand records, because they had no way of getting their records to their customers. In 1963, the distribution networks in effect today did not exist, and it was down to the recording companies themselves to distribute the records, practically door-to-door. The unabashedly popular Continental, for example, even had salesmen who rode on the backs of mules, distributing records as far afield as the Goiás boondocks. It was already enough of a challenge for Elenco to get its records to the downtown Rio stores, never mind those of other cities.

This problem was also experienced by another courageous little label at the time, Forma, run by Roberto Quartin, which was mounting an ambitious project. Its records were strictly luxury items, with thick double sleeves illustrated with modern artwork and title graphics, such as Coisas (Things) maestro Moacyr Santos’s impressive album, Novas estruturas (New Structures) by Bossa Três, and Inútil paisagem (Useless Landscape) Eumir Deodato’s first official record. Forma ended up having to cut costs and go back to a more traditional style of cover, although its albums continued to present a challenge, such as Os afro-sambas (The Afro-Sambas), by Baden and Vinícius.

Aloysio de Oliveira made another mistake with Elenco: he took exactly one year to launch his label in São Paulo, where the major bossa nova market had always been located. And by the time he did this, in 1964, São Paulo was already producing and recording its own bossa nova in copious quantities. It started with José Scatena’s RGE, which had always had Agostinho dos Santos, and then also signed Ana Lúcia, Manfredo Fest, Paulinho Nogueira, and the Zimbo Trio, and would later even acquire Tenório Jr., Wanda Sá, and Francis Hime, all from Rio. São Paulo also played host to the Brazilian branch of Audio-Fidelity, which recorded important albums with Alayde Costa, Milton Banana, and César Camargo Mariano’s Sambalanço Trio, and was the first to release Walter Santos and Geraldo Vandré on LP. Not to mention the small recording company Farroupilha, run by Tasso Bangel, which had Vera Brasil and Pedrinho Mattar and would gain phenomenal success with “Menino das laranjas” (The Little Orange Seller), written by Théo de Barros and released by the sensational Jongo Trio.

But the main conquest of bossa nova in terms of record sales—against which Aloysio had no hope of competing—was by Philips, from which he had resigned, and which was being mobilized by the man who had replaced him: Armando Pittigliani. In a swift and cunning move, Pittigliani had managed to round up Os Cariocas, the Tamba Trio, Sérgio Mendes’s Bossa Rio, Walter Wanderley, and Eumir Deodato and Durval Ferreira’s Os Gatos. Pittigliani had already “discovered” Jorge Ben in the Lane, recorded him, and his first record, Samba esquema novo (New Scheme Samba) sold one hundred thousand copies in two months in 1963. But Pittigliani’s greatest achievement was stealing Nara Leão away from Aloysio de Oliveira.

Nara Leão’s father, Dr. Jairo, was sitting on the sofa in the famous apartment with his legs crossed, reading the Correio da Manhã newspaper, when Nara informed him that she had just accepted Carlinhos Lyra and Vinícius de Moraes’s invitation to star in the show Pobre Menina Rica (Poor Little Rich Girl) at the Bon Gourmet restaurant. Dr. Jairo didn’t even so much as uncross his legs. He merely lifted his eyes from the newspaper and remarked: “Ah, you mean to say you’re going to become a common whore?”

Flávio Ramos, the owner of Bon Gourmet, remembered the episode. Nara’s father went back to his newspaper and Nara, deeply upset, withdrew to her room. But she had already made up her mind, and besides, she was tired of being protected and ordered around by everyone.

While she sang in apartments and at the bossa nova university shows, nobody paid Nara Leão much attention. She was, at most, an ornament who was much loved by everyone—Menescal, Lyra, and of course, her fiancé Ronaldo Bôscoli. When the little gang began to turn professional at the end of 1960, they took it upon themselves to see to it that Nara didn’t. She had to retain her role as their “muse.” Ronaldo was unable to discern qualities as a singer in her, and he never hid this fact from her. The others felt that, given her slight frame, which was as fragile as a dragonfly, Nara should not get herself involved in the rat race without the scrupulousness of the semi-professional. And—to confim André Midani’s initial opinion—their preconceived ideas of her were so belle époque that they felt she wasn’t the kind of woman who ought to sing “at night.”

When the Maysa/Bôscoli scandal hit the headlines and Nara suddenly found herself without a fiancé, she decided that her committment to the gang had also come to an end. Hurt beyond belief by Bôscoli, she turned once again to her old friend Carlinhos Lyra, who was heading yet another gang of musicians. In 1963, he also changed his mind, and decided that Nara should sing. He had written a musical comedy with Vinícius whose title reminded one somewhat of a song written by Noël Coward in 1920, “Poor Little Rich Girl”; it featured a virtual treasure chest of great songs: “Samba do carioca” (Carioca’s Samba), “Sabe você?” (Do You Know?), “Pau-de-arara” (Flatbed Truck), “Maria Moita,” and “Primavera” (Spring), among others. They were going to put on the show at the Bon Gourmet, and Nara would be the original poor little rich girl.

Her father did nothing to stop her except grumble, and Nara appeared at the nightclub in the first part of that year—absolutely terrified at singing in front of an audience. It was no longer a matter of singing at home, or in auditoriums that were sometimes smaller than the living room of her apartment. And at the School of Architecture shows, where there were hordes of people, she hadn’t managed to make anyone out in the tiered seats. At the Bon Gourmet, she knew almost everyone sitting at those tables, and felt completely exposed on the little stage, even with Lyra and Vinícius at her side. Aloysio de Oliveira, the director of the show, had to use all his powers of persuasion: “You’re among friends, Nara,” he said. “Sing at the Bon Gourmet as you would at home.”

With a huge effort, Nara completed the three-week run. Flávio Ramos had a miserably half-empty house every night, and the show didn’t achieve even a mere shadow of the success that the concert with Tom, Vinícius, João Gilberto, and Os Cariocas had a few months earlier. “Nara couldn’t hold the audience,” remembers Flávio. “She wasn’t yet a professional.”

She began to date the avant-garde filmmaker Ruy Guerra, who would soon film Os cafajestes (The Scoundrels) with the famous scene in which Norma Bengell was naked for almost five minutes—which in those days was a stretch of nudity just about as long as Gone With the Wind. Ruy Guerra was “left-wing,” like Carlinhos Lyra, who was more political with every passing day and who already spoke of bossa nova as if it were a thing of the past: “Bossa nova was destined to be short-lived,” he stated at that time. “It was merely a new musical format of repeating the same romantic and inconsequential things that we’ve been saying for a long time. It didn’t change the content of the lyrics. The only true path is nationalism. Nationalism in music isn’t the same as provincialism.”

The fact that Lyra had made this statement in November 1962 didn’t prevent him, just a few weeks later, from singing at Carnegie Hall. But on his return to Brazil, he was more inclined than ever to dedicating himself to learning all about the old sambistas de morro for whom he had finally developed a passion: Cartola, Nelson Cavaquinho, Zé Kéti. Suffused with ideological ammunition by his collaborating partner, Nelson Lins de Barros, Lyra invited them to his apartment in Rua Barão da Torre in Ipanema. The idea was to try and compose something in partnership with them. The journalist José Ramos Tinhorão, who continued to be the angel of doom for bossa nova, surprisingly participated in one of those gatherings and remembers being highly amused at seeing Lyra serving cachaça and beer to the sambistas—because “that’s what sambistas like”—while they themselves drank Scotch. “It didn’t occur to them that those older black men might also have liked whiskey,” laughs Tinhorão.

The results of those efforts to compose together were below standard, according to Tinhorão, because Nelson and Lyra’s musical language, whether they liked it or not, was too elaborate for Cartola and Nelson Cavaquinho. The only collaborative effort to emerge from those rivers of beer was “Samba da legalidade” (Lawful Samba), by Lyra and Zé Kéti—not coincidentally, the only one of the three sambistas who was not a real musician and was capable of merely contributing his autochthonous know-how. They ended up deciding that the best thing was every jack to his trade, although this would not prevent the almost unpublished compositions of the sambistas from being recorded in a modern style—that is, the bossa nova style. Which is what Nara immediately wanted to do.

The album Nara, recorded at the end of 1963 by Elenco, was not Nara’s recording debut, as is commonly held. Months earlier, she had sung on two of the tracks on Carlinhos Lyra’s third and best album up until that point, Depois do carnaval (After Carnival). But for her own record, she would make the sambistas descend their hill. For months, it was her turn to gather Cartola, Zé Kéti, and Nelson Cavaquinho at the enormous apartment in Avenida Atlântica. She did not commit the same gaffe as Lyra and Lins de Barro, and appropriately served them whiskey, allowing them to at least bask in the sweet scent of bourgeoisie while she learned their sambões.

Aloysio de Oliveira, who was going to produce the album, didn’t like her choices at all. For him, bossa nova had fallen from the sky to feed the musical appetites of the urban and sophisticated consumer, but it had already been a supreme effort for him to sell music that was performed by singers “with no voice.” Now that he had finally gotten used to it, Nara, who had still less of a voice, was trying to exchange the pervasive themes of love and the sea for things related to slums and poverty, which were completely alien to the movement. But Nara insisted and recorded “Diz que vou por aí” (Tell ‘em I’m Going By) by Zé Kéti; “O Sol Nascerá” (The Sun Will Rise), by Cartola and Elton Medeiros; and “Luz Negra” (Black Light), by Nelson Cavaquinho.

Aloysio yielded and made the record, but in the text he wrote for the album sleeve he had to make an effort to disguise his dislike of Nara’s repertoire, which included songs that, according to him, “had nothing to do with bossa nova.” And—Aloysio observed—even when Nara sang compositions by those connected with bossa nova, she leaned toward compositions “with strictly regional tendencies,” like “Feio não é bonito” (Ugliness Is Not Beautiful) and “Maria Moita” by Lyra; “Berimbau” and “Consolação” (Consolation), by Baden Powell and Vinícius; “Nanã,” by Moacyr Santos, which did not yet have any lyrics; and “Canção da terra” (Song of the Land) and “Réquiem para um amor” (Requiem for Love) by the young Edu Lobo and Ruy Guerra—all with more than just a faint redolence of the slave quarters about them. Without realizing it, Aloysio had good reason to be concerned: that flirtation with Populism was going to end up ruining the poetry of the genre.

But when Nara’s album was released, bossa nova ended up taking to it fairly well. It was the conservatives who set Nara in their sights, accusing her of diluting the purity of authentic popular music by getting mixed up in it. The veteran musician Jacob do Bandolim (who had the reputation of being bad luck, and people knocked on wood whenever they spoke his name) despised her as a singer. And his son, the journalist Sérgio Bittencourt, started attacking her every other day in his bad-tempered column, Bom dia, Rio (Good Day, Rio) in the newspaper Correio da Manhã. He even initiated a byzantine discussion on whether or not Nara was a sambista and, to his surprise, she was defended by two unsuspected fans of the old guard: Lúcio Rangel and Sérgio Cabral. At the time, Bittencourt was accosted in the street by Zé Kéti: “For God sake, stop this,” begged Zé Kéti. “She’s the only one who’s recording my music and that of Cartola and Nelson Cavaquinho!”

Shy Nara, who up until very recently still needed to be protected by her friends, was holding her own splendidly in those battles. We’re able to tell by checking her album of press clippings that she kept everything that was written about her, even the insulting articles, with the same pride that she kept the ones that praised her. The dragonfly finally emerged from her coccoon and dared to fly close to the neon lights. In January 1964, she survived a run at the almost uncivilized Bottles nightclub, and a few months later she went to Japan with Sérgio Mendes’s trio, Tião Neto, and Edison Machado. The trip was sponsored by Rhodia, a textile manufacturer, for the release of their fabric collection, Brazilian Style.

Before leaving for Japan, Nara and the trio posed for an extensive fashion spread in the magazine Jóia (Jewel), shot in Salvador, with Nara modeling the collection of garments. Her image up until that point, except for the fact that she was the “bossa nova muse,” was not that different from that of her big sister, Danuza, in the frivolous elegance department. But something happened to Nara in Tokyo, and she insisted on including “Diz que vou por aí” in her repertoire, the greatest hit of which was, of course, “The Girl from Ipanema.” Sérgio Mendes refused to pose—he didn’t feel comfortable playing Zé Kéti’s songs in a runway fashion show—and there was considerable friction between the two of them.

On her return from Japan in the second half of 1964, Nara the dragonfly decided to play with fire: now that Brazil was suddenly under a military dictatorship and liberal Brazilians were savoring the bitter taste of defeat, she signed with Philips to record a controversial album—Opinião de Nara (Nara’s Opinion).

This was in fact the record that caused the rift in the bossa nova gang, much more so than the jealousy and commercial squabbles between Carlinhos Lyra and Ronaldo Bôscoli four years earlier, or the record Nara made at Elenco. Except for “Derradeira primavera” (Final Spring), by Jobim and Vinícius, and “Em tempo de adeus” (In Times of Farewell), by Edu Lobo and Ruy Guerra, two romantic ballads of undefined genre, the rest was a ninety-degree bow to the genuine values of the real Brazil: it contained two sambões by Zé Kéti (“Opinião” [Opinion] and “Acender as velas” [Light the Candles]); two others by Baden and Vinícius (“Deixa” [Leave] and “Labareda” [Flame]); a carnival marchinha from 1940 (“Mal-me-quer” [Unwanted]); a protest song by the Maranhense João do Vale (“Sina de Caboclo” [Caboclo Fate]); other assorted protest songs by Sérgio Ricardo and Edu Lobo; and even two Bahian folk music capoeiras. It was the greatest escape that Ipanema had encountered since “Chega de saudade” changed the lives of “a generation.”

The irony is that anyone who was to listen to Opinião de Nara for the first time nowadays would consider it as much a “bossa nova record” as any other. The only explanation for this resides with the musicians who accompanied her: Erlon Chaves on piano; Edu Lobo on guitar, emulating João Gilberto’s beat; Tião Neto on double bass; and none other than Edison Machado on drums, playing as jazzily as if he were at Bottles, while Nara stated, in João do Vale’s song, that she was “a poor Caboclo peasant.” But to the ears of 1964, it was as anti–bossa nova as they came. And even if it wasn’t, it soon became that way when Nara responded to the criticism she had been receiving, for having betrayed the movement, in a pompous interview with reporter Juvenal Portela in the magazine Fatos & Fotos (Facts & Photos).

“Enough bossa nova,” she declared in the interview. “Enough of singing little apartment compositions for two or three intellectuals. I want pure samba, which has much more to say for itself, which is the people’s way of expressing themselves, and not something written by some small group for another small group. The story that bossa nova originated in my house is a big lie. Even if the gang did often get together here, they also did so in a thousand other places. I want nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with a musical genre that I don’t feel a part of, and that isn’t even genuine.”

Portela asked her if that meant she was breaking away.

“If I’m disconnecting myself from bossa nova?” replied Nara. “I did that some time ago, but nobody wanted to believe it. I hope everyone understands now that I no longer have anything to do with it. Bossa nova is boring, it doesn’t excite me. Perhaps I was an idiot in the past, blindly accepting that square form of music that, even now, people are still trying to pin on me. I’m not the person they’re trying to make me out to be: a little rich girl, who lives on Avenida Atlântica, overlooking the sea.”

All of the newspapers visited Nara at her home on Avenida Atlântica to confirm the truth of her statements, and she became more aggressive with each interview: “Bossa nova always has the same basic theme: love-flower-sea-love-flower-sea, and it goes on ad infinitum. It’s very complex. You need to hear it sixty times in order to understand what’s being said. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life singing ‘The Girl from Ipanema,’ much less in English. I want to be understood, I want to be a singer of the people.”

Bossa nova’s ears were burning, but it didn’t pout at its former muse dragging it through the dirt to the press. The following issue of Fatos & Fotos printed several reactions to Nara’s point of view: “Nara’s trying to make a big leap, while she’s still in the age of love-flower-sea,” said Sylvinha Telles. “But no matter how much she dreams of being otherwise, she’s the original bossa nova. She’s underestimating the intelligence of her audience in saying that bossa nova songs need to be played over and over again in order to be understood. Bossa nova is the music for an age in which everyone lives in an apartment.”

“I don’t know who Nara’s audience is,” Aloysio de Oliveria remarked, sarcastically. “‘The Girl from Ipanema’ is a song for everybody. Whether she likes it or not, she’s a typical apartment singer, who wants to deny the existence of the love-sea-flower theme as musical inspiration. That would be denying what the entire world wants. Nobody wants to change Nara. She’s the one who’s trying to pass for something she’s not.”

Her ex-fiancé, Ronaldo Bôscoli, with the intimacy common to former lovers, was harsh: “It’s ugly, it’s not nice, what she’s doing to us. Nara is too young to understand that nobody can deny their past. In denying bossa nova, she is denying a part of herself and is being ungrateful to those who helped to promote her career. Just to point out her inconsistency, she recently traversed four continents singing ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ in English. It was therefore she who broadcast the bossa nova ‘lie’ to the world. And earned a fair bit of money doing so.” (Bôscoli was exaggerating: Nara only traversed two continents.)

“The day that Nara discovers what pure music is, and manages to convey it to the world, we’ll all be pure musicians and will ascend to Heaven together,” Menescal retorted. “Until that happens, we’ll all go on singing in apartments, making a little bossa nova to sell.”

Bossa nova resented what it considered to be Nara’s “ingratitude.” A running joke at the time was “Let’s see if she manages to survive outside her apartment.” But Nara did not lack supporters. The group of sambistas Voz do Morro (Voice of the Hill), who up until that point had never heard of her, threw a party at the Estudantina Musical dance hall in downtown Praça Tiradentes to commemorate her joining their ranks. The samba school Unidos de São Clemente made an appearance, and the event attracted more than five hundred people. Considering itself to be included among the invitees, bossa nova (read that as Ronaldo Bôscoli) responded with a mocking telegram published in the newspapers:

CONGRATULATIONS NARA STOP FORTUNATELY IMPOSSIBLE TO ATTEND PROMOTIONAL EVENT USING PRESTIGIOUS REPUTATION OF BOSSA NOVA STOP SIGNED BOSSA NOVA.

At the beginning of December, war was definitively declared with the opening of Opinião, a theatrical show by Oduvaldo Viana Filho, Armando Costa, and Paulo Pontes, directed by Augusto Boal and starring Nara, João do Vale, and Zé Kéti. The stage of conflict was the arena theater of the Super Shopping Center in Rua Siqueira Campos, in Copacabana. In that highly political climate in the latter part of 1964, during which many people had already begun to suspect that Brazil would not be rid of its military rule any time soon, Opinião was exactly the cathartic remedy the doctor ordered. It was also the inauguration of the “ideology of poverty” that would, for a long time, infest Brazilian culture.

All of the dialogue and songs in the show spoke of hardship. But the theme of Opinião was a little confusing. Most of the northeastern songs were appeals for agrarian reform, but as things were rarely referred to by their proper names, any member of the audience who wasn’t fully paying attention would be confused as to whether a peasant was unhappy because he had no land or because he had no girlfriend. It later became evident that the military dictators should have been listening more carefully to João do Vale’s oration in “Sina de Caboclo”: “It’s just a matter of giving me some land to see how it is / I plant beans, rice, and coffee / It will be good for me and the doctor / I send him beans, he sends me a tractor,” because they all but included it in their new Land Statute. The show merely appeared to be revolutionary. Underneath it all, it was characterized by a delicious and moderate reformism, well in accordance with the political tactics of its authors, all of whom were closely aligned with the Communist Party.

It was also natural, in that oppressive Brazilian atmosphere of 1964, for the audience to be deeply moved when Zé Kéti sang “You can imprison me, you can beat me / You can even starve me / I won’t change my beliefs.” It was like an anthem of resistance to the hard-hearted militiamen, perfect for the era. But it’s hard to believe that people wouldn’t have felt uncomfortable when Zé Kéti went on: “I will never leave the hillside slums.” Why on earth would anyone prefer to continue living in a shack, if they had any choice in the matter? “If there’s no water, I’ll sink a well / If there’s no meat, I’ll buy a bone / And make some broth / And leave it to simmer,” insisted Zé Kéti. This was no longer reformism, but the craziest and most idle conformism imaginable; nobody, however, seemed to cotton to this.

The Opinião audience (almost a hundred thousand people up until August 1965) would have been very disappointed had they known that, when he wrote that song (the title song of the show), Zé Kéti had in fact not lived in a hillside slum for a long time, but in a house that was at sea level, with a “garden and back yard,” in the suburb of Bento Ribeiro. And they would have been appalled, to say the least, if they had known that, “moved by his song,” the then-despised secretary of Social Services in Guanabara, Sandra Cavalcanti, had given him a house in Vila Kennedy—in the exact same spot where they were sending the slum inhabitants that the fiercely right-wing governor, Carlos Lacerda, had ordered to be removed from the Pasmado hill, setting fire to the shacks. And worse still, Zé Kéti had accepted it.

The show stirred the city in several ways. During its opening week, some unidentified but certainly ill-intentioned students vandalized the billboards outside the entrance to the theater, scribbling beneath the innocent names of Nara, João do Vale, and Zé Kéti the ridiculous and provocative slogan, “Directed by Karl Marx.” What nobody was expecting was that that the resulting commotion was such that, without intending to, the Opinião show caused the downfall of the establishment that had inspired it: the Zicartola restaurant in downtown Rua da Carioca. At the beginning of the year, its owner, the composer Cartola, had bought out his partners, closed the restaurant for renovation, and re-opened it with great fanfare, using Zé Kéti and João do Vale, as well as himself, as featured artists to attract customers. The intelligentsia was crazy about the place and even raved over the dried meat with pumpkin served by Dona Zica, the composer’s wife. The result was that Cartola was doing very well for himself—that is, until the opening of the Opinião show.

The show stole more than his main stars—it also stole his customers, who all converged on the Rua Siqueira Campos Shopping Center. Many of them saw the Opinião show five or six times; others went every night, without actually going into the theater, as if they were regulars. It was difficult for Cartola to keep the Zicartola going, which featured permanent acts like Nelson Cavaquinho, Geraldo Babão, a local ensemble, the mulatta Teresinha, and Jorginho de Pandeiro’s group of samba dancers and percussionists. There were a hell of a lot of salaries to maintain, given that the artists were now performing to an empty house. Nara herself felt she ought to sing there one night, in order to help repair the damage, but it was already too late. A short time later, when the Zicartola closed down, the Opinião show was still running.

Each artist performing in the Opinião show had a specialty: Zé Kéti sang about urban hardship, João do Vale about rural hardship, and Nara—well, Nara tried to make it understood that the fact that she had grown up in an apartment overlooking the sea didn’t necessarily restrict her repertoire to music from the social class from whence she had come. Looking at the situation today, it all seems so simple. The very clothes she wore to perform—black, white, and red striped shirt with the sleeves rolled up, off-white corduroy Lee pants, and tan tennis shoes—could not disguise her origins in the boutiques of Ipanema. But when she launched into “Carcará” (Caracara), by João do Vale, the audience felt a shiver, as if the rebellion against dictator Marshal Castello Branco were being exposed right then and there. And each time that Nara ran her fingers through her bangs, it was as if Castello Branco was being physically swept out of Brazilian life.

Carlinhos de Oliveira, who was at the time the most influential columnist of the Rio press, selected her to be his column’s “spiritual sweetheart,” and wrote about her practically every day in the newspaper Jornal do Brasil. When he didn’t really have anything to say, he made something up. At the same time, whenever another columnist, Nelson Rodrigues, of O Globo, wanted to say that someone was getting rich, he would compare that person to Nara Leão. People thought it was another example of his usual tirade against “leftism,” but Nara confirmed: “I’m earning so much money that I don’t know what to do with it all.”

In December 1964, Nara admitted to earning a salary of 1,100,000 cruzeiros a month on the Opinião show, plus eleven percent of the profits, and that wasn’t counting the revenue from her album with Philips and payment for television appearances—for which she had suddenly become the artist most in demand. (For the sake of comparison, pop-star Roberto Carlos, who was the highest-paid singer in Brazil at the time, was said to earn 2,000,000 cruzeiros per month in record sales, and 300,000 cruzeiros per performance.) Nara wasn’t doing at all badly—especially given that none of the bossa nova gang earned even a fraction as much.

The Opinião show had many consequences in addition to pulling Nara out of her apartment and making the bossa nova gang green with envy. It turned her into the “muse of protest songs,” at a time when the new college generation desperately needed something of that genre. Regardless of whatever happened, the newspapers wanted her opinion on it. Nara gave interviews on the Pill, the Pope, cancer, the Dominican Republic, and the Pierre Cardin line. In May 1966, she told the Rio newspaper Diário de Noticias that “the militia might understand cannons and machine guns, but they don’t have a clue about politics.” In the same interview—exhibiting almost unprecendented courage for the era—she called for the eradication of the Brazilian army, the deposition of military leaders in positions of power, and the return of the country to the leadership of the people. And, in a slap-on-the-wrist style criticism, she said that “our Armed Forces are useless, as they demonstrated in the last coup, during which the mobilization of troops was hampered by a few punctured tires.” Wow!

It’s not hard to imagine the nervous state of mind this statement inflicted on Marshal Artur da Costa e Silva, the Minister of War at the time. He had already had similar problems with the bold Correio da Manhã columnist, Carlos Heitor Cony, who had poked fun at his uniform, condemning it to the moths, as well as branded him a blockhead, saying that he probably got around by swinging from a vine. And now this girl was insulting the Army like that, talking about punctured tires. (The militia must have taken Nara’s comment to heart because shortly afterward they helped themselves liberally to the Union budget to buy new tires and to properly equip the Army.) Costa e Silva wanted to detain her under the new National Security Law, and the intellectuals came running in Nara’s defense. Poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade wrote an eloquent column, columnist Sérgio Porto dubbed her “the Joan of Arc of the samba,” and poet Ferreira Gullar wrote: “Boy, don’t mess / With a certain Nara Leão / Because she’s armed / With a flower and a song.”

Nara defined herself at that time like this: “I’m the bravest woman I know. In private, you can call me Nara Coração de Leão (Nara the Lion-Hearted).”

19

Shuttle Service

Singer-guitarist João Gilberto, pianist João Donato, drummer Milton Banana, and bassist Tião Neto at the Bussoloto, in Viareggio, Italy, 1963. This hilarious tour featured probably the greatest bossa nova small combo ever—and they never even recorded together

Collection of Tião Neto

While for some in 1964 the world was going up in smoke, for others the atmosphere continued to be one of peace and birdsong. The singer Wanda Sá, nineteen years old, Roberto Menescal and his musicians, and sound engineer Umberto Contardi arrived in the studio on time one day. They were going to record “Inútil Paisagem” (Useless Landscape), by Jobim and Aloysio de Oliveira, the last track on Wanda’s debut album, Vagamente (Vaguely), for RGE. The studio was closed and empty, although it was an ordinary Wednesday. But Contardi had a key, and they let themselves in. Now all they were waiting for were the string instrument musicians. Hours went by and nobody came. This struck them as very odd; violinists are a serious-minded breed, almost always middle-aged, and they live by the clock. Wanda and Menescal gave up waiting and recorded the song with those present. On leaving to go back to Copacabana, they noticed an unusual commotion in Campo de Santana square downtown, and an uncommon upheaval at the Central do Brasil train station. As they passed through the Flamengo neighborhood, they saw the Students’ National Union headquarters being set on fire. The musicians hadn’t turned up because the General Workers’ Confederation had decreed a general strike and there was no public transportation. It was April 1, 1964, and they didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on. (President João Goulart was merely being ousted by the military.)

Menescal had been, up until then, one of the most influential figures in bossa nova, as a composer, musician, and producer. He had recorded three almost consecutive albums with Elenco, and his ensemble was practically omnipresent—and uncredited—accompanying singers on innumerable other albums produced by him. When bossa nova split into two opposing “left” and “right” factions, Roberto Menescal became an important ally to be won over. “We need to write engagée music,” Geraldo Vandré told him. “The militia are arresting and torturing people. The music has to alert the people to what’s going on.”

“In the first place, I don’t believe any of that stuff,” replied Menescal, who was decidely detached from events. “And second, the purpose of music is not to alert people to anything. That’s the job of the regiment’s bugle.”

Politics were the last thing on Menescal’s mind, trailing miles behind his real concerns with flippers, aqualungs, and wetsuits. But the creation of a left-wing faction in the group that still went around calling itself bossa nova—Nara Leão, Carlinhos Lyra, Sérgio Ricardo, Geraldo Vandré, Edu Lobo, Ruy Guerra, Gianfrancesco Guarnieri—alienated the others and automatically pushed them to the right, for the plain and simple fact that they continued to be exclusively interested in making music. (The worst were those who insisted on living in deliberate ignorance, like Bôscoli, Jobim, and Aloysio de Oliveira.) Only Vinícius had managed to establish a makeshift bridge between the two factions and was able to pass from one to the other with great agility. Nobody was interested in João Gilberto’s opinion and, in any case, by 1964 he had already been out of Brazil for quite some time.

The new batch of composers arriving on the scene (actually, bossa nova’s second generation) were also more concerned with harmonies than discord. They were Marcos Valle, Francis Hime, Dori Caymmi (Dorival Caymmi’s son), Eumir Deodato, and Nelsinho Motta—almost all of them set free from Mário Mascarenhas’s accordion by the bossa nova shows at the School of Architecture or at the Catholic University, which they had enthusiastically attended as groupies. The exception was Edu Lobo, who appeared to be very serious and played a kind of social music (a label he didn’t care for), although it was of an exceptional standard. Affinities were established naturally: Marcos Valle, Francis Hime, Dori Caymmi, and Eumir Deodato felt closer to Jobim and Menescal; Nelsinho Motta felt closer to Ronaldo Bôscoli; and Edu Lobo to Vinícius and the leftish Teatro de Arena gang. Theater music had always been one of Edu Lobo’s interests, and since 1962 he had been trying to get experience in the musical genre and even, in partnership with Guarnieri and Boal, composed the songs for Arena canta Zumbi (Arena Sings Zumbi), a play about slavery that debuted in May 1965 in São Paulo.

At the time, the album from Arena canta Zumbi could only be heard as partisan propaganda and, even then, with difficulty. But several of Edu’s songs, like “Zambi,” “Upa Neguinho,” and “Estatuinha” (Little Statue) would escape that bondage and gain freedom in the voice of new singer Elis Regina, accompanied by a bossa nova beat. The play itself was a masterpiece of simplemindedness and demagogy, but its playwrights Boal and Guarnieri stated that they were “discovering” Brazil and practicing an “impure art” that dealt with unpleasant issues like slavery, work, and liberty. Naturally, the only concern the gang had was using the issue of slavery to talk about the military dictatorship, using the “ideology of poverty” and making bossa nova feel, in comparison, like a sort of society smile.

Marcos Valle, who was twenty-one years old in 1964 and one of the bossa nova youngsters who used to get together at Lula Freire’s apartment in Copacabana, was one of the first to object to the kind of Populism that the others wanted to authoritatively impose upon him. His first songs, written in 1963 with his brother Paulo Sérgio, like “Sonho de Maria” (Maria’s Dream), “Amor de nada” (Empty Love), “E vem o sol” (Here Comes the Sun), “Razão do amor” (Reason for Love), and “Ainda mais lindo” (Even More Beautiful) were along the lines of the love-sea-flower theme that his former beach companion, Nara, was now rejecting. When Nara gave her infamous interview, Marcos felt personally slighted. And he watched with alarm as that kind of acrimony spread among other bossa nova musicians who, like him, were only familiar with impoverished northeast Brazil through picture postcards—and who, up until recently, had shared his fascination for the love-sea-flower theme. What Nara and the others were proposing was a return to the most backward and reactionary folk music traditions imaginable—as well as being exclusive: they would not allow their friends to write any other type of music.

Marcos and Paulo Sérgio Valle didn’t hesitate. They opened up the piano and pounded out a response (aptly entitled “The Response”) which they hoped would show how they felt about it: “If anyone tells you that your samba is worthless / Because it speaks only of peace and of love / Don’t listen to them, because they don’t know what they’re saying / They don’t understand happy sambas.// Samba can talk about the sky and the sea / The samba that people can sing is the best / Enough of hunger, people already have that in their lives / Why make them sing about it, too?// But the time has come to be different / And those people / No longer want to know / About love.// Talking about land on the sands of Arpoador / Isn’t helping those who are poor / Talking of the slums while living in a house that faces the sea / Won’t help to improve anyone’s life.”

The implacable and unsuspicious José Ramos Tinhorão didn’t disagree with a single comma, but according to Marcos, they suffered reprisals: Edu Lobo and other old friends didn’t talk to them for a while. To prove they weren’t kidding, Marcos and Paulo Sérgio immediately followed suit with a series of songs that were even more closely aligned to the love-flower-sea theme: “Gente” (People), “Seu encanto” (The Face I Love), “Samba de verão” (Summer Samba), “Os grilos” (The Crickets Sing for Ana Maria), “Batucada surgiu” (Batucada Emerged), “O amor é chama” (Love Is a Flame), “Deus brasileiro” (Brazilian God), “Tudo de você” (All of You), “Vamos pranchar” (Let’s Surf), and “Preciso aprender a ser só” (If You Went Away). But even they were unable to hold out indefinitely and, three years later, in 1967, they also swapped their traditional steel-string guitars for folk guitars and went to the boondocks, with “Viola enluarada” (Moonlit Guitar). Even for two genuine bossa nova musicians like them, it was difficult to flee from the wave that was transforming stages into soapboxes and any song into protest.

Ironically, soon afterward, a singer told them that they had a song she wanted to record. The song was “A Resposta” and the singer was Nara Leão. “I change my mind every couple of hours,” Nara explained.

At the beginning of 1964, unaware of the uproar surrounding bossa nova on the domestic front, Creed Taylor released Getz/Astrud’s “The Girl from Ipanema” single and the complete Getz/Gilberto album in the United States. During the whole of the previous year, when the record had lain dormant in a drawer, a lot of things had happened. Tom Jobim had finally recorded his own album, The Composer of “Desafinado”—just piano and guitar, no vocals, which was an astute decision by Creed Taylor in order to safeguard Jobim’s reputation in the United States. In place of his voice, they added the string instruments of the German arranger Claus Ogerman, who, following instructions to save money and Jobim’s good taste, would establish a standard for this kind of arrangement in future bossa nova records. The album received the five stars that Down Beat magazine awarded first-rate albums, and the music critic Pete Welding lamented the fact that they did not have a higher star rating to confer upon it.

Nothing happens very fast in the United States, not even when your name is Antonio Carlos Jobim and you’ve been showered with stars by Down Beat. During the many months that passed in 1963, Jobim had to play a little guitar—because, to Americans, this particular instrument lent itself better than the piano to their image of the Latin lover they wanted him to be. He also wrote arrangements for several singers, including Peggy Lee; he accompanied Andy Williams several times on his TV show, one of the first to be broadcast coast-to-coast via satellite; and he paid his bill at the California hotel where he was hiding out from the New York cold with a practically unheard-of record by pianist Jack Wilson on which he appeared as “Tony Brazil.” On the road the entire time, his song production in 1963 was almost zero. One of the few he wrote was called “Bonita” (Beautiful), and with good reason: its inspiration was a young woman, Candice Bergen, whom he had the pleasure of meeting at the home of the president of Atlantic Records, Nesuhi Ertegun. The pleasure, by the way, was mutual. Jobim was about to start his long pilgrimage in the name of bossa nova. Nobody traveled more than he to take his songs to so many people in so many places (not even João Gilberto, whose only committment, after all, was to sing them). It was fortunate that he had already written such a vast repertoire of songs before crossing the sea in 1963—or not even he would have been able to take playing “The Girl from Ipanema” zillions of times over.

João Gilberto also took to the road at that time, but he did so wearing his bedroom slippers. In July 1963, he left New York for Europe with João Donato, who had come out from California especially to accompany him, together with double bassist Tião Neto and drummer Milton Banana. Astrud went with them, but only as João’s wife, although the marriage was already breaking up—her rendition of “The Girl from Ipanema” remained unpublished and she did not sing at any of the group’s performances. They started in Rome, where they spent a week at the Foro Italico, and then left for Viareggio, in the south of Italy, where they packed the Bussoloto, the private function room of an enormous show hall called La Bussola. (The four of them never rehearsed together, and João Gilberto and João Donato spent the entire show laughing under their breath at the others’ mistakes, but even so, according to Tião Neto, their performance was sensational.)

The Bussoloto was a private room on the top floor, frequented by intellectuals. In the large ground-floor hall, Bruno Martino’s orchestra played hully-gullies and counteracted with a bolero written by the conductor, called “Estate”—which, many years later, João Gilberto would remember and record. Well-known, commercially-billed artists also performed at the Bussola, such as the chansonnier Jean Sablon, who sang “Vous qui passez sans me voir” (You Who Pass By Without Seeing Me), and Chubby Checker, King of the Twist. Both of them went up to the Bussoloto after their shows to hear João Gilberto play. It’s not hard to imagine what Sablon, who had many old Brazilian friends, thought of him. But it’s impossible to guess what went through the mind of Chubby Checker on hearing João Gilberto, except that it probably starting flashing “tilt.”

A beach that was four kilometers (almost two and a half miles) in length opened up barely fifty meters in front of the hotel where the group was staying, in Marina Pietrasanta. In the three months they were there, João Gilberto didn’t leave his footprints in the sand once, not even wearing his shoes. He stayed shut up in the apartment, stroking a little cat he had brought from Rome, named Romaninha, and worrying about the first signs of a sprain that would affect his hand and part of his right arm. The hours he had spent playing the guitar every day over the last few years, contorting his fingers into that position that everyone considered impossible, were finally taking their toll.

They had to close the show in October, decline invitations to perform in Tunisia, and take down their tent. Donato, Tião Neto, and Milton Banana went back to New York, and Astrud returned to Rio. João Gilberto went to Paris to consult an acupuncturist, Dr. Zapalla, who “had treated [soccer superstar] Pelé.” The doctor did not manage to cure him (the problem was taken care of the following year, in New York), but in Paris he met a student named Miúcha Buarque de Holanda.

“This gaúcha is a bit of a country bumpkin,” stated Tom Jobim in the CBS studio in Rio, in July 1964. “You can still smell the barbecue on her.”

Elis Regina didn’t hear his comment, which was what eliminated her from the recording of “Pobre menina rica,” by Carlinhos Lyra and Vinícius. But she was told by Carlinhos that the arranger—Jobim, who was back in Rio—didn’t feel she was appropriate for the role of the poor little rich girl. With her calico dress and Farah Diba–style hairdo (a beehive with a steel wool stuffing), she may not have made the Year’s Ten Most Elegant Women list, but hell, this was a record. Nobody was going to see her and know that she was much better suited to playing a poor little poor girl than Vinícius’s sophisticated character.

But on the other hand, it was hard to imagine that anyone who dressed like Elis Regina would be suitable for the role. Besides, Jobim already had someone in mind: Dulce Nunes, wife of the pianist Bené Nunes, an old friend of theirs. Dulce could no longer really be called a “girl” (she was almost thirty), but she was rich, chic, and her voice was very girlish. Jobim made the replacement of Elis with Dulce a condition for his own participation in the record. The switch was made, but Jobim ended up not handing over the arrangements—according to Carlinhos Lyra, for fear of getting involved, during those turbulent post-military coup d’état days, in an album with “social overtones” (which could complicate his return to the United States); according to Jobim, it was because he simply didn’t have time. The arrangements ended up in the magical hands of Radamés Gnatalli, so “Pobre menina rica” missed out on the opportunity to unite Tom Jobim and Elis Regina ten years before their collaboration actually happened, with the album Elis & Tom, released in 1974.

In fact, in those days Elis Regina really was recently arrived from the Pampas. She arrived in Rio “to stay” on March 28, 1964, shortly after her nineteenth birthday. She had been “discovered” in Porto Alegre (if you were to gather together all of the people who claim to have “discovered” Elis Regina, they wouldn’t fit in a sports stadium) and while living there had recorded three albums for Rio recording companies: Viva a brotolândia (Long Live Teeny-Bopper Land) in 1961 and Poema (Poem) in 1962, both for Continental; and O bem do amor (The Good of Love) in 1963, for CBS, with whom she was contracted. On those records, particularly the first two, she did not deny the influence of the singer whom she had always most admired—the powerful-voiced, but corny Ângela Maria—and the repertoire was pitiful: boleros, ballads, covers, and even the cha-cha “Las secretarias” (The Secretaries).

CBS sponsored her trip to Rio in 1964, with the aim of establishing her as a candidate to replace Celly Campello on the throne as the “queen of the teenyboppers.” After bursting onto the scene with “Lacinhos cor-de-rosa” (Pink Shoelaces), “Banho de Lua” (Moon Bathing), and “Estúpido Cupido” (Stupid Cupid), Celly married, retired at twenty, and went to live in Taubaté, upstate São Paulo. Sônia Delfino, her natural replacement, decided to sing songs with more adult themes and left Cinderella’s throne empty. In the recording companies’ plans, the candidates were Selma Rayol, Elis Regina, Cleide Alves, Rosemary, and Wanderléa. The businessman Marcos Lázaro made the brunette Wanderléa dye her hair with henna and convinced CBS to hire her. We don’t know how the others reacted, but Elis didn’t care: she had come from Porto Alegre with a promise from Armando Pittigliani that she would be signed with Philips if things didn’t work out with CBS. The “Poor Little Rich Girl” episode merely gave her an excuse to switch recording companies.

Philips treated her better: they put her on the program Noite de gala (Gala Night), hosted by Abelardo Figueiredo, a man with close connections to bossa nova. Elis’s father, Mr. Romeu, with hands roughened from his work as a glazier and an ambition befitting the mother of a beauty pageant contestant, came with her from the South and appointed himself her manager, agent, and fee collector. He wasn’t always very capable. When Pittigliani approached Ronaldo Bôscoli about doing a show with Elis in Beco das Garrafas, he already knew them both: “That squinty-eyed little girl? Her father’s a pain.”

The Miéle-Bôscoli duo created a show for Elis at the Little Club, in which she appeared with percussionist Dom Um Romão’s band, Copa Trio, with dancer Marly Tavares, and tambourine player Gaguinho. It’s a mystery how on earth they managed to fit as many people as they did on stage for the finale. It’s true that Elis, at five feet, two inches, was the size of a transistor radio, which did not prevent her from snarling like a wildcat at Claudette Soares, who was even two inches shorter, when she saw her entering Copacabana’s Beco do Fome (Hunger Lane): “That little dwarf!”

Beco da Fome, in Avenida Prado Júnior, was a little alleyway frequented by the carousers and musicians of the other musical lanes of the neighborhood, like Beco das Garrafas and Beco do Joga-a-Chave-Meu-Amor. During those late nights, many of those guys survived on the oxtail and collard green soups made by the mulatta Lindaura, and the raw Arab kibbe, cheap meals that were nourishing enough to keep the bossa nova gang going until the following morning. (The other option was the Frango de Ouro [The Golden Chicken] next door, which offered “a bowl of chicken soup with two spoons”—that is to say, one portion to split between two people. The two were usually Sérgio Mendes and Ronaldo Bôscoli.) Another must in the area was the Leme Pharmacy, where the musicians purchased their Stelamine, Pervitin (methamphetamine), and Preludin (phenmetrazine), the “pick-meups” in vogue at the time.

Elis didn’t like Claudette Soares and didn’t really get along well with Leny Andrade, who was then Empress of Beco das Garrafas, either. Leny, like Wilson Simonal, was also a disciple of Lennie Dale, but only Elis would become famous for having been his pupil. Dale always denied that it was he who had taught her to whirl her arms like windmills, which earned Elis the nickname “Hélice” (Propeller) Regina. According to Dale, it was her idea and he merely agreed with her. But it was Elis herself who referred to rehearsals with him as “swimming lessons.” What is amazing is the evidence that Lennie Dale influenced Elis Regina’s style of singing: all you have to do is listen, in order, to Elis’s first three corny records; the two Lennie Dale himself made with Elenco, recorded when she knew him in the Lane; and Elis’s subsequent records, Samba eu canto assim (I Sing Samba Like This) and O fino do fino (The Best of the Best).

Her style of singing wasn’t that different from that of Wilson Simonal, who, when he first performed in the Lane in 1963, caused a furor that today is indescribable and perhaps even unbelievable. He was quite simply the best singer of his generation: a tremendous voice, a sense of phrasing equal to that of the best American singers, and the ability to bend the rhythm to his will, without slipping out of the tune or settling for the easy scats that were Leny Andrade’s specialty. Bôscoli, who had managed to coax him away from rock-oriented producer Carlos Imperial, armed him with original material like “Telefone” (Telephone) and “Ela vai, ela vem” (She Comes and Goes) (written with Menescal) and “Mais valia não chorar” (It’s Better Not to Cry) (with Normando). But Simonal was also perfect for bossa-jazz themes like “Nanã,” by Moacyr Santos, after Mário Telles had written the definitive lyrics for it. He had released late bossa nova compositions by Tito Madi, such as “Balanço Zona Sul” (Zona Sul Swing), and by Evaldo Gouveia and Jair Amorim, such as “Garota moderna” (Modern Girl), and became the best singer of Jorge Ben until “País tropical” (Tropical Country).

During that phase, Simonal was capable of encapsulating the most original tricks within a theme and making it irresistible. But when the tricks became the only important feature of his style, Simonal became repetitive and went back to Carlos Imperial’s domain. In 1966 he was singing silly pop things like “Mamãe passou açúcar em mim” (Momma Sprinkled Sugar on Me). In 1971, he led—with just one finger—fifteen thousand people at the Maracanãzinho stadium in a tiresome song appropriated from Imperial, “Meu limão, meu limoeiro” (My Lemon, My Lemon Tree). A few months later, he got into trouble with an obscure rumor that branded him an informant in the arts for the dictatorship’s security administration, and it ruined his career. To use the jargon that he coined during his glory days, Simonal “allowed himself to fall and got hurt.” But he cannot be left out of the bossa nova story.

His singing style opened up the realms of bossa nova to the extent that singers with strong, deep voices, like Pery Ribeiro, who up until that point had been forced to remain on the fringes of the musical movement, became immediate converts. In 1963 Pery released “The Girl from Ipanema” and in 1965 he starred with Leny Andrade and Luís Carlos Vinhas’s Bossa Três in the show Gemini V at the Porão 73 (Basement 73) nightclub in Copacabana. Gemini V, a show typical of the style of Miéle and Bôscoli, began its run at the same time that Opinião, now starring Maria Bethânia in Nara’s place, was denouncing the military dictatorship every night in Rua Siqueira Campos. Any tourist who went to both shows on consecutive nights would feel as if he were visiting two different countries. In Opinião, a predatory bird, the caracara, flew over a rural Brazil of slums and cassava fields, in which the northeastern inhabitants either died of thirst or drowned, with figures from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics to prove it; in Gemini V, seagulls circled in a Technicolor blue sky, to the sound of passages from “Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro” (Rio de Janeiro Symphony), to Jobim and Vinícius’s drops of dew on a flower petal, and to Menescal and Bôscoli’s sun-salt-souths, with an elaborateness that left the audience virtually seasick. For the youngsters of 1965, choosing between Opinião and Gemini V was practically a political decision, especially at the tables of bars like the Paissandu in Flamengo or the Zeppelin in Ipanema.

Under the impetus of Bossa Três and the dynamism of Pery and Leny, Gemini V was, up to then, the most energetic bossa nova show ever. The famous guitar beat was omnipresent—in the piano, the drums, the inflections of the singers’ voices—but the projection was outward, using every decibel they could muster. It was as if, in a way, a singer named João Gilberto had never existed.

With almost no announcement of the fact, two Rio women who had participated in the birth of bossa nova left Rio for São Paulo between 1962 and 1963, Alayde Costa and Claudette Soares. At the time, Alayde had already been branded by the stigma that would haunt her throughout her entire career: she was a legend among musicians and respected by all other singers, but she had no luck with recording companies. Since she had been “discovered” by João Gilberto in 1958 and taken to the bossa nova gatherings at Bené Nunes’s apartment, she had only managed to record one LP, Alayde canta suavemente (Alayde Sings Softly), with RCA Victor, on which “Lobo bobo” (Foolish Wolf), “Chora tua tristeza” (Cry Your Sadness), and “Minha saudade” (My Saudade) were released. Afterward, she went to Odeon, who put her on the back burner. The record companies maintained that she was “difficult” for the public to appreciate. Alayde believed it was a matter of thinly disguised racism: “They think that all a black woman can do is sing sambas and shimmy in the streets.”

And so the former student of noted maestro Moacyr Santos (who was also black) moved to São Paulo in 1962, where she recorded an LP right away with Audio-Fidelity. In 1965, she made it to the Municipal Theater, thanks to maestro Diogo Pacheco, to sing a repertoire that included Stravinsky, Villa-Lobos, and medieval modinhas in the show Alayde, alaúde (Alayde with Lute). But her greatest hit was in 1964, when she instilled complete silence in the audience at the Paramount Theater with her rendition of “Onde está você?” (Where Are You?).

In Rio, the situation in which Claudette Colbert Soares (her father was a fan of the American movie star) found herself could be considered even worse. The reputation of “little princess of the baião” that she had acquired in Rio radio in 1954 was proving more difficult to shake than Zorro’s sword mark. In 1958, she worked at the Plaza nightclub, and in 1960, she sang in the Night of Love, a Smile, and a Flower show. She was practically a veteran, but nobody would let her record anything. The most she had been allowed to do was to participate on two of the tracks on an adolescent bossa nova record, Nova geração em ritmo de samba (New Generation with a Samba Rhythm), whose historical interest was that it contained the first arrangements by Eumir Deodato, and which must have been the reason that Eumir then shut himself up in his house for the next two years to study.

One of Claudette’s tracks, “Sambop,” by Durval Ferreira and Maurício Einhorn, was the best song on the record, but they only allowed to make her own album three years later, in 1963, once she had already moved to São Paulo and won over the public at the Juão Sebastião Bar and the nightclub Ela, Cravo e Canela. At the Juão Sebastião, there was a reason why Claudette sang sitting at Pedrinho Mattar’s piano: one more person out on the floor, even someone as diminutive as her, who would fit in a thumbnail-sized space, meant one less table for customers. As for her first record, it was recorded with Mocambo, a tiny recording company whose artistic director at the time was a man named Jonas Silva—remember him? From that point on, Claudette only went to Rio to take part in a Miéle and Bôscoli show, Primeiro Tempo: 5 X 0 (First Time: 5 X 0), with Taiguara at the Princesa Isabel theater—or to be called a “dwarf” by Elis Regina.

Alayde and Claudette’s departure for São Paulo was the prelude to a change that bossa nova—or what was left of it in Brazil—was about to undergo. The former “samba gravestone” (as Vinícius used to call the gray, chilly São Paulo) would soon become its stage.

On October 26, 1964, at the O remédio é Bossa (Bossa Is the Cure) show held at the Paramount Theater in São Paulo, Os Cariocas—one in each section of the audience—introduced the featured artists. When their voices, in unison, announced the name of Antonio Carlos Jobim, and he appeared on stage, two thousand rosebuds rained down from the dress boxes and balcony onto the stage. It was a great moment for Jobim, who was performing live for the first time in São Paulo (not counting his innumerable appearances on the TV show O bom Tom in 1959). The roses had been supplied by the florist Dora in exchange for a mention in the show, but the audience’s gesture was straight from the heart; for them, Jobim was the main person behind that golden age of Brazilian popular music. He didn’t know whether he should express his gratitude for the roses, whether he should pick them up, or what to do with his hands. Not knowing what to do, he went over to the piano and sang a song that was also making its world debut—”Só tinha de ser com você” (It Had to Be Only with You), written by him and Aloysio de Oliveira.

At another point during the show, the light streamed like gold on the hair and guitar of Marcos Valle and reflected in his turquoise blue shirt while he sang “Terra de ninguém” (Nobody’s Land). Suddenly, when he got to the verses, which were the very heart of the lyrics, a spotlight illuminated a scaffolding shaped like a cheese, and a tiny woman, Elis Regina (wearing a very short, little white dress, which made her look even tinier) filled the entire theater with her voice, singing, “But the day will come / And the world will know / You cannot live without giving of yourself / Those who work are the ones who have / The right to live / Because the land belongs to nobody,” while the playful Dom Um gave it his all on the drums. It’s a miracle how the two thousand people in the audience managed to resist leaving the theater and going right out to overthrow all the major landowners.

Jobim must have been astonished. That tiny woman was the same person who had auditioned for Pobre menina rica just three months earlier. In just thirty seconds of singing, she had managed to silence all the other stars of O remédio é Bossa—Alayde Costa, Sylvinha Telles, Carlinhos Lyra, Vera Brasil, Walter Santos, Vinícius de Moraes, Paulinho Nogueira, Os Cariocas, the ensembles of Roberto Menescal, Oscar Castro-Neves, and Pedrinho Mattar, the Zimbo Trio, and The Girls from Bahia. A star had been born—and it was obvious that she was too great to fit on the flea-sized stages at Bottles and the Little Club.

It was what Ronaldo Bôscoli, in Rio, had suspected for some time. Elis was forever missing her shows at the Lane. The following day, she would justify her absence by saying that she had felt stressed. The same day, he heard rumors of her performances in São Paulo. He guessed that Elis’s father, for whom no amount of money was too little, was forcing her to practically live on the shuttle—or perhaps that she was in fact the one who was more interested in the São Paulo market, which seemed much more promising. The third time that Elis missed a performance, Bôscoli ordered a black band of mourning to be painted over Elis’s name on the billboard outside the door to Bottles. “But in such a way so that her name could still be read beneath the paint,” he said. Elis, who was superstitious and had a thing about death, wasn’t happy. A ferocious argument followed that would put any civil war to shame. Subsequently, she left the show, the Lane, and Rio de Janeiro, and declared herself the mortal enemy of Ronaldo Bôscoli. That is, until she married him, three years later.

O remédio é Bossa wasn’t the first, or the last, of a long series of shows at the Paramount Theater in 1964 that gave the impression that bossa nova had a new address: São Paulo. In May the law students of the Students’ Center XI de Agosto had put on the first show, which was called O fino da Bossa (The Best of Bossa)—a name coined by the president of the Center, Horácio Berlinck, who saw a bright future ahead of it, and even decided to obtain a trademark for it. The purpose of the show was as innocent as can be: to raise money for the graduation ball at the end of the year. The result was that the air shuttle would prove to be just what the doctor ordered for bossa nova.

From the XI de Agosto show, they had already secured the participation of the broadcaster Walter Silva, who managed to gather the Rio troops to include Nara Leão, Wanda Sá, Jorge Ben, Sérgio Mendes, Marcos Valle, Rosinha de Valença, Os Cariocas, drummer Edison Machado’s trio, as well as the singer-guitarist Luís Henrique, mixing them up with local artists: Walter Wanderley, Ana Lúcia, Geraldo Cunha, Paulinho Nogueira, the Zimbo Trio, and the adopted Paulistas Claudette Soares and Alayde Costa. The latter, as she had been at the first bossa nova shows in 1959, was once again a show-stopper—this time, with her rendition of “Onde está você?” (Where Are You?), also by Oscar Castro-Neves and Luvercy Fiorini.

Walter Silva witnessed the tremendous line of people waiting to get in and booked the Paramount for new shows. It certainly wasn’t due to a lack of shows that students from other departments were failing to get their degrees. One after another, during the latter half of 1964, he organized a show in the School of Philosophy at the University of São Paulo (Samba Novo—New Samba), in the School of Medicine (Mens sana in corpore samba—A Healthy Mind in Samba Body, debuting unknowns Toquinho, Taiguara, and Chico Buarque), and at the School of Dentistry (Primeira dentisamba—The First Dentisamba), as well as O remédio é Bossa. In all of these shows, Walter Silva attracted an average of two thousand people per show—the Paramount had 1,700 seats, but there was still enough room for a good many more people either standing or sitting on the floor. Everything performed at these shows was recorded, and a good part of it was released on disc by RGE.

At the School of Medicine, the first part of the show, featuring the debuting artists, was merely a warmup for the night’s main attraction: a reproduction of the show that Sylvinha Telles, Oscar Castro-Neves, and Roberto Menescal’s band were performing at the new bossa nova nightclub in Rio, the Zum-zum, owned by Paulinho Soledade. At the School of Dentistry, Alayde, Geraldo Vandré, Pery Ribeiro, and others opened the show for the person who was already becoming São Paulo’s biggest star: Elis Regina.

Elis’s show, formerly at Bottles with Dom Um’s Copa Rio—the same one that had earned her a band of mourning through her name on the billboard—was going to be repeated at the Paramount, but it almost didn’t happen. The Danúbio Hotel in São Paulo, where the Rio artists invited by Walter Silva were staying, exhibited blatant racism and refused to allow drummer Dom Um and pianist Salvador to stay there—and it wasn’t due to the percussionist’s Mephistophelian countenance. Elis and the double bassist, Gusmão, caused a scene in the lobby and, with Walter Silva’s intervention, the hotel did everything but give the presidential suite to the two black musicians.

It wasn’t wise to pick a fight with Elis Regina. She got even more squinty-eyed when she was annoyed, and anything could happen, as all her friends attest. Her moods displayed more ups and downs than an electrocardiogram. She was capable of literally overturning the table if she lost at canasta and within a minute would sit down and start knitting, humming to herself. Her life, up until she began to achieve success, had been a long succession of fights—one of them against poverty. Her family lived in a high-rise tenement building in the slums (a housing project in Porto Alegre), and she was shunned by her neighbors for singing on the radio. When she recorded her first discs in Rio, the gaúchos resented her because they felt she was speaking with a carioca accent. Her father went with her to Rio, they moved into a tiny apartment in Rua Figueiredo Magalhães in Copacabana, and, a few months later, her mother and brother came out to join them. They lived on what she earned and soon a perverse relationship of dependency developed, in which she appeared to derive pleasure from being exploited by them, and able to humiliate them in return. In fact, although she gave as good as she got, Elis was the one who got hurt.

At the beginning, she was unanimously considered ugly, tacky, and ignorant. But Elis learned quickly—sometimes too quickly. “To her, everyone had something to teach her,” Walter Silva once said. “Once she had learned all she could from them, she moved on to someone else.” Her most serious boyfriend after she arrived from the South was Solano Ribeiro, producer for TV Excélsior. The success of the Paramount shows inspired Solano to organize what would be the first Song Festival at Excélsior, in which Elis competed with “Arrastão” (Fishing Net), written by Edu Lobo and Vinícius, and “Por um amor maior” (For a Greater Love), by Francis Hime and Ruy Guerra. She won with “Arrastão.” During the festival, she got pregnant by Solano. When the festival ended, she got rid of her child and also finished with her boyfriend. There was no arguing with Elis. The nickname “Pimentinha” (Little Pepper) was given to her at this time in her life, a dubious tribute to her appalling temper, and Elis hated it. When anyone called her this, she responded by flipping them off.

But if you peeled off her outer veneer, she was still the same romantic girl who listened to the radio in Porto Alegre and dreamed of being a star. When she fell for Edu Lobo after the festival, she started drawing hearts pierced with arrows and scribbling with permanent marker pen on the cubicle dividers of the dressing room at TV Record: “Elis loves Edu, Eduardo Góes Lobo.” And—what must have been shocking for Elis given the person she would become—she gave in-depth interviews to the corny Revista da Rádio, divulging information like her favorite color (brown), perfume (Réplique), hair-style (top knot), and authors (Walt Disney and Sophocles).

In April 1965, some days before the first anniversary of her leaving Porto Alegre, Elis did a show at the Paramount that resulted in a disc that broke all sales records and a television program that, in a way, would be a shot in the arm to bossa nova. The show and the record were made with singer Jair Rodrigues and the sensational Jongo Trio. The program was O fino da Bossa.

Moving to São Paulo was the best thing for bossa nova once it began to stagnate. In Rio, none of the shows at the Bon Gourmet in 1963 managed to repeat the success of the show with Jobim, Vinícius, and João Gilberto—which also meant no profit for owner Flávio Ramos. What he spent on pampering his stars led him to ask himself if he shouldn’t be managing someone like Maria Callas or Renata Tebaldi. Pobre menina rica had suffered as a result of Nara’s inexperience, and subsequent shows also gave Flávio Ramos a few splendidly gray hairs.

Baden Powell’s show, which followed, would sometimes be interrupted halfway through because Baden—already drunk as a skunk—would bend over his guitar, as if he were searching for a note in the depths of his chest—and, when the audience realized, astonished, that the right note was not coming, some of them would cup their hands over their ears and hear a gentle hum. The guitarist had fallen over his instrument into a deep sleep, with his hands in the position of the chord he was looking for. It’s worth mentioning that Baden moved to a room in the cellar of the Bon Gourmet, where he could sleep at will without risking being late for work. When he awoke to the sight of all those bottles, he thought he had died and gone to Heaven. He imbibed most of what he earned and, by the end of the show’s run, ended up almost in the red with the nightclub and went straight to the Clínica São Vicente.

Maysa’s show—the last one produced for Flávio Ramos by Aloysio de Oliveira—was written à propos. Maysa left the audience and took the stage with a glass in her hand, singing “Demais” (Too Much), written by Tom and Aloysio (“Every one thinks I talk too much / And that I drink too much / And that this restless way of life / Is good for nothing / Going here and there, from bar to bar, from bar to bar”)—and nobody doubted her sincerity in the slightest. Not everyone in the audience knew that before she had come on stage, she had spent more than an hour having makeup applied by the Bon Gourmet coat-check girl, who was trying to hide the swellings and bruises on her face from the fights she had on a daily basis with her new boyfriend, a Spanish bullfighter named Miguel Azenza. Despite all of this, Maysa gave a fantastic performance almost every night. (One of them was recorded by Aloysio and released on disc by Elenco.) At the end of the show, she was taken home almost in a dead faint in the famous black Cadillac. After all those exciting events, the Bon Gourmet closed its doors in December 1963.

Almost nobody was terribly professional in those valiant days, and the few that tried to be, like Sérgio Mendes, were accused by the others of being mercenary. But some of them were catching on. Menescal was performing with Sylvinha Telles at the Zum-zum, the nightclub in Copacabana that replaced the Bon Gourmet in 1964, and wasn’t happy when payment for his performances started being delayed more than he expected. Without batting an eyelid, he enlisted the help of his old friend Candinho, Sylvinha’s ex-husband, former guitarist, former carouser, and now a sober lawyer—and Candinho impounded the Zum-zum’s refrigerator by way of payment for Menescal.

One night during the show’s run, Sylvinha closed the show, washed down a tranquilizer with a shot of whiskey, and got into her little bottle-green Fusca to go home, a few blocks away. She fell asleep at the wheel coming out of the Major Vaz tunnel, in Rua Toneleros, and hit a Chevrolet head-on. The Chevy and Sylvinha’s car then hit three other cars. The impact caused the steering wheel to crumple against her stomach. She broke her front teeth and the windshield shattered, embedding shards of glass in her forehead. Sylvinha passed out and was rescued by Portuguese singer Francisco José, who happened to be passing by and saw what happened. He did not recognize her right away beneath the copious quantity of blood on her face. He took her to the Miguel Couto hospital and she was treated for, among other things, internal hemorrhaging. Sylvinha would not allow them to perform plastic surgery—a few months earlier, she had undergone six procedures in one sitting, with Dr. Urbano Fabrini, which had left her looking like a then-unknown singer named Barbra Streisand. That wasn’t her first accident—in 1962, she had hit a car on the Rio–São Paulo highway and broke her arm. Unfortunately, it also wasn’t her last accident, either.

Since 1961, Sylvinha’s career and personal life had been in the hands of Aloysio de Oliveira. From that year on, he was instrumental in arranging for her to record a series of great albums for the American market with arrangers like Nelson Riddle, Calvin Jackson, Bill Hitchcock, and the idolized guitarist Barney Kessel, and took care of her television appearances in the United States. But Aloysio was merely her instructor in the studio, because their marriage was one of the most fiery, jealous matches in the history of bossa nova. At one time, Sylvinha took to carrying a gun, in case she caught him with another woman. Even so, when they split up so that he could marry Cyva, of The Girls from Bahia, Sylvinha made a point of insisting on being the matron of honor. Her heart was bigger than a triple album.

Despite being “older” (after all, she was from the same generation as Dolores), Sylvinha continued to be the female face of bossa nova, resisting following in the doomed footsteps of the new singers who joined the movement every fifteen minutes. Except for Carnegie Hall, she was present at all of bossa nova’s most important moments. She recorded the 78 r.p.m. of “Foi A Noite” (It Was the Night) in 1956; her name practically carried the University Hebrew Group show in 1958; she was the first professional to bridge the gap between the gangs; and, almost right up until the end, she never sang anything that couldn’t be classified as modern samba. Not only that, it’s far from preposterous to assert that, despite the stylistic incest between the first bossa nova singers and João Gilberto, she had influenced him—and not the other way around. Remember that the two of them had dated back in 1952, when João sang with a strong voice like Orlando Silva and would accompany her all day long on his guitar. We can’t be sure how she sang in those days, but from her first 78s, beginning with “Foi A Noite” in 1956, to 1959, when she recorded “Amor de gente moça” (Young Love), Sylvinha was still the same singer. She hadn’t changed, but João Gilberto had.

In 1966 on TV Globo, on the show O jogo de verdade (Truth or Dare), hosted by comedian Dercy Gonçalves, Sylvinha condemned the singers who were turning bossa nova into “calisthenics.” She didn’t single out Elis Regina, who was then at the peak of her whirling arms quirk, and perhaps she didn’t intend to refer only to her. At about the same time, Pery Ribeiro was introducing to Brazil the fashion of leaping on stage to the sound of clashing cymbals, and Elis’s partner, Jair Rodrigues, managed to sing while upside-down. Many singers were inventing their own gimmicks and increasingly forgetting how to sing. That just wasn’t Sylvinha’s cup of tea.

Sylvinha was going to return to New York in December 1966 to record another American disc. Kapp Records wanted her in the studio that month, but she decided to postpone the recording and only go after Christmas. In the early morning of December 17, a Saturday, she got into her Beetle with her little dog, Nicole; the lawyer Horácio de Carvalho Jr., her ex-boyfriend from a rich Brazilian family, was driving, and they left on the Amaral Peixoto highway, bound for Maricá, in upstate Rio. It was a farewell journey for both of them, as they planned to definitively go their own ways from then on, Horácio was engaged to another girl, and Sylvinha was going to the United States for a prolonged stay. The sun was coming up over Kilometer 24 of the Amaral Peixoto when the Beetle zig-zagged across the highway, went under a truck loaded with pineapples, was dragged along by it, and finally plunged into thick undergrowth several meters down. They were both killed. The Rio state police concluded that Horácio had fallen asleep at the wheel.

The original lineup for the show at the Paramount Theater in São Paulo that April of 1965 included Elis Regina, Wilson Simonal, and the Zimbo Trio. But Lívio Rangan, of Rhodia, booked Simonal and the Zimbo Trio for a tour of Brazil. The producer of the show, Walter Silva, had to settle for Elis, Baden Powell, and the Jongo Trio instead. The day before the show opened, Baden decided he’d rather go and play in Germany. Silva and Elis went to look for businessman Marcos Lázaro at the Cave nightclub and saw Jair Rodrigues performing on stage. Jair Rodrigues had had a hit the year before, “Deixa isso pra lá” (Leave That over There), which he sang while gesticulating extensively. He already grated on the nerves of anyone who listened to him, but he was cheerful and had a suitable physical strength for being teamed up with the dynamic Elis. He was hired on the spot. The first rehearsal took place in the afternoon of the opening night, with the sequence of songs for each medley painted on the stage floor: “O morro não tem vez” (The Hill), “Feio não é bonito” (Ugliness Is Not Beautiful), “Samba do carioca” (Samba of the Carioca), etc.—twelve songs in each medley.

Jair Rodrigues wasn’t what you’d call a modern singer. His personal preferences were more for música sertaneja (Brazilian country music) than for what was starting to be called MPB (Música Popular Brasileira). As far as bossa nova went, therefore, he was a total virgin. Some of the songs in the show’s repertoire bothered him, like “Menino das laranjas” (The Little Orange Seller), written by Théo de Barros, and “Marcha da quarta-feira de cinzas” (Ash Wednesday Marcha), by Carlinhos Lyra and Vinícius. “These songs sound very communist,” he remarked.

His concern must have revolved around the no entanto (nevertheless) in the line “E no entanto, é preciso cantar” (But nevertheless, we need to sing) in Lyra’s song. He thought it was a reference to the military coup d’état of 1964. But they managed to convince him that it had nothing to do with it, to such an extent that, just the following year, 1966, he sang a rustic guitar moda, “Disparada” (Stampede), also by Théo and Geraldo Vandré, at Excélsior’s second song festival—almost certainly without realizing that he was singing what seemed, at the time, like an open exhortation to rural insurrection.

Elis Regina, Jair Rodrigues, and the Jongo Trio packed the Paramount in São Paulo on April 9, 10, and 11, 1965, with their resounding combination of bossa nova themes and traditional sambões, cemented by a strong jazz base accompaniment. It was MPB in the making. Walter Silva recorded the show’s opening night, and contrary to what he had previously been doing, he did not sell the tape to RGE, but to Philips, with whom Elis and Jair worked under contract. The recording, made into the album Dois na Bossa (Two in Bossa), became the “bestselling Brazilian music record in history” up until then, although nobody seemed to be anxious to produce the requisite figures. We know that the sale of the tape was a cash transaction: had it been done on the base of royalties for Walter Silva and the musicians, they would all have earned a lot more money. According to the double bassist Sabá, the Jongo Trio never saw so much as a penny.

The Jongo Trio were a miracle, as they would prove when they released their own album, Jongo Trio, with the recording company Farroupilha that same year of 1965. Nobody could have guessed that anything particularly spectacular would emerge under bossa nova skies in the trio department, since the explosion onto the scene of the Tamba Trio in the Lane, at the end of 1961, had instigated a flood of combos comprising piano, double bass, and drums.

The Tamba Trio, composed of Luizinho Eça, Bebeto, and Hélcio Milito, was not just a trio, because double bassist Bebeto also played the flute. Their first album, Tamba Trio, recorded with playbacks so that Bebeto could play both instruments at the same time, was perfect—which meant that it was an instrumental record, merely dotted here and there with a few vocals by the trio on some of the tracks. On the records that followed, the voices of Luizinho, Bebeto, and Hélcio began to fight to be heard above the instruments, and none of the trio was much of a singer. Ronaldo Bôscoli, with typical bluntness, commented at the time, “If the Tamba Trio just played and Os Cariocas just sang, what a marvelous thing that would be.”

He was referring to the fact that Os Cariocas’s musical accompaniment was not up to the same standard as their fabulous vocals. To Bôscoli’s surprise, one member of Os Cariocas, Badeco, agreed with him and felt that the two groups should join forces to make a record that would be hard to beat. Besides, the two groups were both contracted at Philips. But their respective leaders (Eça, for the Tamba Trio, and Severino Filho, for Os Cariocas) weren’t interested and the idea never got off the ground. The Tamba Trio, however, almost achieved Nirvana with the record Luiz Eça & cordas (Luiz Eça & Strings), which was in fact the trio minus vocals, with violins masterfully arranged by Eça in their place.

The other great trio that followed onto the scene, although merely instrumental, was the Bossa Três, with Luís Carlos Vinhas on piano, Tião Neto on double bass, and Edison Machado on drums. They also made their debut in the Lane in 1962, and by the beginning of 1963 they were already in New York under contract with Sidney Frey, the owner of Audio-Fidelity and the organizer of the Carnegie Hall concert. Frey made them record a series of discs for the American market, took them on the Andy Williams Show on television, and featured them at the Village Vanguard, one of the hallowed jazz havens. But they missed out on other good opportunities, like playing at Birdland accompanying important people, because one of their members, Edison Machado, did not read music.

All of the pianists in the Lane, like Don Salvador, Sérgio Mendes, and Tenório Jr., and even the drummers, like Milton Banana and Edison Machado himself, eventually formed their own trios. But time would prove that, due to the number of nightclubs and recording companies ready to hire them, instrumental trios were a phenomenon particular to São Paulo. At one time, between 1963 and 1966, the following groups co-existed in the city: the Zimbo Trio; César Camargo Mariano’s Sambalanço; the trio of Walter Wanderley, whose leader played the electric keyboard instead of the piano; the trio of Pedrinho Mattar; Amílson Godoy’s Bossa Jazz; the trio of Manfredo Fest; and that of Ely Arcoverde—and those were merely the most prominent ones. There were dozens of them. Of all of them, the only one to survive into the nineties was the highly technical Zimbo Trio, formed by Amílson Godoy and two men with more night experience than Count Dracula’s entire family line: double bassist Luís Chaves and drummer Rubinho Barsotti.

The most ephemeral trio (together for less than a year; just one record of their own) was the most exciting: the Jongo Trio. With their official lineup, pianist Cido Bianchi, double bassist Sabá, and drummer Toninho Pinheiro, they burst onto the scene in 1965 with their recordings of “Feitinha pro poeta” (Made Just for the Poet), written by Baden Powell and Lula Freire in honor of Vinicius, “Seu Chopin, desculpe” (Sorry, Mr. Chopin) by Johnny Alf, and their own “Menino das laranjas.” Their instrumentals were not only powerful and polished, but their vocals were also very bold, because Sabá, brother of Zimbo’s Luís Chaves and former accomplice of Johnny Alf at the Baiúca, had been a member of vocal ensembles in the state of Pará at the beginning of the fifties. During that entire year, the Jongo Trio caused long lines to form when they were billed to participate in bossa nova shows at theaters, universities, and clubs, and their album, Jongo Trio, was even a hit on Rio radio, which had never had much patience for São Paulo’s heavily jazz-influenced trios.

The bossa nova trios had their moment of glory, and contributed instrumental music the likes of which had never before been heard in Brazil, a country that was traditionally deaf to anything with no vocals. The musicians, in turn, never had more opportunities for work. But this phase passed by quickly because the trios drained the public’s interest, multiplying like rabbits and repeating styles—and because, around 1966, the younger market was being definitively swallowed up by something called ye-ye-ye—the Brazilian rock ‘n’ roll.

20

The Diaspora

With the money he earned from the Getz/Gilberto album when it was finally released in July 1964, Stan Getz bought a home in Irvington, New York, that had belonged to Frances Gershwin, sister of the late George. It was a Gone With the Wind–style mansion with twenty-three rooms and white two-story columns—all it was missing was its very own Scarlett O’Hara. For his participation on the record, João Gilberto, as co-star, received $23,000 in the first part of the year and a coveted pair of Grammys for his vocals and guitar playing—two statuettes that he stored in a closet and lost when he moved and left the closet behind. Astrud Gilberto, who sang “Garota de Ipanema” in English and was responsible for the record’s international success, earned what the American musicians’ syndicate paid for a single night of work: $120. Great, don’t you think?

But when the record came out, Getz took Astrud, who had already separated from João Gilberto, on a tour of the United States and the United Kingdom, performing great live versions of “The Girl from Ipanema,” “Corcovado” (now well known as “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars”), “Samba de uma nota só” (One Note Samba), “Eu e você” (Me and You), by Carlinhos Lyra and Vinícius de Moraes, “Telefone” (Telephone), by Menescal and Bôscoli, and other new songs that Astrud brought with her from a trip to Rio. During one of the shows, at the Café a Go-Go in Greenwich Village in mid-August, Astrud passed the test of performing in front of New York audience—and the applause she received guaranteed her a career in the United States. One of their first records was made there (Getz Au Go Go, featuring Astrud Gilberto), but it was still a Getz record. Creed Taylor, of Verve, took it upon himself to ensure that she recorded her own The Astrud Gilberto Album next, and from that point on, she surpassed Dick Farney’s achievement fifteen years earlier: she carved out a niche for herself in the American market singing in both English and Portuguese. Of course, she wasn’t quite as successful as her husband, João Gilberto, who carved out his own niche doing things his way, merely singing when and wherever he felt like it—and in Portuguese.

Another Brazilian girl, Miúcha Buarque de Holanda, joined João Gilberto in New York in February 1964. She had met him in Paris at the end of the previous year, during a show by the Chilean Violeta Parra at the La Candelária nightclub in the Quartier Latin. (She never wholly understood what on earth he was doing at a Violeta Parra show.) Miúcha was giving an impromptu performance at the nightclub when a friend of hers, an Argentine named Fernando, told her that there was someone there who wanted to meet her. She listened to him halfheartedly, because the last person that Fernando had tried to introduce her to was an Arab sheik who dealt in white slave trafficking. Miúcha saw the small Brazilian who was watching the show (not from the audience, but through a window in the lobby) and decided to talk to him without even knowing his name. (“No names,” João Gilberto had told Fernando.) But even in the darkness of the nightclub, she recognized the unmistakable voice of João Gilberto—her idol ever since “Chega de saudade.”

Months later, she accepted an invitation from João to be his secretary in New York, and together they moved into an apartment in Central Park West on 72nd Street, facing the Dakota building. (It was the first of at least eight addresses they had, between the United States and Mexico, in the seven years she lived with him there.) But money was tight, because Getz/Gilberto had still not come out and they weren’t even sure if it would any day soon. João Gilberto tried to sell his share in the album to Verve, but the recording company wasn’t interested. So Miúcha went to work as a typist for a law firm in Manhattan, without knowing much English or even how to type. Months later, when the lawyers noticed her shortcomings and fired her, Getz/Gilberto finally came out and things got better.

Not much so for João Gilberto, though, because the Parisian acupuncturist hadn’t managed to cure his muscular problem, and he was now being treated by three American doctors, Drs. John Utereker, Saul Goldfarb, and Guilholm Bloch—practically an entire medical council. The council diagnosed slight atrophy in his right shoulder, and prescribed ultrasound treatments. For months, João underwent treatment at the doctors’ office, until he finally decided to buy the equipment the doctors used himself, and carry out his treatments at home over the years that followed. But he continued to think there was something wrong with his hand and, as a supplement to the treatments, he would spend a number of hours every day soaking his hand in a can of brine.

During João Gilberto’s entire first American phase, from 1963 to 1969, Brazil was more occupied with the funny stories about him in his self-imposed exile than in knowing that, practically every time he stepped onto a stage abroad, he conquered the audience’s affinities for bossa nova and Brazilian music forever. It was that way, for example, on the tour he did with Stan Getz to Canada that same year, 1964, before Getz/Gilberto was released, and at the concert they gave at the end of the year at Carnegie Hall, which resulted in the Getz/Gilberto #2 album. It was also that way at his performances in several New York clubs, like the Village Vanguard, the Village Gate, and the Bottom Line; and when he was sometimes billed with pianist Bill Evans or trumpet player Art Farmer, in cities like Boston, Washington, and Los Angeles.

It wasn’t exactly an exhausting schedule. During those six years, João Gilberto played little and recorded even less, as if he had decreed a long vacation for his soul and all the dreams that had hatched in Juazeiro, Salvador, and Rio were suddenly things of the past. There was always some excuse. First, it was his hand; years later, it would be his voice. He turned down many invitations to make albums on the basis that the sound engineers cleaned up the recordings, erasing the sound of the singer’s breathing: “They don’t understand that there’s a real live person behind the words and notes,” he maintained.

He also refused to work anywhere where the audience talked through the show and left halfway through, like in Washington, when he sang two songs and walked off stage, saying by way of explanation, “They weren’t enjoying it.”

Likewise, nobody could say that he was particularly cooperative with the press, either. He didn’t want to be photographed for Life magazine because he felt that in the magazine’s photographs, “everyone came out looking as if they were wearing makeup.” He was even more reticent with journalists (whom he referred to as “you lot”), but that was due in part to the language barrier—a problem whose magnitude he preferred to exaggerate. The stories that went around Brazil made note of the fact that João Gilberto had lived in the United States for years and still didn’t speak a word of English. One of those stories was that he had invented the famous line “Me no speak,” which he muttered whenever someone he didn’t know spoke to him in the street—prompting columnist Telmo Martino, an admirer of his, to write that “João Gilberto is the only Brazilian who learned English from Tarzan.”

In fact, it didn’t take him to long to be able to understand everything that was being said around him, and he acquired a relatively extensive vocabulary that allowed him to be understood in New York without having to resort to mime—in addition to the simple “Please, one orange juice.” He never became as proficient as his friend Luiz Bonfá—who, according to Bonfá himself, had learned to speak English “fluently incorrect”—but he was in no way the mute he made himself out to be. He probably could even have learned to speak English pretty well, had several Americans, particularly musicians like double bassist Don Payne, not taken it upon themselves to study some Portuguese in order to be able to talk to him.

In contrast to many other bossa nova Brazilians, who made an effort to give their careers a more than professional spin in the United States, João Gilberto appeared not to think in terms of his career. His performances were merely to keep him in funds for the next few months, although there were times when he had to employ some creativity to obtain certain luxuries—for example, the time when he convinced a Brazilian named Vladimir, who worked at a local delicatessen, to sneak certain spices from the store so that Miúcha could prepare him the couscous and fish moqueca that he couldn’t live without (with ambrosia for dessert). Or when João and Miúcha subleased the apartment of a couple on East 23rd Street for three months. The couple came back from their vacation and wanted to move back into their apartment, and they managed to convince the couple that they could all live together.

Or even when they moved to Weehawken, New Jersey, and rented an abandoned house, whose only piece of furniture was a table. João and Miúcha furnished the rest of the house by going out at night and collecting up the furniture that their neighbors disposed of in the street. On one of those expeditions, they even got a Ping-Pong table, complete with net and paddles, and João only had to buy the balls. One of the advantages of the house was a secret door that led from the kitchen up to the third floor, which allowed João Gilberto to spend days without being seen by the guests that Miúcha eventually invited over—and yet still continue to eat. One of the couple’s guests, the maestro Julio Medaglia, spent three days there and only saw João Gilberto as he was leaving.

In 1965, Miúcha received a telegram from her parents, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and Maria Amélia:

NEWSPAPERS PUBLISHING ANNOUNCEMENT OF YOUR MARRIAGE TO JOÃO GILBERTO STOP AWAITING YOUR DENIAL STOP KISSES SERGIO AND MARIA AMELIA

They sent a reply confirming the news, attached to a note from author Jorge Amado to his old friend Sérgio Buarque: “Dear Sérgio and Maria Amélia. João Gilberto is a fine example of a young man, very kindhearted, extremely sensitive, shy, and a little crazy, like all the musicians I know. I’m sure you’ll like him very much. Hugs, Jorge.”

Jorge Amado’s guarantee calmed the Buarque de Holandas’s misgivings, and with João Gilberto divorced from Astrud in the United States, he and Miúcha got married in April 1965 at the UN’s Chapel of All Nations, in a ceremony complete with champagne, confetti, and departure in a car dragging a string of tin cans. Their daughter Bebel was born in 1966, and as she opened her eyes, one of the first things she saw was trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie, a friend of João’s, filling his cheeks with air to entertain her. (Anyone who has seen Dizzy Gillespie puffing out his cheeks while playing his trumpet can imagine the impression that Bebel must have had of what was waiting for her outside the womb.)

João returned to Brazil for the first time in October 1965, after almost a three-year absence. Among other reasons for his return was that he wanted to see speech pathologist Pedro Bloch, as he thought he was losing his voice. Bloch didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, but João wasn’t convinced. So Bloch recommended a few medications to keep him happy: Disofrol, to clear his sinuses; Actiol, to reactivate the musculature of his vocal cords; and German Ilja Rugoff garlic tablets. And he told him, en passant, not to talk for a while.

João Gilberto was alarmed: ever since he had arrived in Brazil, he spoke as if he had been injected with a Victrola needle. He sang three numbers on the TV show O fino da Bossa, hosted by Elis Regina on TV Record and, going by what he heard there, did not leave with a good impression of the state of popular music in Brazil. At the end of the program, he mentioned to a few people: “It would be better to play rock ‘n’ roll than that retarded jazz.”

By “retarded jazz,” he could only be referring to the instrumental trios and bebop-style singers that had since taken over bossa nova. But he would lose nothing by waiting, because within just a short time, many of his former colleagues would be adopting the style of cheap ye-ye-ye star Roberto Carlos. And an entire new cadre of composers (coincidentally, his contemporaries) would get involved in the ye-ye-ye renovation movement known as Tropicalismo.

João Gilberto took Pedro Bloch’s advice about saving his voice to heart, and simply stopped speaking. This gave rise to the famous story that he communicated on the telephone by knocking on the receiver, using a kind of private Morse code: one knock meant yes; two meant no; and three meant hold on a minute, let me think about it. This was just one of a myriad of myths that surrounded João. Nobody bothered to ponder the fact that if this were indeed to be considered an example of his eccentricity, then the same should also have been applied to those who actually conversed with him this way, among whom was Dorival Caymmi.

The fact that he preferred not to speak much didn’t stop him from playing the guitar, which became his full-time occupation upon his return to New York. Sometimes he played for eighteen hours straight, without taking a break to even so much as clip his fingernails—and he always played music from the past, such as “Na Baixa do Sapateiro” (Bahia) from 1938, and “Picapau” (Woodpecker), a marchinha from 1942, both by Ary Barroso; “Curare,” by his friend Bororó, from 1940; and a veritable festival of Herivelto Martins songs written with several different partners: “Praça Onze,” from 1942; “Odete,” from 1944; “A Lapa,” from 1949. It wasn’t unusual, from that point on, for him to delve further back into the musical past, and not just that of Brazil. His lack of interest in the protest songs that were all the rage in Brazil was all-encompassing—he thought it was all “demagogic nonsense.” The few times he returned to the present, when he sang at home, were dedicated to songs by newcomers, like “Pede passagem” (Permission to Go), by Sidney Miller, and “Ela desatinou” (She Went Crazy), by his brother-in-law Chico Buarque, and other songs by Jobim that he had never sung, such as “Fotografia” (Photograph) and “Ela é carioca” (She’s a Carioca). Until he felt it was safe to record again.

João Gilberto’s admirers had always known that he was full of surprises, but they certainly weren’t expecting his next record, recorded in Mexico in 1970 after six years of silence, to feature the boleros “Farolito” (Little Lighthouse), by Agustin Lara, “Bésame mucho” (Kiss Me Often), by Consuelito Velasquez, and “Eclipse,” by Ernesto Lecuona, the cream of that particular musical genre. His departure with Miúcha to Mexico in 1969 had also been unexpected, even for her. They had closed up the house on Hudson Street in Brooklyn Heights for a ten-show run in Guadalajara and Mexico City, for which he would earn twelve thousand dollars. They ended up staying two years.

In Mexico City, they rented a Japanese-style house on the road to Toluca, surrounded by a lush green area inhabited by peacocks and monkeys, with adjacent property that was home to an Indian tribe. In Mexico, João Gilberto perfected his Ping-Pong game with a Chinese player who taught him an effective serve that was very difficult to return. He also took driving lessons and managed to pass his test, which allowed him to get, at the age of forty, his first driver’s license. But his fondest days in Mexico were during the 1970 World Soccer Cup, in which Brazil became third-time champion. He didn’t attend a single game, but he saw them all on television, and spent hours on the telephone with Didi, the Brazilian trainer of the Peruvian team, discussing tactical moves and the structure of plays. That could explain Peru’s decent standing in that particular World Cup.

And, ah yes, his album, João Gilberto en México (João Gilberto in Mexico), with arrangements by Oscar Castro-Neves, was perfect, despite the almost indifferent reception it got in Brazil. It contained “De conversa em conversa” (From Conversation to Conversation), which Lúcio Alves had written in 1940 at the age of thirteen and handed over to Haroldo Barbosa for him to write the lyrics. It also included one of 600 versions that the very same Haroldo Barbosa had done for Rádio Nacional—this particular one was of “The Trolley Song,” written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, erroneously attributed on the sleeve to Irving Berlin; two songs by Jobim, “Ela é carioca,” with Vinícius, and “Esperança perdida” (I Was Just One More for You), with Billy Blanco; and two instrumental pieces that he had written in New York at the time he had dedicated himself exclusively to playing the guitar: “Acapulco” (in tribute to a city in Mexico that he had never visited) and “João Marcelo,” for his and Astrud’s son.

The new songs on the record, in addition to the boleros, were “O sapo” (The Toad), by João Donato, and “Samba da pergunta” (The Question’s Samba), by Carlos Alberto Pingarilho and Marcos de Vasconcellos. The first, which would later become known as “A rã” (The Frog) (after lyrics were put to it by Caetano Veloso), was from the only recent record by a Brazilian artist that João Gilberto had listened to a lot lately: A Bad Donato, the great album that his old alter-ego had recorded in California that year. What was surprising about this was that A Bad Donato seemed to be an infernal free jazz-style cacophony, with terrible Afro-Cuban percussion, including that which could be heard in the background of “The Frog”—apparently nothing to do with his, João Gilberto’s, own style. But on his Mexican record, he tossed Donato’s toad into the blender and extracted those soft and cautious vocals that were typically João Gilberto.

Another surprise track, “Samba da pergunta,” was from a group of bossa nova composers—those who started composing from 1960 on—for whom he had never had much time (and still didn’t). It’s hardly surprising that its composers, Pingarilho and Marcos Vasconcellos, jumped up and down with delight when they learned that João Gilberto had recorded one of their songs. It was a privilege that he never granted to Baden Powell, Dori Caymmi, Durval Ferreira, Edu Lobo, Eumir Deodato, Francis Hime, Geraldo Vandré, Jorge Ben, Luizinho Eça, Lula Freire, Marcos Valle, or Oscar Castro-Neves. But why should they have complained? In his entire life, João Gilberto recorded only one song each by Luiz Bonfá, Donato, and Johnny Alf, and none by Mário Telles, Sérgio Ricardo, Tito Madi, or Walter Santos—all of whom were old friends.

The show at Carnegie Hall in November 1962 was the explosion that began the diaspora. Those who felt ready to do so stayed in New York, like João Gilberto and Jobim. Others who hadn’t gone for the show left immediately, like Bossa Três. And there were those who returned from Carnegie Hall, but only to mark time in Brazil while they waited their turn to take off for good. One of them was Sérgio Mendes.

During 1963, he had gone on tour to Japan and France as part of a trio, sponsored by Rhodia, with singer Nara Leão. But his big break came the following year when the Itamaraty (or should we say, Mário Dias Costa?) invited him to put together a group for a “cultural tour” to Mexico and the United States. Sérgio formed a team with Jorge Ben on guitar and vocals, young and beautiful Wanda Sá on vocals, Rosinha de Valença on guitar, Tião Neto on double bass; and Chico Batera on drums. They did the round of the usual universities (after all, the tour was “cultural”) but once their official sponsorship ended in December 1964, Sérgio decided that there was gold to be had at the end of the rainbow and convinced all the others to stay. Well, almost all the others.

Jorge Ben didn’t like Los Angeles much. To improve his mood, he decided to get his hair cut. He found a barber shop in Vine Street and went in. It was empty, and the two barbers working there were reading the newspaper, with their scissors and combs tucked into the pockets of their jackets. Jorge nonchalantly sat down in one of the empty chairs, said “Shave and a haircut” and waited. The barbers looked at one another, then at the young black man, and then at one another again. Jorge Ben only realized what was going on when one of them hissed at him, out of the corner of his mouth, “We’re busy.” Ben left and went straight to Varig Airlines to buy his return flight home.

It was a shame, because he missed out on a great night, a few days later, when Sérgio and the group performed at Shelly’s Manne Hole, a nightclub in Los Angeles owned by Shelly Manne, Stan Kenton’s former drummer. In the middle of the performance, someone in the first row shouted out:

“Don’t you dare stop! I’ll be back in fifteen minutes!”

It was guitarist Barney Kessel. He went running back to his house to get his guitar, and within the promised fifteen minutes, was back with it. He played with them for the rest of the night, and it was little Wanda Sá’s turn to feel just like Julie London.

There was another important person in the audience: Dave Cavanaugh, president of Capitol Records. In the weeks that followed, he recorded two albums with Sérgio Mendes and the group Brasil ‘65. Mendes felt that those records would set them on their way, and got in touch with Nesuhi Ertegun, president of Atlantic Records and someone who used to frequent the Lane in Rio. At Atlantic, he recorded other albums with Brasil ‘65, one of them with arrangements by people with ties to bossa nova, like pianist Clare Fischer, or merely with a wide scope of experience, like Bob Florence—but neither one of them did much for Dori Caymmi and Edu Lobo’s songs, which Sérgio was introducing. He still hadn’t hit upon the formula he wanted; his albums continued to sound like a trio from the Lane expanded with string or brass instruments, but a trio from the Lane nevertheless.

Wanda Sá, singing alone, was a hit. After the standard set by Astrud, which freed up mankind to accept singers with a mere whisper of a voice, Wanda, with the same whisper, found herself with the chance of a great future in America: she was prettier, and had the figure of a siren, a fantastic stage presence, and a sly and sensual way of using the microphone. She recorded a solo album at Capitol, entitled Softly, and the industry prepared itself to continue recording her. But at the time, her heart overruled her head, and she preferred to return to Brazil and take her love for Edu Lobo, whom she married, seriously.

Guitarist Rosinha de Valença and drummer Chico Batera also returned at the end of 1965, and Sérgio Mendes brought over guitarist-composer Marcos Valle, his breathtakingly beautiful wife, Ana Maria, and drummer João Palma to replace them. They were a good choice, but the timing was wrong: it was hard for Sérgio Mendes to book a couple who sang in Portuguese to a guitar beat anywhere in Los Angeles. The problem was resolved a few weeks later, when there was a knock at the door of Marcos Valle’s hotel suite on Sunset Boulevard:

“FBI,” stated an American who appeared to be ten feet tall, making the classic gesture of showing his badge. “You should have sailed for Vietnam yesterday.”

Like all immigrants, Marcos had had to enlist in the American Armed Forces, and with his perfect health record, he was a sure candidate to be sent to face the Vietcong. Once he recovered from the shock, he told them he was on his way and jumped on the first night plane—back to Rio. And thus Sérgio Mendes was left to find his own perfect blend of harmony.

“Tom, I’ve got money on my mind!”

The American lyricist Ray Gilbert entered Tom Jobim’s hotel room in New York in 1964 with several quarters stuck to his forehead. What he meant to say was that with Jobim’s songs, translated into English by him and released by the publishing houses that he planned to establish to exclusively release bossa nova—RioCali and Ipanema Music—the two of them would be rich. But Jobim wasn’t entirely convinced.

It’s a fact that Jobim wasn’t happy with the hurried versions of his songs that had been written by Norman Gimbel, Gene Lees, and Jon Hendricks. He felt they reduced the imagery penned by Vinícius de Moraes or Newton Mendonça to that uncultured stereotype of “coffee and bananas.” Johnny Mercer, the founder of Capitol and lyricist for “Midnight Sun,” “Blues in the Night,” “Too Marvelous for Words” and other songs that made Jobim sigh, telephoned him to tell that he would love to compose something with him. But they couldn’t work together. Mercer was associated with ASCAP (American Society of Composers and Performers) and Jobim with BMI (Broadcasting Music, Inc.)—and anyone who belonged to either one of the two dues-collecting super-organizations could not work in partnership with someone who belonged to the other. (This unfortunate prohibition would be abolished many years later, but Mercer died in 1976.) So Jobim had to make do with Ray Gilbert, who was recommended by his friend Aloysio de Oliveira.

Broadway produced some of the best lyricists of the century: men like Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Howard Dietz, Alan Jay Lerner, E. Y. Harburg, the Betty Comden–Adolph Green duo, Stephen Sondheim, and, of course, Johnny Mercer—not to mention exceptional second and third teams, who were only ranked second and third because there was room for only eleven names at the top. Compared to any of them, Ray Gilbert wasn’t even fit to be their errand boy. Jobim’s songs deserved the best American lyricists, but the big names on Broadway found it hard to put lyrics to independent songs. There were craftsmen who carried out this kind of work, and among them, there were several who would have been capable of doing a great job with Jobim. At the time that his songs were being released in the United States, Dorothy Fields, Sammy Cahn, Carolyn Leigh, and the Alan–Marilyn Bergman duo were on the scene, and available. But it was inevitable, because it came down to Aloysio, that preference would be once again given to Ray Gilbert.

Until his foray into bossa nova, Ray Gilbert’s only venture into the annals of American popular music was when he dragged out an old instrumental New Orleans jazz classic (“Muskrat Ramble,” by Kid Ory, from 1926) and wrote lyrics for it thirty years later. Except for this, everything else he had done was linked to Walt Disney or Carmen Miranda—that is, to Aloysio de Oliveira. Aloysio had met him at Walt Disney’s studio in 1942, during the filming of those South American cartoons starring Donald Duck, Zé Carioca, and the whole cast. Gilbert’s job was to translate songs like “Na Baixa do Sapateiro,” and transform the lyrics “Na Baixa do Sapateiro encontrei um dia / A morena mais frajola da Bahia” (One day I met, in the Shoemaker’s Hollow / The sassiest brunette in Bahia) into “I live the memory of many dreams ago / When the stars were bright and you were mine alone.” As you can see, he didn’t really have the native touch. Unless, of course, you’re talking about playing around with “goo-goo ga-ga” onomatopoeias, like “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah,” one of his songs. He also wrote the English lyrics to the bolero “Solamente una vez” (You Belong to My Heart). And if Jobim was unhappy with the insertion of bananas into his songs, it was probably because Gilbert was the author (in partnership with Aloysio de Oliveira) of a song called “I Make My Money with Bananas.”

The fact that he applied his meaningless lyrics to a large number of Jobim’s songs, perhaps preventing them from going even further in vocal cover versions, was merely to be expected. But of course, as their editor, through his links to RioCali and Ipanema Music, Ray Gilbert also acquired ownership of the songs. In fact, he did even better than that because he earned a 50 percent share of the profits for each song as editor, plus a percentage for being a partner in each one. In the case of a song that Jobim had written alone, like “Fotografia,” Gilbert got 75 percent of the money. And this was how, with the exception of omissions, Gilbert enriched both his life and career with the following songs by Jobim and his collaborating partners:

“Esperança perdida” (I Was Just One More for You) (with Billy Blanco), “Por causa de você” (Don’t Ever Go Away) (with Dolores Duran), “Ela é carioca” (She’s a Carioca) and “O morro não tem vez” (The Hill) (with Vinícius), “Dindi,” “Inútil paisagem” (Useless Landscape / If You Never Come to Me), “Só tinha de ser com você” (It Had to Be Only with You), “Samba torto” (Pardon My English) and “Preciso de você” (I Need You) (with Aloysio), “Surf Board,” “Valsa de ‘Porto das Caixas’” (Porto das Caixas Waltz), “Bonita,” and “Fotografia” (Photograph) (by Jobim alone).

However, following the example of their elders, the young bossa nova composers also handed their work to Gilbert on a plate. Some of the highlights in the lineup were “Preciso aprender a ser só” (If You Went Away), “Seu encanto” (The Face I Love) and “Vamos Pranchar” (Let’s Surf) (by Marcos and Paulo Sérgio Valle), “Você” (You), “A morte de um deus de sal” (The Death of a Salt God) and “Tetê” (by Menescal and Bôscoli), “Berimbau” (by Baden and Vinícius), “Chuva” (The Day It Rained) and “Tristeza de nós dois” (Our Sadness) (by Durval Ferreira), “Razão de viver” (A Little Tear) (by Eumir Deodato), “Imagem” (Image) (by Luizinho Eça and Aloysio de Oliveira), “Morrer de amor” (I Live to Love You) (by Oscar Castro-Neves and Luvercy Fiorini), and “Das Rosas” (Roses and Roses) (by Dorival Caymmi).

Marcos Valle, who after his scare with the FBI decided to take a new trip to the United States in 1966, emptied out his drawers and gave Gilbert all of his songs except for “Samba de verão” (Summer Samba) for him to edit, write lyrics for, and release in the United States. In return, Marcos signed a five-year contract, during which whatever he and his brother Paulo Sérgio produced would go straight to Gilbert (or to an American lyricist selected by him). In fact, Gilbert had had his eye on Marcos Valle ever since the explosive release of “Summer Samba,” Walter Wanderley’s recording of which had sold one million copies, and which had already been edited by Duchess Music.

Mind you, there was nothing illegal about this kind of business. It was merely a clever game—that was played everywhere in the world, including in Brazil—but one in which the composer never came out with the lion’s share. If you didn’t want the pile of money you earned to shrink too much, then you had to sleep close by. Many bossa nova musicians—Jobim, Bonfá, João Gilberto, Eumir Deodato, Oscar Castro-Neves, Sérgio Mendes, Walter Wanderley—preferred to move to the United States, some for extended periods of time, others to stay. For the first time, an entire generation of Brazilian musicians was facing the same dilemma that Dick Farney had encountered.

Marcos Valle stayed for just a year, 1966, worried about Vietnam. He sent his songs from Los Angeles for Paulo Sérgio to write the lyrics. Paulo Sérgio was an airline pilot on the Rio–Manaus route, and spent more time in the air than on the ground. Several of his song lyrics were written at 30,000 feet—including those to “O amor é chama” (Love Is a Flame). But it was he who had his feet on the ground when it came to threatening to beat up Ray Gilbert when he practically abandoned them in 1968, yet forbade them to find another editor. Gilbert’s justification was that, without Marcos Valle in the United States, it was just too difficult to promote his songs, and that five years was the minimum amount of time needed to establish him in the market.

Perhaps. But keyboard player Walter Wanderley had needed far less—just five months—to become extremely well known in America, and he did so with one of Marcos Valle’s own songs. Wanderley (whose name had the advantage of being able to be pronounced wond’rli) arrived in New York in 1966, hired by Creed Taylor. He recorded “Samba de verão” in May, and it went straight into the charts. In Brazil, he enjoyed great respect among musicians and his albums were popular, but nothing that would have brought the house down. His repertoire was a festival of boleros and cha-chas, when it was clear that the unbelievable rhythm of his organ deserved much more worthy material.

Those who knew him from the São Paulo nightlife already knew this in 1958, when Walter, at the age of twenty-six, arrived from Pernambuco to play at the Oásis nightclub and in the Captain’s Bar of the Comodoro Hotel. At the time, he was married to singer Isaurinha Garcia, whom he accompanied and wrote arrangements for. Around 1963, he started accompanying and writing arrangements for Claudette Soares and took advantage of the opportunity to change his repertoire, which everyone benefitted from—except perhaps Isaurinha, who lost her husband. Tony Bennett, who heard him on one of his trips to Brazil, thought he’d never heard organ music like it, recommended him to Creed Taylor, and the rest is history.

Or maybe not. Walter Wanderley’s huge success in the United States would have passed unnoticed in Brazil if his American records hadn’t occasionally been released over there, where they were received with the usual apathy. No Brazilian businessman was ever interested in bringing him over to play in his own country. The Americans, on the other hand, compared his personality to that of Fats Waller, the first jazz organist, and his technique to that of Jimmy Smith, the last. At one point, Walter Wanderley had all of the Los Angeles area jazz clubs eating out of his hand, and was constantly going off on tour to Mexico, Europe, and Japan.

Unfortunately, he appeared to suffer from that affliction that haunts certain musicians and creates barriers between them and their chance of success, as if the latter were a dangerous tiger to be kept at a distance. In his case, the barrier came in bottles. After a series of disasters that made even his most enthusiastic supporters fearful of contracting him, in 1969 the opportunity of a lifetime fell into Walter’s lap: to spend the next few years, sponsored by Holiday Inn, performing at the hundreds of hotels in the chain in the United States, Mexico, and Japan. His debut show would be the inauguration of the San Francisco Holiday Inn. For this particular show, they even invited Cyva and Cybele, from The Girls from Bahia, to do the female vocals.

All was well during the first set of the opening night. During the second set, his style was starting to become heavily influenced by Johnnie Walker. Between the second and last set, Wanderley must have swallowed a Molotov cocktail in his dressing room, because he barely managed to signal to the girls that he was going to start playing—one-two, one-two-three—before he collapsed over his keyboard like a dead weight. When they finally managed to wake him, hours later, it was goodbye Holiday Inn.

“Anyone who says they went to America and made lots of money is lying. Including me,” declared veteran guitarist Laurindo de Almeida, former Stan Kenton band member.

There are those who disagree.

“My name is Luiz Bonfá. I’m the composer of Black Orpheus.”

Joking aside, rumor has it that this is how Luiz Bonfá usually introduced himself to people in the United States, as if he were reading the information on a business card. This was, of course, before 1967, when he had to change what he said to: “My name is Luiz Bonfá. I’m the composer of ‘Gentle Rain.’”

Bonfá wasn’t exactly the composer for the film Black Orpheus, because there had been another, named Antonio Carlos Jobim, but it was true that “Manhã de carnaval,” which became known internationally as “A Day in the Life of a Fool” had covered more ground than any other song in the entire score. Bonfá was one of two Brazilians in the United States (the other, of course, was Jobim) who could introduce himself as the composer of more than one song that everyone seemed to know.

The world was kind to Bonfá as he ventured around its axis. At the start of the 1950s, he left the Quitandinha Serenaders (remember?) in order to write and play music solo. As a songwriter, he was soon taken on by Dick Farney, who felt he was modern enough to record practically everything he had written up until then, including “Sem esse céu” (Without This Sky), “Perdido de amor” (Lost in Love), and “Ranchinho de palha” (Little Straw Hut). As a guitarist, Bonfá also impressed him from the start with his technique and the different harmonies he used to embellish any song that fell into his lap. In 1957, he was already a name in Brazil, and when he was asked how he came up with those harmonies, he replied, in all seriousness:

“I once went to the cinema to see a movie called Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing; I heard the music and told myself that’s what I wanted to do.”

If the interviewer laughed, Bonfá didn’t need to provide further explanation; if he didn’t, no explanation would help. The song he was referring to, “Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing,” by Paul Francis Webster and Sammy Fain, was a hit in 1956, when he, Bonfá, was already more than ready. In 1958, he packed up his guitar and left for New York with all his savings. Before he took off, he left two songs (“Manhã de carnaval” and “Samba de Orfeu” [Orpheus’s Samba]) with Sacha Gordine, for the film that would become Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus). In New York, the goddess of Broadway, singer Mary Martin, heard him at a party at the home of Julius Glazier, owner of Cartier jewelers, to which he had been taken by a rich Brazilian friend. Mary Martin liked him and invited him to accompany her on a long tour that would be starting in Alaska.

While Bonfá was playing in Alaska and in other more hospitable places, Orfeu Negro was gathering awards on the worldwide screen, and people were going crazy for “Manhã de carnaval,” with his guitar and Agostinho dos Santos’s vocals. When he returned to Brazil in 1959, bossa nova was just starting to creep onto the scene, and he felt as comfortable with the new genre as if he had been one of those responsible for bringing it into the world—without changing his style of playing or composing. In 1962, when singers and musicians in Rio were tumbling over each other for the concert at Carnegie Hall, there was no need for him to hurry: after Jobim and João Gilberto, he was one of the few artists whom Sidney Frey truly couldn’t do without. That night, at Carnegie, he played solo, accompanied Agostinho in “Manhã de carnaval,” thanked the audience whenever possible for their applause, and decided to continue his career in New York, with his new wife and partner, Maria Helena Toledo. And he had already recorded a multitude of discs when, in 1967, he had the idea of inviting the young keyboard player, pianist, guitarist, composer, arranger, producer, and conductor Eumir Deodato to come and work with him in New York.

Bonfá even paid his airfare—which was very cheap, when you take into consideration the number of musical instruments Eumir Deodato took on the plane as luggage. In Rio, in 1959, at the age of sixteen and in the flower of his youth, Deodato formed part of the very first bossa nova gang. He then retired to his apartment in Laranjeiras, where he spent the next few years sitting in a swivel chair in his pajamas, surrounded by his piano, keyboards, and study desk, learning all about theory, harmony, counterpoint, solfeggio, arrangement, and instrumentation by correspondence, with all the imported books and course packets that the mailman brought him. One of the courses he took was that of Henry Mancini. And, as had happened with the generation immediately before his (Menescal’s generation), the record he listened to with his external ear while he studied with his internal one was the same Julie Is Her Name, with Julie London and Barney Kessel.

When he felt he was ready, Deodato went out and approached the studios—literally, all the studios in Rio. From 1963 to 1967, he took part in dozens of recordings in one or another of the many capacities which he was capable of fulfilling. His arrangements backed just about every singer of the era you could name: Wilson Simonal, Marcos Valle, Wanda Sá, Maysa, Nara Leão, Pery Ribeiro, Leny Andrade, Quarteto 004, Tita, Elis Regina, Pacífico Mascarenhas’ Samba-Cana, among many others. Whenever the public bought a record by Elenco entitled A Bossa Nova de Roberto Menescal (Roberto Menescal’s Bossa Nova) or A nova Bossa Nova de Roberto Menescal (Roberto Menescal’s New Bossa Nova), they were under the impression that they were buying a record by Roberto Menescal, but in fact, they were buying one by Eumir Deodato—Menescal was merely cheerfully acting as a kind of front man. Other discs without definitive paternity, like the two recorded at Philips by Os Gatos (Os Gatos and Aquele som dos Gatos—The Cats and The Sound of the Cats) could have been ace guitarist Durval Ferreira, but they were also Eumir Deodato. There’s nothing like being twenty years old.

Eumir Deodato must already have felt like a veteran at this age. When he had released his real first album—Inútil paisagem, with Roberto Quartin’s new label Forma—he astonished everybody with his maturity. Four long years later, in 1967, there was no other way out for him than Galeão airport, as Tom Jobim used to say. This was primarily due to the fact that Deodato had just been fired from EMI-Odeon, where he worked as an arranger. The alleged reason given by Milton Miranda, the artistic director of the recording company, was that his arrangements were “too complicated and they confused the singers; and besides, his albums weren’t selling.”

That was when Bonfá sent him a ticket to New York, so that he could do the arrangements on a record by his wife, Maria Helena Toledo. Deodato did the arrangements, and, chosen by Astrud Gilberto to write the arrangements for her record Beach Samba, astonished producer Creed Taylor by arranging and recording five songs in just six hours—which was typical of a hotheaded Brazilian trying to impress. But Taylor knew he was capable of doing an even better job if he worked a little more slowly and, little by little, started entrusting him with other contracted artists: Jobim himself, Walter Wanderley, Wes Montgomery, Paul Desmond, Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett, and, yes, Frank Sinatra. At the end of 1972, Deodato—at the ripe old age of twenty-nine—recorded his first official disc for Creed Taylor, entitled Prelude, and introduced it with a jazz-pop arrangement of “Also sprach Zarathustra.” The single sold five million copies.

This was an unquantifiable achievement, given that the market then was much smaller than it is today, when sales of that figure are still impressive. Giving “Zarathustra” a pop rhythm was certainly less work (and less fun) for him than another project he undertook that year: untangling six hours’ worth of tape that João Donato had recorded in a studio in New York—free improvisations on old themes, such as “Cadê Jodel?” (Where Is Jodel?) and others that Donato had made up on the keyboard as he went along—with a note for the producer at Muse Records, whom he owed a record: “Give this to Eumir Deodato. He understands me and he’ll know what to do.”

Deodato took the spool of tape, added his own keyboard, sprinkled in a few brass instruments, with Maurício Einhorn’s harmonica and percussion by Airto Moreira, and the result was a classic bossa nova–Latin jazz fusion: Donato/Deodato, which was released almost clandestinely in Brazil.

Deodato’s presence in the United States also had positive repercussions for the career of the man who had opened the gates to New York for him: Luiz Bonfá. He modernized Bonfá, opening him up to a more jazz-influenced style, and convinced him to experiment with other guitars, such as the Craviola, the Ovation, and even an electric guitar. Bonfá was no less revered as a composer and great virtuoso, and expanded his audience even further, recording surprising albums like The New Face of Luiz Bonfá, in 1970, and the record widely considered in the United States to be one of the classics of solo guitar, Introspection, in 1972. These records went practically unnoticed in Brazil.

Eumir Deodato’s career was now taking the kind of leaps that Superman did in the early comic books before learning how to fly. In the future, the walls of his studio in New York would play host to no less than fifteen platinum records—totalling fifteen million copies sold—as a pop music instrumentalist, arranger, and producer. He came to earn $250,000 for the arrangement and production of a single track and, in 1988, had to pay more taxes in the United States than Airto Moreira and Flora Purim, who were very successful, earned in a year.

Eumir has not appeared in public for several years—nor does he need to. To be precise, he hasn’t since 1976, when he had Carnegie Hall to himself, and his band, for the last time.

On stage at the Opera House in Chicago in 1968, the miniskirt worn by Karen Phillips, one of the two American vocalists of Sérgio Mendes’s Brasil ‘66, almost made the audience overlook the fact that she was in fact very tuneful and competent. Likewise the skirt worn by the other female vocalist, Lani Hall. After the show, the band received an important guest in their dressing room: Senator Robert Kennedy. He was so impressed with the sound of Brasil ‘66, particularly with the rhythm created by Tião Neto on double bass, Dom Um on drums, and Rubens Bassini on percussion, that he had decided to go to the dressing rooms to meet Karen Phillips. Kennedy was hard to resist, but Karen held herself in check; she knew it was dangerous to keep company with him. You know what those assassination attempts are like; anyone close to the target ran the risk of being hit by a stray bullet. (Robert Kennedy was killed just a few months later.)

With the implosion of the Beatles the following year, Sérgio Mendes became the greatest influence on the pop market. At the end of 1965, he had decided to experiment with a new formula for his group, then called Brasil ‘66, and hired two female vocalists to sing in English; he switched the rhythmical ingredients around, eliminated every last vestige of jazz influence, and created a combination of samba, pop, and bossa nova; and began to use the more dance-oriented themes that young Brazilian composers offered him, combining them with the Bacharachs and Lennons and McCartneys of the era. Herb Alpert, the leader of a Tex-Mex group named Tijuana Brass and owner of a small label, A & M, heard him, liked what he heard, and began to invest in his music. In 1966, Mendes released several hit singles and the LP Look Around. In 1968, Brasil ‘66 had already sold four million singles of “Fool on the Hill”—more than the Beatles had sold of their own recording.

Someone who didn’t like what was going on was his old Brazilian friend Armando Pittigliani, of Philips. In 1960, Pittigliani had invited Sérgio Mendes to cut a disc at his recording company—a dance record. Mendes had resisted: he wanted to make a jazz record. Pittigliani managed to persuade him to change his mind, and Dance moderno was made, but Mendes styled the arrangements with so many complicated, jazzy innovations that nobody could dance to it. The record did not sell. A few years later, here he was, recording dance music, only in someone else’s studio. At the time, Pittigliani had lent him some money and Mendes had repaid him with a check—which had bounced, because he was hard up. When they met again in 1968, Pittigliani reminded him, laughing, of the bad check. Sérgio Mendes, who was by then rich and famous, gave him a suggestion: “That check is valuable now. You should have it framed and hang it on the wall.”

In just two years, from 1966 to 1968, the group had already played in hundreds of American cities, toured the whole of Europe (sometimes playing in two different countries on the same day), Australia, and the Far East, particularly Japan, where they played twenty-seven cities on each tour—at a minimum of two Japanese tours per year. At first, Sérgio Mendes was opening several shows for Frank Sinatra, but shortly afterward, he wasn’t opening shows for anyone. He became as big a featured artist as the Rolling Stones. All that was left was for Sérgio Mendes to fulfill the promise he had made to old colleague of the Lane, Ronaldo Bôscoli: to steal a pair of Sinatra’s underwear that had been only “slightly worn.” He didn’t fulfill this particular promise.

When he decided to acquire his very own Xanadu, Sérgio Mendes soon found it: a house in Encino that Clark Gable had had built for his wife Carole Lombard in 1939. He moved into the house, filled it with paintings by Di Cavalcanti and colonial Brazilian furniture, decorated it with cast-iron craft-ware and, just for fun, installed a recording studio in the basement—which, years later, he sold to the Brazilian recording company Som Livre. And when he established his two music publishing houses, Rodra and Berna, his offices were inundated with the entire Brazilian music production of the era: Marcos Valle, Edu Lobo, Dori Caymmi—all those who wanted to be free of opportunists like Ray Gilbert gave him their songs. Sérgio Mendes’s house in Encino became the Mecca, like Nara Leão’s apartment in Copacabana in the old days, only for different reasons.

In the years that followed, Sérgio Mendes performed several times at Carnegie Hall. But for some reason, the renowned New York theater no longer held the same special charm that had flooded his senses when he had led his sextet in their performance of “Batida diferente” (Different Beat), by Durval Ferreira and Maurício Einhorn—the first number played at the bossa nova concert in November 1962. Not that the Carnegie had suddenly become chopped liver, but because nothing seemed capable of exceeding the feeling he had experienced that night.

Sérgio Mendes, Tião Neto, Dom Um, and Rubens Bassini would be struck by a similar feeling, perhaps, an even greater one, on May 5, 1968, at the very same Opera House in Chicago. Brasil ‘66 was to be the final attraction of the night. And whose band do you think was opening the show for them?

Stan Kenton’s.

If they were to tell the clerks at the Murray, nobody would have believed them.

21

The World as an Exit

Frankie goes to bossa nova: Jobim and Sinatra at the definitive recording session

Meanwhile, in Brazil …

“Nara sings very badly, but she’s an eloquent speaker,” said Elis Regina. “She’s always in the papers, denying something she said the night before. And she’s betrayed every musical genre she’s ever been a part of: bossa nova, samba de morro, protest songs, and ye-ye-ye.”

Nara Leão didn’t hold her rival in very high regard, either: “Elis is a childish, aggressive, and unstable woman,” she declared.

That was the battle of the stars in 1966. But it was more like a disagreement between bosom buddies. A few minutes before they had issued those statements, the two of them had posed together, all smiles, for the Manchete magazine reporter who had asked them individually what they thought of one another.

It wasn’t as if the public was so divided: Nara’s fans were more or less the same as Elis’s, and both singers recorded for Philips. Nara, in fact, had little patience for putting on a front—the only thing about her appearance that never changed were the bangs she had worn since childhood. But it was antagonistic of Elis to accuse her of having betrayed ye-ye-ye, given that she had never really been a part of the genre. The closest she had ever gotten to this kind of music was her brief relationship with Roberto Carlos, a scoop revealed by commentator Claudio de Mello e Souza on TV Rio. And, by the way, the news didn’t please the fans of either one of the two.

It wasn’t merely a disagreement between two singers. In the extensive hullabaloo that surrounded Elis and Nara, what ended up being relegated to a corner was popular music itself. The quarrel was supposedly political, and the litigants were a new group of composers who were much busier ruining their eyes over the works of the sociologist Herbert Marcuse than over books about guitar methods or composition. That was not the case with Edu Lobo, who took his studies seriously, but it certainly was with Geraldo Vandré, for whom two chords were more than enough with which to compose a song. “What matters is communication with the people,” he used to say. “Communication” and “people” were, by the way, two very important words in those days.

Elis and Nara were merely along for the ride. The success of “Arrastão” (Fishing Net), by Lobo and Vinícius, sung by Elis, at the TV Excélsior song festival in 1965, proved that it was foolish to just try and preserve folk music—as Sérgio Ricardo had done in 1964, for the film Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (Black God, White Devil). Who wanted to listen to that? And furthermore, what on earth for, if it was possible to mass-produce the same music in a studio, with European harmonies, and still win festivals?

“Arrastão” made possible the existence of “Disparada” (Stampede), a guitar moda by Théo de Barros, with lyrics by Geraldo Vandré, performed by Jair Rodrigues in the 1966 festival, now hosted by TV Record. The accompaniment provided by Quarteto Novo in “Disparada” included the former Sambalanço percussionist and future Weather Report frontman, Airto Moreira, playing a donkey’s jawbone that he found by the side of the road somewhere. It was all well and good that sophisticated urban music was being invaded by Northeastern rhythms, but did it have to happen so fast? Just a year earlier, for example, Vandré was answering questions about bossa nova on the awards show O céu é o limite (The Sky’s the Limit) on TV Record, in São Paulo, and going on tour with Rhodia, decked out in silks and satin.

In contrast to the aggressiveness of “Disparada,” which was a kind of “Carcará” (Caracara) on horseback, the same festival also saw the provincial and nostalgic “A banda” (The Band), written by Chico Buarque de Holanda and sung by—who?—the former black sheep Nara Leão. The year before, Nara had brought Chico Buarque into the limelight with songs like “Olê, olá” and “Pedro pedreiro” (Pedro the Bricklayer), and Brazil had fallen in love with the composer. Chico Buarque managed to win over not just a large sector of the younger generation, but he also thrilled his older audience, who soon dubbed him “the new Noel Rosa.” With bossa nova still echoing in the ears of many people, the music he wrote in fact seemed like a younger approach to the old samba style, but so what, if it was good? As well as being João Gilberto’s brother-in-law, Chico was practically bossa nova’s nephew, given that his father, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, had been almost a brother to Vinícius de Moraes for thirty years. And even before “A banda,” when anyone casually asked Vinícius what was new, he would reply: “Chico Buarque de Holanda.”

But enthusiasm for “Disparada” was also marked among members of its audience who considered themselves more politically minded, and the two songs got a boisterous reception when performed at the Record Theater. The jury cast their votes, the ballots were counted, and “A banda” won, but in order to avoid a conflagration in the auditorium, Paulo Machado de Carvalho Filho, the director of Record, decided that they had tied. Neither of the two sides were pleased, but Philips thought it was great—they had released both songs.

In record time, Philips released Nara’s single of “A banda” and it sold fifty-five thousand copies within just the first four days. The swift release time can be explained: the disc had already been recorded two months earlier, but Philips had held onto it, so that the song could be entered in the festival. It was fortuitous for Nara—and not so lucky for Os Cariocas, to whom Chico had offered the song just a short time before, and who had felt it was not in keeping with their style.

“In the days of ‘A banda,’” remembered Nara in 1973, “I could have been surrounded by ten slaves tending to my every whim, holding my purse, pulling out my chair so that I could sit down. I felt like the only child of a rich family. Once, in Bahia, I made a plane wait while I finished eating a dish of caruru. They paged me over the intercom and I told them to wait—and they did!”

“Disparada,” sung by Jair Rodrigues, also sold well, and was recorded almost immediately—most appropriately—by the country duo Tonico e Tinoco. Of course, Geraldo Vandré would never have allowed it, but Brazilian politics had undergone so many upheavals since that time that perhaps nobody was really surprised when his guitar moda was adopted as the signature tune for the 1989 presidential campaign of ultra-right-wing candidate Ronaldo Caiado, of the UDR (Rural Democratic Union).

Elis Regina was out of the running for that 1966 festival, but she couldn’t really complain. She had recorded the second volume of Dois na Bossa (Two in Bossa) with Jair Rodrigues, which looked likely to be as successful as the first (it wasn’t quite, but almost) and brought the house down with the weekly show O fino da Bossa (The Best of Bossa), which was also shown on TV Record. The unforgettable highlight of the show was her rendition of “Canto de Ossanha” (Ossanha’s Chant), an afro-samba by Baden and Vinícius. When she sang the refrain “Vai, vai, vai, vai!” (Go, go, go, go!), it was feared that her audience would indeed take flight, but she was gaining admirers even among people from whom it was least expected: “Elis Regina manages to turn just about any song into the Marseillaise,” remarked author Nelson Rodrigues to his friend journalist Otto Lara Resende when the two of them attended Elis and Baden’s show at the Zum-zum.

Bossa nova didn’t come into the world to produce Marseillaises, but in 1966, O fino da Bossa had already stopped being about Bossa and had its title cut to just O fino. The main reason was Horácio Berlinck’s departure from the production team, and he owned the title of the show. But it made no difference, because for some time the program had been a kind of Top Ten of all Brazilian pop music that couldn’t be classified as rock ‘n’ roll.

One of the up-and-coming stars of O fino was a Bahian named Gilberto Gil. In 1965, he arrived in São Paulo sporting a suit, tie, and briefcase, to work as a bureaucrat at Gessy-Lever, bringing with him songs like “Louvação” (Praise), “Roda” (Circle), and “Lunik 9”—the latter, by the way, an admonition against the artificial satellites that threatened to steal the moonlight from poets, serenaders, and lovers. (Former Sinatra-Farneys Armando Cavalcanti and Klécius Caldas had already broached the weighty issue in a carnival marchinha from 1961, “A lua é dos namorados” [The Moon Is for Lovers]). Gil’s songs were energetic, written to be sung at the top of one’s voice—Marseillaise-style—and he arrived on the scene none too soon for Elis, with her nationalistic and proclamatory song themes. Gil himself was one of those singers who could be heard at quite a distance. A short while later, concerned about the increasing popularity of Brazilian rock ‘n’ roll, Gil, Elis, Edu Lobo, and a small gang of artists and groupies marched from the Paramount Theater toward the Largo do São Francisco, in São Paulo, in the burlesque incident that became known as the “protest march against electric guitars.”

“It wasn’t exactly against electric guitars,” remembered Gil, years later, in an interview with reporter Regina Echeverria. “In fact, it evolved from a surge of people’s utter resentment, a half-xenophobic, half-nationalistic thing ‘in support of Brazilian music.’ That rally was in protest of several things, but the wording of the slogans was aimed against foreign, alienating music. It was a semi-Geraldo Vandré thing.”

Gilberto Gil had every reason to gently blush when talking about the incident because, in less than a year, he himself was using Os Mutantes’s electric guitars in his performance of “Domingo no parque” (Sunday at the Park) at a song festival. He would have been even more uncomfortable had he known that that protest march, as has been confirmed by some, was merely a strategy dreamed up by Paulinho Machado de Carvalho to stir up rivalry between the two music shows broadcast by his TV station: Elis Regina’s O fino, and Roberto Carlos’s Jovem Guarda (Young Guard).

Jovem Guarda first aired in September 1965, five months after O fino (which at the time was still da Bossa), and was shown live on Sunday afternoons, a sort of matinée performance. It brought together the gang of young rockers that Carlos Imperial had been trying to develop for years in Rio, without much success. Now in the hands of an astute businessman from São Paulo, Marcos Lázaro, and with Roberto Carlos already famous for his cover of “Splish Splash,” they were ready for things to turn around. This happened with “Quero que vá tudo pro inferno” (I Want All the Rest to Go to Hell) in 1966, and from that point on, all they had to do was grow and iron their hair. André Midani’s recipe for successful record sales in that long-ago year of 1958 was more on target than ever: young people were the biggest market. And the music they were now listening to was rock ‘n’ roll.

“Elis Regina can always take comfort in the fact that the Vietnam War is much worse,” wrote columnist Carlinhos de Oliveira in the Jornal do Brasil, when news broke of Elis’s marriage to her sworn enemy, Ronaldo Bôscoli.

History had already been privy to other surprising matches—Hitler and Stalin in 1938, Brazilian Communist leader Luís Carlos Prestes and dictator Getúlio Vargas in 1945, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller in 1956—but nobody from Rio to São Paulo was expecting what happened in 1967. Ever since their famous rift in the Lane, in 1964, Elis and Bôscoli had spent the next three years hurling darts instead of words when they spoke of each other, whether in writing, through messages, or in poisonous interviews. The vitriol was confined to each other’s professional careers because up until then, their only physical contact had been a warning finger on their respective noses. Bôscoli even produced a show in Rio for the singer Cláudia, entitled Quem tem medo de Elis Regina? (Who’s Afraid of Elis Regina?)

But by the middle of 1967, O fino was losing its audience—due in part to the rise in popularity of Jovem guarda, but mostly because it had deviated considerably from its original format, in hosting popular music artists who had little or nothing to do with bossa nova, like Elizeth Cardoso, the regional style of maestro Caçulinha, rustic singer Ary Toledo, the boring Juca Chaves, and, of course, Jair Rodrigues. In TV Record’s opinion, the way to save the show was to hire a new duo of producers: Miéle and Bôscoli. To Elis Regina, this solution seemed about as stable as throwing her a high-voltage cord to pull her out of a well.

That year, Ronaldo Bôscoli’s prospects in Rio didn’t seem all that great either. Almost the entire bossa nova gang had left Brazil. Tom Jobim, João Gilberto, Eumir Deodato, Luiz Bonfá, Maria Helena Toledo, Astrud Gilberto, and Hélcio Milito had all moved to New York. Sérgio Mendes, João Donato, Tião Neto, Dom Um Romão, Luizinho Eça, Oscar Castro-Neves, Walter Wanderley, The Girls from Bahia, Aloysio de Oliveira, Moacyr Santos, Raul de Souza, and Rosinha da Valença were all in California. Pery Ribeiro, Leny Andrade, Bossa Três, and Carlinhos Lyra were in Mexico. Baden Powell was in Paris. Francis Hime and Edu Lobo had their bags packed and were ready to go. Marcos Valle couldn’t make up his mind whether to stay or go. And Vinícius de Moraes was on a permanent world tour.

Os Cariocas had just split up. Sylvinha Telles had died. The Lane ceased to exist when Alberico Campana sold his nightclubs in 1966. Aloysio de Oliveira had practically given Elenco to Philips. He, Ronaldo, was composing less and less with Menescal, or anyone else, for that matter. Of the old gang, Chico Feitosa had become a jingles producer, Normando was off the air, and Nara still wasn’t speaking to him. What was left of bossa nova? A group of young people who were more interested in talking about politics or winning festivals than in making music—and the radio stations and recording companies were totally caught up in rock ‘n’ roll.

It was the end of that long, unforgettable holiday.

So Ronaldo Bôscoli, together with Miéle, swallowed his pride and went to São Paulo, with the purpose of trying to save O fino for Elis Regina—and for himself, too. He wasn’t successful, because the damage that had been done to the show was too great to repair. If anyone had told him, on the way to TV Record for his first meetng with Elis, that on December 5 of that year, he would be married to the woman, Bôscoli would have replied that Frank Sinatra would come to Brazil to sing at the dollhouse-sized Zum-zum before that was likely to happen.

Sinatra, Bôscoli’s idol since 1940 (“I love Frank Sinatra more than I love women”), was one of the major bones of contention in his marriage to Elis. After they were married, he walked into the house on Avenida Niemeyer, in Rio, where they were going to live, with a trunk containing his entire collection of Sinatra releases: hundreds of albums, some of them rare, others already out of print, all of them valuable, and many of them bought at Flávio Ramos’s record shop at the beginning of the 1950s.

Bôscoli’s entire life (well, almost) was in those imported Sinatra albums, such as Swing Easy, from 1954, Songs for Young Lovers, from 1955, Close to You, from 1957, and Only the Lonely, from 1958. So just imagine his horror on returning home after a fight with Elis only to find that she had gone out onto the balcony and launched them all, like flying saucers, into the Atlantic Ocean. Some of the records hadn’t quite made it to the sea, and could be seen lying like dead fish on the asphalt of Avenida Niemeyer. This was not Elis’s first vendetta. Some time before, she had set fire to another of Bôscoli’s trunks, which had contained letters, poems, original copies of lyrics, and photos of fishing trips, nights at the Lane, and his many ex-girlfriends.

Columnist Carlinhos de Oliveira had been right: this wasn’t a marriage, it was Vietnam, although it was hard to figure out who was playing the role of the Americans—and Bôscoli wasn’t exactly a victim. One of their fights erupted when Elis received her credit card statement and found a charge from the King’s Motel. Ronaldo had only stopped by the motel with a dancer from TV Globo, and paid with Elis’s credit card. Furniture flew and Elis, as always, took João Marcelo, their son, and went to stay with Jacques and Lídia Libion in Copacabana. Sometimes she would storm out of the house after a fight, go to Jacques and Lídia’s house, and find Bôscoli already settled in. He had also gone there in search of refuge.

These, at least, were fights with concrete reasons behind them—because, in the four years and four months they were married (until 1972), not one day went by in which the gossip in Rio surrounding Elis and Bôscoli wasn’t further augmented with pulse-quickening details of domestic disputes. And that didn’t even include the fights they had on the eve of their wedding day and on the actual day itself. In 90 percent of the cases, nobody, not even themselves, could tell you how the fight had started. Foundering in those turbulent waters, the marriage between the singer of “Arrastão” and the composer of “O barquinho” (The Little Boat) wasn’t exactly the most fertile soil for the continued growth of bossa nova.

One reason for this was, according to Bôscoli, that Elis lived in a perpetual state of discord with the big names in bossa nova. She had never completely recovered from the veto imposed on her by Jobim in the recording of Pobre menina rica (Poor Little Rich Girl), and although she eventually included his songs in her medley albums (what modern Brazilian singer could do without Jobim in the 1960s?), she didn’t do so with the same zeal that she reserved for Edu Lobo, who was, for a long time, her favorite. But Jobim was a friend of Bôscoli’s, and frequently came to their house. In the beginning, Bôscoli had to keep a careful eye on Elis to make sure that she didn’t serve him charred steak during the barbecues that the couple held in Avenida Niemeyer.

It was a marriage that would have put the Borgias to shame, but at least it served to heal old wounds between the greatest female vocalist (Elis) and the greatest composer (Jobim) in Brazil, because in 1969 she recorded an entire song of Jobim’s (“Wave”) for the first time, on the record she made with harmonicist Toots Thielemans in Sweden. From that point on, she regularly included Jobim’s compositions in her repertoire, made “Águas de março” (Waters of March) her own and, in 1974, two years after her official separation from Bôscoli, she recorded her best record up until then, Elis & Tom, with Jobim in Los Angeles—on which the orchestra was, coincidentally, conducted by Bill Hitchcock, the man who had discovered Dick Farney at the Urca Casino in 1946.

“OK, stop telling stories,” said the singer Dionne Warwick in Rio, in 1966, to Ronaldo Bôscoli. “Everyone knows that Burt Bacharach invented bossa nova.”

What do you mean “everyone”?—Bôscoli might have asked. But then, had she been French, Dionne Warwick probably would have attributed bossa nova to Francis Lai and Pierre Barouh, whose score for a tremendously popular film released that year, Un homme et une femme (A Man and a Woman) was bossa nova at its best. The cream of the crop was the lengthy “Samba saravah”—Baden and Vinícius’s “Samba da benção” (Benediction Samba), with the authors carelessly omitted from the screen credits—which Barouh had recorded in Rio with Baden, Oscar and Iko Castro-Neves, and Milton Banana.

Silently (which is a contradiction in terms, given that we’re talking about music), bossa nova had crept into the inner ear of people everywhere, and there were already several who could reproduce its guitar beat, sublety of percussion, and vocal style as if it had always existed.

Antonio Carlos Jobim spent a large part of 1965 and 1966 in the United States, this time in California, doing television appearances, personal performances, and arrangements. To help stave off his homesickness, Brazilian friends who were passing through brought him gifts from his mother: Phebo soap, Garoto chocolates, and Praianinha cachaça. (One of the bottles of booze, brought over by a photographer, never reached its destination: the customs officer in Los Angeles was suspicious of its contents and broke open the bottle right then and there, flooding the entire area.) But the main activity that occupied Jobim was the records he started making for Warner, through RioCali. Ray Gilbert was working in that respect, at least—although, as is to be expected, he gave preference to the songs for which he was lyricist and editor.

Jobim sang for the first time on one of the records, The Wonderful World of Antonio Carlos Jobim. It’s true that he was firmly backed by Nelson Riddle’s orchestra and arrangements, but this was no picnic. Quite the opposite. Goodness knows what it must have been like to feel almost a novice, and to be recording with a musician he had spent his entire life admiring, especially the man who had given new life to Sinatra’s career just eleven years previously. And besides, Nelson Riddle was used to Sinatra; he had heard him singing in the bath and was close enough to him to call him “Frankie.” It was a huge responsibility. But with the exception of his limitations as a singer, nobody would ever have guessed, on hearing The Wonderful World of Antonio Carlos Jobim, that Antonio Carlos Jobim actually felt nervous.

Nervous is indeed what he felt some months later, in December, when he was back in Rio and settled back into his favorite niche, the Veloso Bar, having a few evening beers with friends. Mr. Armênio, one of the bar’s waiters, told him there was a telephone call for him—from the United States. Jobim picked up the receiver; it was Gilbert, and Frank Sinatra wanted to talk to him.

Pause.

In December 1966, if someone told you that you had a phone call, and Frank Sinatra was on the other end of the line, 10,132 kilometers (6,296 miles) away, it would really make you stop and think. How is it possible to explain to today’s reader exactly what that meant back then? There are no artists of equivalent stature in show business today. None of the post-Sinatra megastars (except perhaps for the Beatles, and even then, there were four of them and they hung out together) ever managed to accumulate the same amount of power, prestige, and inaccessibility—all at once. (Many of today’s idols might have two of those things, but none have all three.) In 1966, at fifty years of age, Sinatra also had reason to be proud of his staying power; no other singer had managed to stay the distance with the legend himself for so many years—he had been famous since at least 1940. Once, in 1939, when he was still singing with Harry James’s band, a reporter told James that he was going to interview his crooner. “For the love of God, don’t!” implored James. “The kid has only barely gotten started, nobody knows who he is, and he already thinks he’s bigger than Caruso!”

Sinatra’s supremacy reached its peak in 1960 when, an ardent supporter of the Democratic Party, he gave his all as both a voter and an artist to John Kennedy’s campaign for presidency of the United States. With Kennedy’s victory, he was practically appointed as a minister without a cabinet. He organized the colossal show for the inauguration party, and from that point on became almost a permanent fixture at the White House—until Jack’s brother, Bobby Kennedy, began locking the door. Bobby was attorney general, and was threatening to put an end to the Mafia; he felt that he wouldn’t be taken seriously in his crusade when someone whose favorite dish was macaroni had taken up permanent residence in the guest room. Bobby’s interference ended with John Kennedy going to California and staying at the home of Republican supporter Bing Crosby—symbolizing his break with Sinatra. The latter withdrew from the White House, but he and John remained friends and the two of them still had a lot of fun together, when the president went to New York for secret flings at the Carlyle Hotel.

Sinatra was still the biggest popular singer in the world in 1966. From 1954 to 1961, all of the albums he released with Capitol were in the top five sold in the United States. Only the Lonely, from 1958, and Come Fly with Me, from 1959, had been number one. In 1961, he set up his own recording company, Reprise, which he opened in 1963 with WEA, a business that made him even more of a millionaire than he already was. And that same year of 1966, in the middle of the Beatles era, his Strangers in the Night single, a Bert Kaempfert song, was also number one. This was the man who was phoning Tom Jobim at the Veloso.

Not that it came as a complete surprise to Jobim. Since 1964, Rancho Mirage, Sinatra’s stronghold in the middle of the desert in Palm Springs, was already indicating that The Voice wanted to record his songs. But with Sinatra, things only happened when he decided it was time—and besides, there was no reason for him to rush. For years, his market had been the adult public, and the Beatles explosion in 1964 did not affect him seriously. What was happening was a low release rate of great songs in his style—in fact, it was the beginning of the decline of great American music. Like other singers, he was looking for new types of material, and bossa nova had more than enough quality, sophistication, and commercial appeal. And to Sinatra, bossa nova was Jobim.

Ray Gilbert passed the telephone to Sinatra, and he said, “I’d like to make a record with you, and to know if you like the sound of the idea.”

Jobim replied, “It’s an honor, I’d love to.” Sinatra suggested the German Claus Ogerman to do the arrangements, and Tom promptly agreed—it was Ogerman who had written the arrangements for his own album The Composer of “Desafinado” three years earlier, and that was, without a doubt, the record that Sinatra must be using as a benchmark. Sinatra suggested that Jobim play guitar on the record. Handsome Jobim, a pianist, was growing a little weary of being portrayed as a guitarist in the United States—where they associated the guitar with the clichéd stereotype of the Latin lover—but that was no reason to make things complicated. He agreed, but asked for a Brazilian drummer. Sinatra agreed. In the end, Sinatra asked him if he could go to Los Angeles right away, in order to get to work with Ogerman on the arrangements—which meant that the songs had more or less already been chosen. The Voice issued his final instructions: “I don’t have time to learn any new songs and I hate rehearsing,” Sinatra told him. “Let’s stick with the best-known ones—the classics.”

The recording was set for the end of January, and with that, the two of them bade each other farewell and caught their respective planes—Jobim to Los Angeles, and Sinatra to Barbados—on the one hand, to prepare his voice, and on the other, to recover from the tremendous crisis that was going on in his marriage to actress Mia Farrow. Sinatra, who was fifty, and Mia, twenty, had married less than a year before, and ever since, stories surrounding the event had put food on the table and paid the rent of practically every American comedian. Thousands of jokes were being made on a daily basis in the newspapers and on television. It was said that some of Sinatra’s neckties were older than Mia; that Ava Gardner had always known that Sinatra would “end up in bed with a little boy”; and that all that was left was for Frank Sinatra, Jr. to marry Maureen O’Sullivan (Mia’s mother, and former Jane to Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan).

The problem in that marriage, meanwhile, was that Frank wanted Mia to stay at home making ravioli, and she, with the willfulness of her twenty years, insisted on pursuing a movie career—in order to avoid merely being labeled “Sinatra’s wife.” Against his will, she went to New York to film Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. Her role was intense, the film was intense, and Roman Polanski was intense. All that intensity ended up draining her both physically and psychologically. If you’ve seen the film and remember Mia’s appearance in the final scenes, it’s worth noting that she wasn’t made up to look like a woman who was in labor with the son of the Devil. Filming ended, but Mia didn’t want to go back to the marriage. The two were, for all intents and purposes, separated.

Round about the time he had telephoned Jobim, Sinatra invited Mia to spend Christmas with him in Palm Springs, in a tentative effort to salvage what was left of their marriage. She accepted, but according to columnist Earl Wilson, her stay was very much along the lines of a “visit.” The two of them agreed to “take a break,” during which Frank went to Barbados. As for Mia (once again, against Sinatra’s wishes, who thought she was being taken advantage of), she fled to India that January—in the company of John Lennon and George Harrison—to visit a meditation, relaxation, and LSD “spa” with guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This was the atmosphere in which Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim was to be recorded.

Antonio Carlos Jobim, in turn, no longer had any reason to go about his day whistling. Once his initial euphoria at having his music sung by the idol of his generation had worn off, he was faced with the frightening reality: it was now or never for his career. He arrived in Los Angeles and was put up in a suite with a piano and refrigerator at the Sunset Marquis Hotel. Claus Ogerman came to see him every day, and the two of them engineered, with watchmaker-like precision, the delicate workings of “The Girl from Ipanema,” “Dindi,” “Corcovado” (Quiet Night of Quiet Stars), “Meditação” (Meditation), “Inútil paisagem” (If You Never Come to Me), “Insensatez” (How Insensitive), and “O amor em paz” (Once I Loved).

Three American songs would be included in the repertoire, after being passed through bossa nova’s superfine-mesh sieve: “Change Partners,” written by Irving Berlin, and performed by Fred Astaire in 1938 in the film Carefree; “I Concentrate on You,” by Cole Porter, which also made its world debut through Fred Astaire, in the film Broadway Melody of 1940; and “Baubles, Bangles and Beads,” which Bob Wright and George Forrest wrote for Kismet, a Broadway musical, in 1953. The purpose of including American songs was to dispense with the exclusively Latin flavor of the record—and regarding the inclusion of “Baubles, Bangles and Beads,” it’s not ridiculous to assume that Sinatra already knew how good it would sound with a bossa nova beat. Among the many albums he had listened to in order to familiarize himself with the rhythm, was It Might as Well Be Spring, which Sylvinha Telles had recorded that same year for Kapp Records, and contained the song “Baubles, Bangles and Beads.”

The work with Ogerman didn’t take long—precisely because everything would be sorted out by Sinatra himself in the studio, at the hour of reckoning. So for the rest of January, Jobim merely sat around in his hotel waiting for Sinatra to return so that they could start work. In California, the days passed slowly, even in wintertime, when even Nathanael West’s locusts came out to sunbathe. Jobim kept himself busy by writing to Vinícius or Caymmi and painting a somewhat exaggerated picture of his situation. In one of his letters to Vinícius, he described himself thus: “A poor wretch confined to a hotel room, waiting for the summons to start recording, in that state of physical lethargy that precedes important events, incessantly watching television with a stomach full of butterflies.” And he signed it: “Astênio Claustro Fobim” (Lethargic Cloistered Lazybones).

On January 25, he turned forty, a great age to be recording with Sinatra—thirty years after his godfather had rented a used piano so that his sister Helena could learn to play. The piano, old, ugly, and missing some of its keys, was stored in the garage at his house in Ipanema, and Helena hadn’t been very interested in it—but he had. He subsequently put in thousands of hours of practice, another good many in awful nightclubs, and still more in studios. Things had gotten better. His keys now shone, and were all in their proper place—and there he was, in that hotel room, about to go and play (unfortunately, guitar!) for Sinatra. January 25 arrived, and Jobim was feeling too lethargic to do anything special for his fortieth birthday. Until producer Sonny Burke called to say they would start recording on January 30.

“The last time I sang so softly was when I had laryngitis,” laughed Frank Sinatra.

He had just finished singing “Dindi,” Jobim’s first song to be recorded. Before they started, he had done a warmup with his old friends “Baubles, Bangles and Beads” and “I Concentrate on You” to get used to that guitar beat, and to practice the way he intended to project on the rest of the record. In the forties, Sinatra had incited a revolution in popular music by softening the Bing Crosby style even further. Like no other singer of his generation, he naturally prolonged certain vowels (and even some consonants) and led one phrase into another as if they were glued together, apparently without the need to take a breath. Experts loved to cite his confession that he had learned that technique by watching his former boss, Tommy Dorsey, doing the same thing on trombone, night after night.

But Jobim’s songs demanded something—in fact, something less—from him other than mere soft vocals. Stan Cornyn, author of the sleeve text for the original edition of the album, described the atmosphere of the first night of recording, as if each person in Warner’s Studio One on Sunset Strip were trying to “sshhhh” more softly than anyone else—including arranger and conductor Ogerman, the musicians, and the technicians. Recording alien noises in the background of Jobim’s songs, explained Cornyn, would be like “washing glasses in a concrete mixer.” The recording session was set for eight in the evening, but Sinatra arrived earlier so that he could go over the songs by himself. On greeting Jobim shortly afterward, Frank told him that “he would make an effort to restrain himself, so as not to rob bossa nova of its subtlety.”

From the studio, separated from the rest of the world by a thick pane of glass, Sinatra could see the control booth filling with several people who, clearly, had about as much of a right to be there as Sammy Davis, Jr. at a Ku Klux Klan meeting. There was a list on the door containing the names of the people who were to be allowed entrance, and they weren’t on it. He sent one of his men to ask who the guy with the yachting cap was, and the one with the white mustache. He was told that they were “Brazilians” who were with the president of the recording company, Mick Martrand: one of them was Ray Gilbert; the other, Aloysio de Oliveira. Sinatra killed them with a look and they both cowered in a corner of the booth.

“He has eyes of steel,” Jobim later remarked. “And he also has a gypsy’s eyes—he never forgets a face.”

“Shut the door!” yelled Sinatra, before starting to sing. Raising his voice a semitone appeared to make any subordinate present recoil. It was popularly held that Sinatra wasn’t surrounded by “yes men”—when he said “no,” everyone around him also said “no.” A trombonist allowed the slide of his instrument to slip mere millimeters out of sync, and Sinatra noticed. The man practically dove under his music stand. In describing his memories of that night, Aloysio de Oliveira later said that, in Sinatra’s presence, everyone “was under the absolute control of his personality.” Is that a fact? There was at least one man there who appeared not to fall under the spell of The Voice: drummer Dom Um Romão, whom Jobim had asked to borrow from Astrud Gilberto in Chicago. Cornyn, on the album sleeve, described him as appearing to be “simultaneously alert and polished.” In Brazil, Dom Um was, together with Edison Machado, the most jazzy of the bossa nova drummers. There, accompanying Sinatra and Jobim, he muted the bass drum with a cushion and was playing as softly as Milton Banana had for João Gilberto—as he had been told to do.

According to Aloysio de Oliveira, Jobim was “nervous,” which he admitted. It was a normal state of mind among musicians within earshot of Sinatra. But Jobim wasn’t that nervous.

After all, he had already recorded several times with João Gilberto.

Jobim ran into the Sunset-Marquis and invited everyone up to his suite. On the morning of the first day of recording, several of his friends had arrived from Brazil with Aloysio: Oscar Castro-Neves, Marcos Valle and his wife Ana Maria, and The Girls from Bahia. Jobim brought a tape from the studio containing the first recorded tracks: “Dindi,” “Corcovado,” and “Inútil paisagem.” They were all astounded. It had to be heard to be believed—and he was delighted. The victory was not just his, but for the whole of bossa nova as they had secretly conceived it, a million dreams ago.

Sinatra was singing softly, as bossa nova required. So softly, in fact, that he could not be heard outside the walls of the studio. Meanwhile, Ipanema, in Rio, was filled with other sounds: a babel of protests during song festivals, physical fights for first place and for big money prizes, booing contests and cacophonous electric guitar music filling auditoriums—little music and too many arguments. Bossa nova, feeling like a fish out of water, picked up its stool and its guitar, and slipped away unnoticed.

Fortunately, it had somewhere to go: the rest of the world.

VinÌcius de Moraes, Dorival Caymmi, and Jobim

Manchete Press

Epilogue

What Happened to Them

Turn on the radio in New York, Montreal, Paris, Tokyo, or Sydney, and you’ll hear bossa nova. On disc, the piano of Antonio Carlos Jobim and the voice or guitar of João Gilberto live on aboard airplanes, on ships, in bars, elevators, and waiting rooms, and played live, in concert halls, theaters, school gymnasiums, stadiums, and even at the beach in Rio, for audiences of thousands. It has been going on this way for almost forty years. According to official figures, “Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl from Ipanema), by Jobim, runs cheek by jowl with “Yesterday,” by Lennon and McCartney, in terms of performances by the millions, and “Águas de março” (Waters of March), also by Jobim, was cited as one of the century’s ten best songs by critic Leonard Feather.

A large part of the classic bossa nova production is available on CD in Japan and Europe—in the case of the latter, not always on authorized releases. Collectors from all over the world visit secondhand record stores in Rio and São Paulo in search of original albums, often looking for those with sleeves in perfect condition. Months later, those discs reappear on CD (with a sleeve, inside cover, and label identical to those of the album) in large stores in London or Barcelona. Bids at international auctions for the original album release of Canção do amor demais (Song for an Excessive Love) (Elizeth Cardoso’s record from 1958, on which João Gilberto’s guitar beat was heard for the first time, on the track “Chega de saudade” [No More Blues]) reached US $500, before it was re-released on CD in 1998.

There isn’t a single American orchestra or vocalist from the classic era that hasn’t recorded bossa nova: Tony Bennett, Nat “King” Cole, Perry Como, Vic Damone, Billy Eckstine, Johnny Hartman, The Hi-Los, Jackie & Roy, Al Jarreau, Johnny Mathis, Mark Murphy, Bobby Short, Mel Tormé, Frank Sinatra (of course), Rosemary Clooney, Dardanelle, Doris Day, Blossom Dearie, Ella Fitzgerald, Eydie Gormé, Peggy Lee, Julie London, Carmen McRae, Helen Merrill, Anita O’Day, Sarah Vaughan, Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner, Earl Hines, Stéphane Grappelli, Percy Faith, Enoch Light, Billy Vaughn, Herb Alpert, Ray Anthony, The Ray Charles Singers, John Williams & the Boston Pops, you name ‘em. And contemporary singers like Susannah McCorkle, Karrin Allyson, Joyce Breach, Ann Burton, Rebecca Kilgore, Kristin Korb, Yvonne Roome, Daryl Sherman, and the Nancy Marano–Ed Montero duo have all included bossa nova standards in their repertoires. Others have incorporated a bossa nova beat into their renditions of American standards. Just about everyone on the face of the earth, bar Mother Teresa of Calcutta, seems to have recorded bossa nova at least once Fortunately, Antonio Carlos Jobim lived to witness almost all of this. Jobim died of a heart attack at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York on December 8, 1994, following surgery for bladder cancer, just a few weeks before his sixty-eighth birthday. For Brazilians, his death had the equivalent impact of “the felling of an entire forest,” as his friend, filmmaker Arnaldo Jabor, put it.

In recent years, he had become a household name, as beloved on a worldwide scale as in his home country. Every year, he received tributes and honorary degrees in cities from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv to Tokyo, which allowed him to perform frequently with his own Banda Nova, a highly-polished instrumental-vocal ensemble composed of his sons and the sons of his friends. A college of music was founded in São Paulo in his honor. In 1992, the Escola de Samba Mangueira (The Mangueira Samba School) paraded in the Rio Carnival with its four thousand participants singing a samba in tribute to him—with the shy Jobim himself perched on top of a float, four meters above the ground, terrified of falling and receiving a standing ovation from the crowd in the stands.

I spoke with him for the last time just two weeks before his death. Jobim was sitting at his usual table at the Plataforma restaurant, in the Leblon neighborhood of Rio, where he went every day. He appeared happy and carefree, although he was aware of the seriousness of his condition. Since the publication of the Brazilian edition of this book, in 1990, I had returned several times to his beautiful home in upper Jardim Botânico, with a breathtaking view of the beaches, mountains, and lagoons of Rio. In his last years, Jobim gradually slowed his work pace but sat at his piano daily (he had two grand pianos in his studio), hunched over a song for months. One of his last compositions was “Piano na Mangueira” (Mangueira Piano), the final rendezvous between traditional samba and bossa nova. His last recording might well have been the track “Fly Me to the Moon,” a duet with Frank Sinatra on the record Duets II.

Like Jobim, many other big names in bossa nova have died in the last twenty years: lyricists Vinícius de Moraes, Ronaldo Bôscoli, and Marcos de Vasconcellos; producer Aloysio de Oliveira; female vocalists Maysa, Elizeth Cardoso, Nara Leão, and Elis Regina; male vocalists Dick Farney, Lúcio Alves, Agostinho dos Santos, Luiz Roberto (of Os Cariocas), Luiz Henrique, and Wilson Miranda; percussionists Milton Banana, Edison Machado, Victor Manga, and Rubens Bassini; pianists Luiz Eça and Tenório Jr.; organist Walter Wanderley; and maestro Radamés Gnatalli.

On the other hand, many others are still active and some (following a period of ostracism brought about by the conquest of the Brazilian market by rock) have even relaunched their careers in the nineties. Guitarists Roberto Menescal and Baden Powell, composer Carlos Lyra, the vocal ensemble Os Cariocas, singers Alayde Costa and Claudette Soares, pianist Luis Carlos Vinhas, and many others have been working more than ever. The singer and actress Norma Bengell became a movie director. Pianists and composers João Donato and Johnny Alf have finally been recognized as two of the great pioneers of bossa nova and have received due tributes, recording prolifically. The composer and singer Marcos Valle was rediscovered in England and the Netherlands, where he has become a sensation. Singer Leny Andrade frequently performs in New York. Many Brazilian musicians have now taken up permanent residency in the United States: pianists and arrangers Sérgio Mendes, Eumir Deodato, Oscar Castro-Neves, and Don Salvador; singers Astrud Gilberto and Flora Purim; arranger Moacyr Santos; percussionists Airto Moreira, Dom Um Romão, and Hélcio Milito; among many others. The quality of their work paved the way for innumerable Brazilian musicians, many of whom aren’t necessarily associated with bossa nova, like Tom Zé, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Gal Costa, to become known to the American public.

João Gilberto returned to Brazil in 1980, after an eighteen-year absence. As is his style, he moved quietly into a hotel suite in Leblon, Rio de Janeiro, which he has since rarely left. He has never been sighted dining out, he never goes to bars, he doesn’t attend shows or go to the movies, and there is no record that he ever visits friends. Compared with his reclusive lifestyle, there are Tibetan monks who lead social lives worthy of being written up in the gossip columns. He has gone back to making great records, and when money is tight, to doing shows, at which he refuses (with good reason) to sing if the sound system isn’t up to his minutely exigent standards. On records and in his performances, he has managed to combine bossa nova classics with the hits that he heard over the loudspeakers of his home town, Juazeiro, in Bahia.

It’s as if he never really left—and as if the entire revolution that he brought about in popular music since “Chega de saudade” (No More Blues) in 1958 was merely the path that he followed in order to be able to continue singing the songs he had listened to as a child.

A Select Bossa Nova Discography

All entries are CDs and refer to classic records issued in the last ten years. The CD’s country of origin follows the label’s name. Some of them may be hard to find or out of print, but can be tracked through specialized Brazilian record stores, such as Marché Discos (Rua Mourato Coelho, 798—Pinheiros, São Paulo—SP, CEP 05417-001 http://marchediscos.com.br) or Modern Sound (Rua Barata Ribeiro, 502-D—Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro—RJ, CEP 22040-000 http://www.modernsound.com.br). (A good U.S. source for hard-to-find Brazilian CDs and LPs is http://www.dustygroove.com.)

As of this writing, dozens of great Bossa Nova records remain unreleased on CD. For a more detailed discography of the artists below, including rare singles and albums, visit http://www.sombras.com.br.

Adnet, Mario

Para Gershwin e Jobim—Universal Brasil 325911001332

Alf, Johnny

Eu e a brisa—Imagem Brasil 2003

Olhos negros—RCA Brasil 10.083

Cult Alf—Natasha Brasil 289 127

Eu e a bossa—Rob Digital Brasil RD 020

Alves, Lúcio

Balançamba—Elenco Brasil ME—02

Lúcio Alves especial—EMI Brasil 795678

Acervo especial—RCA Victor Brasil M 60.049 20

preferidas—RGE Brasil 5519 2

Andrade, Leny

Leny Andrade & Johnny Alf—Acervo especial—BMG Brasil 100018

Letra & música : Antonio Carlos Jobim (w/ Cristovão Bastos)

Lumiar Brasil 107655

Bossa nova—Eldorado Brasil

Banana, Milton

Vê—EMI Brasil 789629 2

Milton Banana trio—EMI Brasil 859164

Sambas de bossa—BMG Brasil M60025

Benjor, Jorge (Ben, Jorge)

10 anos depois—Polygram Brasil 842012

Blanco, Billy

Billy Blanco na voz do próprio—Polygram Japan 4225—

Paulistana—EMI Brasil 837823 2

Informal ao vivo—CID Brasil

Bonfá, Luiz

Bossa nova (w/ Lalo Schifrin & Oscar Castro-Neves) Verve

Japan POCJ 2565

Jazz samba encore (w/ Stan Getz & Antonio Carlos Jobim)

Verve USA 823613-2

Non-stop Brazil—Chesky USA JD29

The Bonfá magic—Milestone USA 9202

Jacarandá—Orchard 387 USA

Introspection—Orchard 1546 USA

Bossa Três

Os reis do ritmo—Bomba Japan—Bom561

Em forma—Polygram Japan PHCA 4242

Bruno, Lenita

Por toda a minha vida—Festa Brasil FT1802

Cardoso, Elizeth

Canção do amor demais—Festa Brasil 6002

Elizete interpreta Vinicius—Movie Play Brasil ABW 81588

Cariocas, Os

A bossa de Os Cariocas—Polygram Brasil—558954

Reconquistar—WEA Brasil—903176578

A bossa brasileira—Paradoxx Brasil—3208015

Castro-Neves, Oscar

Oscar with members of The Paul Winter Consort—Living

Music USA DX 1292 LD0010

Oscar Castro-Neves—Imagem Brasil CD 2005 Brazilian Scandals—JVC Japan VDP 1204

Caymmi, Danilo

Sol moreno—EMI Brasil 8357912

Mistura brasileira—EMI Brasil 857 482

Caymmi, Dori

Brazilian serenata—WEA USA 26573

Dori Caymmi—WEA USA 60790

Caymmi, Dorival

Caymmi visita Tom (w/ Antonio Carlos Jobim) Polygram

Brasil 823011

Mestres da MPB—Continental Brasil—995969 Dorival & Nana—BMG Brasil 30550

Caymmi, Nana

Nana—RGE Brasil 8151

Nana—Polygram Brasil 526952

A noite do meu Bem—EMI Brasil—830776

Cesar, Silvio

Amigos da bossa—Paradoxx Brasil 3208013

Chaves, Luiz

Projeção—RGE Brasil 3476010

Chevalier, Claire

Saveur Brésil (w/ Rosinha de Valença)—Paradoxx Brasil 1305

Clooney, Rosemary

Brazil (w/ John Pizzarelli)—Concord USA 4884

Costa, Alayde

Amiga de verdade—MoviePlay Brasil 115706

Falando de amor—Ethnic France 6876

Costa, Gal

Gal canta Caymmi—Polygram 836014

Aquarela do Brasil (Songs of Ary Barroso)—Polygram Brasil Gabriela—(w/ Jobim)—Polygram Brasil

Rio revisited (w/ Jobim)—Polygram Brasil 841286

Gal Costa canta Tom Jobim—BMG Brasil 7432170979

Creuza, Maria

O Grande encontro (w/ Toquinho & Vinicius de Moraes)—Sigla Brasil 4156

Você abusou—RGE Brasil—115737

Deodato, Eumir

Inútil paisagem—Universal Brasil—848270

Ataque (Os Catedráticos) UBCD Japan 104

Impulso (Os Catedráticos) UBCD Japan 101

Nova concepção (Os Catedráticos) UBCD Japan 102

Idéias—EMI Japan 50643

Desmond, Paul

From the hot afternoon—A&M USA CD 0824

Donato, João

Sambou, sambou—Pacific Japan 8320

João Donato (w/ Eumir Deodato) 32Jazz USA 32154

Quem é quem—EMI Japan 50638

Coisas tão simples—EMI Brasil 836008

Só danço samba—Lumiar Brasil 40-01/99

João Donato songbook (3 CDs)—Lumiar Brasil LD45-04

Donato Millennium—Universal Brasil 73145428912

Duran, Dolores

Dolores Duran—Marcos Pereira Brasil 10037

Dolores canta Dolores—EMI Brasil 499356

Eça, Luiz

(See Tamba Trio and Tamba 4)

O prestígio de Luiz Eça—Polygram Brasil—811162

Luiz Eça piano e cordas 2—Polygram Brasil 526960

Elias, Eliana

Plays Jobim—Blue Note USA 793089

Sings Jobim—Blue Note USA 95050

Farney, Dick

A voz de Dick Farney—Polygram Brasil 848268

Meus momentos Vol 1—EMI Brasil 830700

Meus momentos Vol 2—EMI Brasil 857836

Fest, Manfredo

Just Jobim—DMP USA 524

Fitzgerald, Ella

Ella abraça Jobim—Pablo USA PACD 2630-201-2

Fogueira Três

Bossa nova—CID Brasil 3/5

Gatos, Os

Aquele som dos gatos—Polygram Brasil 558955

Getz, Stan

Jazz samba (w/ Charlie Byrd)—Verve USA 2304195

Getz au go-go (w/ Astrud Gilberto)—Verve USA 2304173

Getz & Gilberto (w/ Astrud Gilberto)—Mobile Fidelity USA 208

Getz & Gilberto 2—Polygram USA 519800—Easy

Best of two words (w/ Miucha & João Gilberto)—SNY USA 3703

The girl from Ipanema—The bossa nova years—(4 CDs) Polygram USA 314519801

Gilberto, Astrud

Beach samba—Polygram USA 314519801

The Astrud Gilberto album (w/ Tom Jobim)—Polygram USA 823451

The shadow of your smile—Polygram Japan 2559

The girl from Ipanema—Prime Cuts USA 2364

Gilberto, João

The legendary João Gilberto (includes Chega de Saudade, O amor, o sorriso e a flor and João Gilberto—the first three albums) World Pacific USA 793891

En México—Polygram USA 848426

João Gilberto—Polygram Brasil—837580

Amoroso—WEA USA—23053

Live at 19th Montreux jazz festival—WEA 254728

Brasil (w/ Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Maria Bethania) WEA Brasil 256964

João—Polygram Brasil—848188

Eu sei que vou te amar (live) Epic Brasil 476467

João, voz e violão—Universal Brasil 731454671132

Henderson, Joe

Double rainbow—Verve Polygram Brasil—527 222

Hi-Los, The

The Hi-Los happen to bossa nova—Reprise USA 1134

Hime, Francis

Francis Hime (2 em 1)—Emi Brasil 829032

Passaredo—Cast/Sigla 4009-2

Álbum musical—WEA 063017811-2

Hime, Olívia

Alta madrugada—Paradoxx Brasil 3208006

O fio da meada—Cast/Sigla—403.0022

Hollanda, Chico Buarque de

Chico Buarque de Hollanda N. 4—Polygram Brasil 812 091

Construção—Polygram Brasil—836 013

Jobim, Antonio Carlos

The composer plays—Polygram USA 823011

Composer—WEA USA 946114

Tom Jobim apresenta—WEA Brasil 832907 Wave—Polygram USA 0812

Tide—Polygram USA 393031

Stone flower—CBS USA 45480

Matita Perê—Polygram Brasil 826856

Urubu—WEA USA 22928

Echoes of Rio (w/ Miúcha & Chico Buarque) BMG USA 9602

Miúcha & Tom—BMG Brasil 10025

Tom, Vinicius, Toquinho e Miúcha—Ao Vivo no Canecão—

Sigla Brasil 4244

Edu & Tom (w/ Edu Lobo)—Polygram Brasil 534258 Terra brasilis—WEA USA 23409

Passarim—Polygram Brasil 833234

Antonio Brasileiro—Sigla Brasil—419058

Tom Jobim inédito—BMG Brasil—7432132920

Minha alma canta—Lumiar Brasil 07/97—1997

Jobim–Morelenbaum Quarteto

Jobim–Morelenbaum Quarteto—Universal Brasil 04400129652

Jones, Quincy

Big band bossa nova—Mercury USA 814225

Jones, Salene

Sings Jobim—Velas Brasil 11-V174

Jongo Trio

Jongo Trio—MIX House Brasil—MH0005

Joyce

Tom Jobim—Os Anos 60—EMI Brasil 793498

Meus momentos—EMI Brasil 830779

Tardes cariocas—Far Out England—016CD

Live at the Mojo Club—Universal Germany 527808-2

Koning, Josee

Tribute to Antonio Carlos Jobim SNY USA 81919

Koorax, Ithamara

Sings the Luiz Bonfá songbook—Paddle Wheel USA KICP-503

Red river—King Records Japan 497

Bossa Nova songbook—King Records Japan 301

Bossa Nova meets drum & bass—King Records Japan 665

Leão, Nara

Nara—Polygram Brasil—848970

Dez anos depois—Polygram Brasil 528083

Garota de Ipanema—Polygram Brasil 826854

Um cantinho, um violão (w/ Roberto Menescal) Polygram Brasil 824414

Meus sonhos dourados—Polygram Brasil 832639

My foolish heart—Polygram Brasil 838812

Minha história—Polygram Brasil 518665

Lobo, Edu

Edu Lobo por Edu Lobo (w/ Tamba Trio) Polygram Brasil 848967

Edu e Bethânia (w/ Maria Bethânia) Polygram Brasil 512053

Edu Lobo (2 em 1)—EMI Brasil 829032

Currupião—Velas Brasil—11-V0

Minha história—Polygram Brasil—526193

Sergio Mendes presents Lobo—A&M Japan—POCM 2016

Lucia, Ana

Ana Lucia canta triste—RGE Brasil 6098

Lyra, Carlos

Mestres da MPB—Continental Brasil 997753

Bossa nova—Polygram Japan 4215

Pobre menina rica (w/ Dulce Nunes) Columbia Brasil 476410

BossaLyra—BMG Brasil M20298

Carioca de algema EMI Brasil 831339

Machado, Edison

Edison Machado é samba novo—Columbia Brasil 866024

Madi, Tito

Tito Madi especial—EMI Brasil 795604

Maia, Tim

Interpreta clássicos da bossa nova—Vitória Régia Brasil MVRD 00010

Amigo do rei (w/ Os Cariocas)—Vitória Régia VRD 00012

Mann, Herbie

Do the bossa nova—Collectables USA 6245

Herbie Mann & João Gilberto with Antonio Carlos Jobim—Atlantic USA 7567-80789

Márcia

Eu e a brisa—Polydor Brasil 532596

Maysa

Barquinho—Columbia Brasil 866016

A bossa nova por Maysa—RGE Brasil 3426090

Tom Jobim por Maysa—RGE Brasil 3426089

Demais—RCA Brasil 10024

20 Sucessos (Canecão Apresenta Maysa)—Copacabana Brasil 99902

Convite para ouvir Maysa (4 CDs) RGE Brasil 9402

McFarland, Gary

Soft samba—Verve Polygram Japan 2110

Mendes, Sergio

Swinger from Rio—Collectables Jazz Classics USA 6267

The beat of Brazil—Collectables Jazz Classics USA 6267

Sergio Mendes and Brasil ‘65 (w/ Wanda Sá)—EMI Japan 7994

The great arrival—Atlantic Japan 1244

In person at El Matador—Atlantic Japan 1246

Look around (w/ Brasil ‘66) Polygram Japan 1981

Menescal, Roberto

A bossa nova de Roberto Menescal—Polygram Brasil 512058 Bossa evergreen—Albatroz Brasil 1048

Miúcha

Miúcha—Continental Brasil 179105

Rosa amarela—BMG Brasil—743216/7333

Miltinho

Miltinho convida—Globo Columbia Brasil—419 096

Monteiro, Ciro

De Vinicius e Baden, especialmente para Ciro Monteiro Polygram Brasil 558957

Monteiro, Doris

Simplesmente—Bomba Japan 556

Doris Monteiro—Polygram Japan 4244

Doris Monteiro e Tito Madi—Columbia Brasil 721 240

Moraes, Vinicius de

A arte de Vinicius de Moares—Polygram Brasil 834654

Vinicius & Odete Lara—Polygram Brasil 512057

Vinicius/Caymmi no Zum Zum—Polygram Brasil 848969

Morelenbaum, Paula

Paula Morelenbaum—Cameratti Brasil 1006

MPB 4

Deixa estar—Polygram Brasil—526956

Antologia—Mercury Brasil—532 597

Mulligan, Gerry

Paraíso (w/ Jane Duboc) Telarc USA 83361

Ney, Nora

Mestres da MPB—Continental Brasil 995472

Ono, Lisa

Minha saudade (w/ João Donato) BMG Brasil 27264

Passos, Rosa

Curare—Velas Brasil 11-v056

Rosa Passos canta Antonio Carlos Jobim—Lumiar Brasil 3702/98

Pinheiro, Leila

Benção, bossa nova—Polygram Brasil 842036

Isso é bossa nova—EMI Brasil 830979

Powell, Baden

Grandes mestres da MPB Vol 1—WEA Brasil—063018097

Grandes mestres da MPB Vol 2—WEA Brasil—063018098

Tempo feliz (w/ Maurício Einhorn)—Polygram Brasil 848852

Baden Powell à vontade—Polygram Brasil 848968

Os afro sambas (w/ Vinicius de Moraes) Polygram Japan 4205

Swings with Jimmy Pratt—Polygram Brasil 528045

Purim, Flora

500 miles high (w/ Michel Brock)—Fantasy USA 1018

Quarteto em Cy
(The Girls from Bahia)

Vinicius em Cy—CID Brasil 00100

Quarteto em Cy—Bomba Japan Bom514

Som definitivo—Bomba Japan Bom515

Regina, Elis

No fino da bossa ao vivo (3 CDs) Velas Brasil 11-V030

O fino do fino (w/ Zimbo Trio) Polygram Brasil 830060

Elis—Polygram Brasil 810436

Honeysuckle rose/Aquarela do Brasil (w/ Toots Thielemans) Polygram Brasil 830 391

Elis, como e porquê—Polygram Brasil 811468

Elis especial—Polygram Brasil 811220

Elis & Tom (w/ Antonio Carlos Jobim) Polygram Brasil 824418

Ribeiro, Pery

Pery é todo bossa—EMI Brasil 831207 (dois em um)

Pery muito mais bossa—EMI Brasil 831207 (dois em um)

Gemini V (w/ Leny Andrade & Bossa Três) EMI Brasil 836674

Ricardo, Sergio

Um sr. talento—Polygram Brasil 512055

Romão, Dom Um

Dom Um Romão—Muse USA 6012

Sá, Wanda

Vagamente (w/ Roberto Menescal)—Bomba Japan Bom506

Softly!—EMI Capitol Japan TOCP 50290

Eu e a música—Cid Brasil 00182

Brasileiras (w/ Célia Vaz)—Cid Brasil 118

Salvador, Don

Don Salvador trio—Imagem Brasil 2016

Santos, Agostinho dos

Agostinho dos Santos—EMI Brasil 833466

Santos, Moacyr

Saudade—Toshiba 6289 Japan

Shank, Bud

His Brazilian friends (w/ João Donato & Rosinha de Valença) EMI Japan 50634

Simonal, Wilson

A nova dimensão do samba—EMI Brasil 833531

Meus momentos—EMI Brasil 852388

Sinatra, Frank

Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim—Warner Brasil M759927041

Sinatra & company—Warner Brasil 91033

Soares, Claudette

É a dona da bossa—Imagem Brasil 1032

Claudette Soares ao vivo—Som Livre Brasil 5004

Soares, Elza

Elza, Miltinho e samba—EMI Brasil—833672

Meus momentos Vol 1—EMI Brasil—852387

Meus momentos Vol 2—EMI Brasil—833015

Souza, Raul de

Rio—MixHouse Brasil 0004

Tamba 4

Samba blim—Polygram Japan 5054

We and the sea—Polydor Japan—POCM 5025

Tamba Trio

Tamba Trio—Philips Japan PHCA 4214

Tempo—Philips Japan—PHCA 4239

Avanço—Philips Japan PHCA 4239

Telles, Claudia

Chega de sausade—Cid Brasil—00484-8

Telles, Mário

Mario Telles—Columbia Brasil—866109

Telles, Sylvia

Carícia—EMI Brasil 827535

Amor de gente moça—EMI Brasil 866 109

Amor em hi-fi—Polygram Brasil 848850

Bossa, balanço e balada—Polygram Brasil 512054 Silvia—EMI Japan 50283

Bossa session (w/ Lúcio Alves & Roberto Menescal) Polygram Brasil 558959

U.S.A.—Polygram Japan 4202

Tenório, Jr.

Embalo—RGE Brasil 3426023

Thielemans, Toots

The Brasil project—PrivateMusic USA 01005-82101

The Brasil project Vol. 2—PrivateMusic USA 01005-81110

Toquinho

Convite para ouvir (w/ Vinicius de Moraes) RGE 8503

A bossa do Toquinho—RGE Brasil 3466003

Valença, Rosinha de

Folklore e bossa nova do Brasil (w/ Edu Lobo & Sylvia Telles) MPS Germany 533 133

Valle, Marcos

Samba demais—EMI Brasil 829370 (dois em um)

O compositor e o cantor—EMI Brasil 829370 (dois em um)

The essential Marcos Valle (2 CDs)—Mr. Bongo USA 3 & 4

Samba ‘68—Polygram USA 314559516

Nova bossa nova—Far Out England—022

Viola enluarada—EMI Brasil 833607

Vandré, Geraldo

Mestres da MPB (Hora de Lutar) Continental Brasil 997752

Canto geral—EMI Brasil 833406

20 preferidas—RGE Brasil—5613

Vaughan, Sarah

Copacabana—Pablo Today Brasil—PACD 2312-125

O som brasileiro de Sarah Vaughan—RCA Brasil 10 027

Veloso, Caetano

Domingo (w/ Gal Costa)—Polygram Brasil 8385555

A bossa de Caetano—Polygram Brasil

Wanderley, Walter

Boss of the bossa nova—Motor Germany 535585

Samba swings!—Scam USA 9704

Brazil’s greatest hits—Crescendo USA 2137

Winter, Paul

The sound of Ipanema (w/ Carlos Lyra)—Sony Japan 7154

Rio (w/ Luiz Bonfa, Roberto Menescal and Luiz Eça)—Sony Japan SRCS 7155

Zimbo Trio

Ao vivo—Movieplay Brasil 317

Anthologies, Soundtracks, Scores, and Songbooks

Antonio Carlos Jobim songbook (5 CDs)—Lumiar Brasil 108300/304

Antonio Carlos Jobim songbook instrumental—Lumiar Brasil 107742/3

The man from Ipanema (3 CDs)—Polygram USA

Blue Note plays Jobim—Blue Note USA 72438 352835

Bossa nova—O amor, o sorriso e a flor (4 CDs)—Polygram/Reader’s Digest 994045

Bossa nova—acervo especial—BMG Brasil 100019

Bossa nova at Carnegie Hall—Audio Fidelity Brazil 8253

Bossa nova: história, som & imagem—Ventura Brasil VE0004

Bossa nova trinta anos depois—Polygram Brasil 826870

Bossa sempre nova (3 CDs) RGE Brasil 600-1/2/3

Brazilian horizons—BMG USA 47078

Carlos Lyra songbook—Lumiar Brasil 04/94

Casa da bossa—Polygram Brasil 536061

Chega de saudade—The best of bossa nova—EMI Brasil 827605

Edu Lobo songbook—Lumiar Brasil 107441–42

Forma—A grande música brasileira—Polygram Brasil 528491

The girl from Ipanema—The Antonio Carlos Jobim songbook—Polygram USA 525472

João Donato songbook (3 CDs)—Lumiar Brasil 43-04/99 43-05/99 43-06/99

Marcos Valle songbook—Lumiar Brasil 3904/98

Meus primeiros passos e compassos (original recordings of Jobim songs through 1958)—Revivendo Brasil 110

Orfeu—Motion picture soundtrack (w/Caetano Veloso)—Natasha Brasil—292105

Black Orpheus—The original soundtrack from the 1958 film—Verve Polygram USA 830783

Para viver um grande amor (w/ Dori Caymmi, Djavan, Zezé Motta)—Motion picture sound-track—Columbia Brasil 721357

Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro (w/ Dick Farney, Os Cariocas, Emilinha Borba and others)—Continental Brasil 45099180

A trip to Brazil—Motor Germany 565382

A trip to Brazil, vol. 2: bossa and beyond—Universal Germany 545360-2

Vinicius de Moraes songbook (3 CDs)—Lumiar Brasil 01/93

Vivendo Vinicius (w/Baden Powell, Carlos Lyra, Miúcha and Toquinho)—BMG Brasil 7432189005

O fino da bossa—Show at Paramount theater, São Paulo in May 25, 1964—RGE Brasil 347 6012

Glossary

afoxê a percussion instrument composed of a gourd with beads strung around it, also known as the xequerê.

ambrosia a Brazilian dessert made of milk, sugar, and eggs.

áraque a spirit alcohol flavored with anise.

Arcos da Carioca an ancient aqueduct in Rio de Janeiro that is no longer used to transport water but now carries Rio streetcars.

baião a fast, lively, syncopated song and dance form from the northeast of Brazil.

batucada rhythmical drumming and percussion-playing of various indigenous Brazilian musical instruments.

batuque generic designation of Afro-Brazilian drumming and dances.

berimbau an Afro-Brazilian chordophonic instrument, originally from Angola, composed of a wooden bow with a wire string and gourd resonator, commonly played in Bahia, particularly as a rhythmical accompaniment to capoeira.

Bilac, Olavo Brás Martins dos Guimarães (1865–1918) a Parnassian poet born in Rio de Janeiro; his themes included ancient history, the history of Brazil, love, death, and old age.

Caboclo a Brazilian whose ancestry may be traced back to the indigenous Indian peoples.

Cabral, Pedro Álvares the Portuguese navigator who “discovered” Brazil in May 1500, while commanding a fleet that was supposed to be en route to India.

cachaça strong spirit alcohol brewed from sugarcane.

caixeta a Latin American woodblock, composed of a rectangular piece of wood with a slit running lengthwise along the side, creating a sound chamber; it is played by striking with mallets or sticks.

Calabar, Domingos Fernandes (?–1635) a mulatto from Porto Calvo, Pernambuco, who was hanged after betraying his country by helping the Dutch invasion.

Candomblé one of the Afro-Brazilian religions, a blend of Catholicism and the polytheistic beliefs of early African slaves. It is very active in Brazil, and has many followers, particularly in Bahia.

capoeira a ritualized Afro-Brazilian combat-dance that evolved from a fighting style that originated in Angola, and which is performed to the accompaniment of a musical ensemble that includes the berimbau, pandeiro, etc.

Carioca a native of Rio de Janeiro.

caruru a Brazilian dish made with chicken, fish, okra, palm oil, and pepper.

cavaquinho a ukelele-like stringed instrument.

choro (or chorinho) a melody in 2/4 characterized by its specific structure, extreme melodic leaps, unexpected modulations, breakneck tempos, and improvisational language.

cocada a candy made out of coconut and sugar.

cuíca a drum like instrument open at one end and with a stick attached to the center of the drum skin that, when rubbed, produces a grunting noise.

Dona used to address a woman who has senior standing, by virtue of either age or social status.

farofa cassava flour toasted in butter, lard, or olive oil, sometimes mixed with meat or eggs.

feijoada a typical Brazilian stew of black beans cooked with dried meat, pork, and sausages.

forró generic designation of dance music from the northeast of Brazil.

frevo a highly syncopated, fast-tempo marcha that originated earlier in the century in Recife.

gaúcho a native or inhabitant of Rio Grande do Sul.

guaraná a soft drink flavored with guaraná, a Brazilian climbing shrub.

jequitibá one of the largest trees in Brazilian fauna, frequently planted in parks and squares; its wood is used in the construction industry, and to manufacture furniture, toys, and shoe heels.

marcha song form based on the boisterous rhythm of early Carnival parade music, subsequently influenced in the 1920s by one-step and ragtime.

marchinhas “little marches”: a diminutive form of marcha.

mariola a sweet made from banana.

maxixe the first genuinely Brazilian song and dance, created in Rio around 1880 by Afro-Brazilian musicians: a synthesis of lundu, polka, and Cuban habanera.

moqueca stew of fish or shellfish simmered in palm oil, coconut, and pepper.

Ossanha, Xangô, and Iemanjá some of the orixás—gods and goddesses—of the Umbanda Afro-Brazilian religion.

Palácio do Catete the former official residence of Brazilian presidents, now home to the Museu da República, or Museum of the Republic.

papo-de-anjo “angel’s throat/chin,” a small, sweet cake originating in the convents of the Azores, made from beaten egg yolks that are baked and then left to soak in a sugar syrup sometimes flavored with rum, cinnamon, or citrus peel.

Paulista a native of São Paulo.

Pellegrino, Hélio (1924–1988) poet, orator, psychoanalyst, and left-wing militant.

peteca a Brazilian game first played by Indian tribes hundreds of years ago, in which one bumps a feathered shuttlecock with the palm of one’s hand to a partner, or competitively over a net, like badminton with no rackets.

Philco a brand of portable radio.

picadinho a ground or finely chopped meat hash, often made with leftovers from a previous meal.

pontos de candomblé invocations for deities in the Candomblé faith.

Praça Mauá Mauá Square, at the entrance to the Rio de Janeiro docks.

rancheiras a lively folk music of Spanish-American origin.

reco-reco a musical instrument made of a piece of bamboo with notches cut into it, over which a rod is rubbed to produce a rhythmical sound.

roda a Brazilian folk dance.

samba de morro “samba from the hill,” a name used to differentiate traditional samba, which maintained its original characteristics of style, from other forms of samba, such as samba-canção, etc.

samba-canção a genre of samba that emphasizes melody more than rhythm, with more complex harmonies and more sophisticated—usually sentimental—lyrics.

samba-de-roda samba dancing that features a circle into which participants are summoned to display their moves, accompanied by hand-clapping and batucada.

sambão big-time samba, written by old samba masters.

sambista someone who sings, writes, plays or dances samba.

São Gonçalo a city in upstate Rio de Janeiro.

saudade a longing or a yearning for someone or something.

tamborim a small, high-pitched, hand drum made of a circular wooden shell with a piece of hide stretched over one side, played either with a drumstick or a multi-thread nylon beater.

telecoteco an onomatopoeia intended to duplicate the sound of a drumstick on a tamborim, used as a metaphor for pure samba, which is free of influences from the maxixe and batucada of the Carioca morros (hills).

tucupi a seasoning of pepper and cassava juice.

xaxado a song and dance style from the northeast of Brazil traditionally performed by men.

Index

A & M, 314

A Bad Donato, 304

“A banda,” 319

A Bossa Nova de Roberto Menescal, 312

“Acapulco,” 303

“Acender as velas,” 267

“Adeus,” 70

“Adeus, América,” 26, 54

“A felicidade,” 69, 164, 166, 177, 250

afro-sambas, 231

“After You,” 32

“Agonia,” 70

“Àguas de março,” 324, 333

“Ah! Se eu pudesse,” 208

“Ainda mais lindo,” 277

“A Lapa,” 302

alayde, alaúde, 285

Alayde canta suavemente, 284

Alf, Johnny, 8–9, 12, 14, 45, 57–59, 66, 74–75, 84, 88, 92, 94, 102, 108, 111, 117, 122, 140, 141, 143, 151, 177, 202, 206, 211, 219, 226–27, 233, 235, 245–47, 295, 304, 335

at A noite do amor, do sorriso e a flor, 203–4

“Alguém como tu,” 62

“Alguém me disse,” 138

“All of Me,” 23

“All the Things You Are,” 215

Allyson, Karrin, 333

Almeida, Antonio, 185

Almirante, 24

Alpert, Herb, 314, 333

“Also sprach Zarathustra,” 313

“A lua é dos namorados,” 320

Alves, Ataulpho, 185

and His Shepherdesses, 46

Alves, Cleide, 281

Alves, Francisco, 53, 53

Alves, Lúcio, 12, 17, 19–21, 23, 28, 32, 35, 40–41, 44, 58, 61–63, 88, 92, 102, 113, 118, 134, 139–41, 153, 155, 173–74, 211, 232, 254, 260–61, 303, 334

Alves, Rômulo, 121

Amado, Jorge, 188, 206, 254–55, 301

A Manhã, 79

“Amar é bom,” 34

“Amazonas,” 228

“Amendoim torradinho,” 73, 75, 84

American Jazz Combo, 91

“Amor certinho,” 129, 176–77, 191

“Amor de gente moça,” 291

“Amor de nada,” 277

Amorim, Jair, 283

“Amor no samba,” 249

“A morte de um Deus de Sal,” 208, 308

“Andorinha preta,” 87

Andrade, Leny, 191, 211, 282–83, 312, 322, 335

Andy Williams Show, 294

“Anjo cruel,” 34

Anjos do Inferno, 20–21, 24–25, 115, 223

A noite do amor, do sorriso e a flor (Night of Love, a Smile, and a Flower), 203–5, 227, 257, 285

“A noite do meu bem,” 69

A nova Bossa Nova de Roberto Menescal, 312

Anthony, Ray, 333

Antônio, Luiz, 177

“Aos pés da cruz,” 32, 146, 148, 164

“A primeira vez,” 223

“A rã,” 228, 304

Araújo, Guilherme, 262

Araújo, João, 199, 216

Arcoverde, Ely, 294

Arena canta Zumbi, 277

“A Resposta,” 278

“Arpoador,” 61

“Arrastão,” 289, 318, 324

Arruda, Walter, 188–89

“Artistry in Rhythm,” 9

ASCAP, 307

Astaire, Fred, 5

As Três Marias, 36

Astrud Gilberto Album, The, 298

“A Taça do mundo é nossa,” 134

Atlantic Records, 305

A turma da bossa nova, 199–200

Audio-Fidelity, 244–45, 254, 263, 284

Augusto, José, 122

“Aula de matemática,” 69

Austregésilo, Teresa, 46

Axidentals, The, 34

Azeitona, 223

Azulay, Jomico, 208

Babão, Geraldo, 271

Babo, Lamartine, 99

Bacharach, Burt, 314, 324

Badeco, 25, 131, 143, 232, 294

baião, 26, 122, 131, 211

Bailly, Otávio, 216, 235, 246

Baker, Chet, 118, 187

“Balanço Zona Sul,” 283

Bálsamo, Geni, 8

Banana, Milton, 59, 122, 133, 155, 177, 181, 216, 235, 245, 252, 256, 263, 279–80, 325, 331, 334

Bandeira, Manuel, 72

Bando da Lua, 23–24, 108–10

“Banho de Lua,” 281

Banzo-ayê, 169

Barbosa, Haroldo, 20, 23, 26–27, 41, 182, 303

“Bar da Noite,” 87

Barouh, Pierre, 324

Barquinho, 220

“Barquinho de papel,” 90, 148, 202

Barroso, Ary, 66, 72, 110, 156, 179–80, 185, 196, 202, 302

Barroso, Sérgio, 216

Barsotti, Rubinho, 294

Bassini, Rubens, 133, 216, 314–15, 334

Bastos, Newton, 55

Batera, Chico, 216, 304, 306

“Batida diferente,” 215, 315

Batista, Dircinha, 32

Batista, Wilson, 88, 148, 182

“Batucada surgiu,” 278

batuques, 184

“Baubles, Bangles and Beads,” 329–30

Beach Samba, 313

Beatles, 314

Bebeto, 14, 150, 168, 177, 178–79, 216, 220, 293–94

Bechet, Sidney, 13

“Begin the Beguine,” 92

Belinha, 98

Beltrão, Henrique, 73

Ben, Jorge, 211, 263, 283, 287, 304–5

Beneke, Tex, 21, 40

Bengell, Norma, 46, 147, 164, 167, 169–74, 187, 261, 264, 335

at A noite do amor, do sorriso e a flor, 203–5

Bennett, Tony, 241, 248, 309, 313, 333

Bergen, Candice, 279

Bergman, Alan, 307

Bergman, Marilyn, 307

“Berimbau,” 231, 266, 308

berimbau, 231

Berlin, Irving, 307, 328

Berlinck, Horácio, 320

Berna, 315

“Bésame mucho,” 185, 303

Bethânia, Maria, 284

“Bewitched,” 23

Bianchi, Cido, 295

Bilac, Olavo, 129

“Bim-bom,” 39, 92, 105, 112, 114, 118, 122, 126, 130, 132–38, 148, 177–78, 205, 218, 241

Bittencourt, Sérgio, 266

“Black Coffee,” 22

Blanco, Billy, 59–61, 62, 68, 75, 88, 168, 172, 210–11, 232, 252, 261, 303, 308

Blane, Ralph, 303

Blecaute, 4

Blimp, 239

“Blues in Riff,” 17

“Blues in the Night,” 307

BMI, 307

Boal, Augusto, 269, 277

Bolão e seus Rockettes, 138

bolero, 111, 184

“Bolinha de papel,” 21, 223

“Bom dia, amigo,” 230

Bom dia, Rio, 266

“Bom é querer bem,” 67

Bonfá, Luiz, 47–48, 58, 73, 81, 92, 94, 148, 165–66, 179, 216, 218, 245, 249–50, 252–53, 258, 300, 304, 309, 310–14, 322

“Bonita,” 279, 308

Borba, Emilinha, 4, 61

Borba, Oswaldo, 184

Bororó, 112–13, 302

Bôscoli, Geysa, 78

Bôscoli, Jardel, 78

Bôscoli, João Marcelo, 323

Bôscoli, Lila, 78–80

Bôscoli, Ronaldo, 54, 69, 78–80, 92–94, 120, 149–51, 152–53, 156, 158, 162–63, 165–66, 168–69, 172–74, 177, 178–80, 182–85, 186–87, 190–91, 196, 199, 201–3, 203–4, 208–10, 214, 219–20, 225, 227, 240, 248, 252, 260, 264, 269, 276–77, 282–85, 286–87, 294, 315, 334

and Carlinhos Lyra, 90–91, 218, 267

and Nara Leão, 89–90

and Regina Elis, 321–24

and Roberto Menescal, 87–89, 216, 298, 308

Sinatra collection of, 323

bossa clássica, 180

Bossa Jazz, 294

“bossa nova beat,” 103

Bossa Nova Carlos Lyra, 202

bossa nova dance, 234

“Bossa Nova in New York,” 249

Bossa Nova Mesmo, 260

Bossa Rio, 263

Bossa Três, 216, 233, 245, 262, 283–84, 294, 304, 322

Botelho, Toninho, 23, 28–29, 37, 114–15, 172, 208

Braga, Rubem, 80, 86, 166, 225

Brasil ‘65, 305

Brasil ‘66, 314–16

Brasil, Vera, 263, 286

“Brasil pandeiro,” 48

“Brazil,” 180

Brazil’s Brilliant João Gilberto, 241

Breach, Joyce, 333

“Brigas, nunca mais,” 156, 164, 205

Britinho, 39, 45

Brubeck, Dave, 62, 117

Bruno, Lenita, 134, 164

Buarque, Chico, 287, 303

“Buquê de Isabel,” 154

Burke, Sonny, 329

Burton, Ann, 333

Byrd, Charlie, 208, 241–42, 250, 256, 258

Cabral, Sérgio, 266

“Cachito,” 134

Caçulinha, 322

“Cadê Jodel?,” 228, 313

Caetano, Pedro, 43

Caetano, Zama, 205

Cahn, Sammy, 188, 307

Caldas, Klécius, 320

Caldas, Sílvio, 76, 112–13, 182

Calouros em desfile, 66, 72

“Caminhemos,” 182

“Caminho de pedra,” 128

“Caminhos cruzados,” 152, 164

Campello, Celly, 138, 281

Campello, Tony, 189–90

Campos, Paulo Mendes, 80

Camus, Marcel, 166–67

“Canco da eterna despedida,” 164

“Canção da índia,” 99

“Canção da terra,” 266

“Canção da volta,” 54, 67, 75

Canção do amor demais, 119, 126–28, 130, 148, 164, 166, 333

“Canção que morre no ar,” 201

Candinho, 58, 80–81, 290

and Sylvinha Telles, 72–75

“Canta, canta mais,” 164

“Canto de Ossanha,” 320

“Cantos,” 231

Capitol Records, 7–8, 9, 241, 305–6

capoeiras, 268

“Caravan,” 23, 28

“Carcará,” 271, 319

Cardoso, Elizeth, 119, 126–28, 130, 132, 148–49, 164, 166, 191, 322, 333–34

Cardoso, Ney Lopes, 18

Cardoso, Sylvio Tullio, 18, 22, 248

Carícia, 149

carioca, 288

Carioca, Zé, 69–70

Carlos, Erasmo, 140

Carlos, Roberto, 272, 302, 318, 321

Carrilho, Altamiro, 75, 141

Carrillo, Heitor, 189–90

Cartola, 265–67, 271

Casa Villarino, 75–77

Cássio Muniz Show, 188

“Castigo,” 69

Castro-Neves, Iko, 91, 168, 179, 325

Castro-Neves, Léo, 91, 168

Castro-Neves, Mário, 91, 168

Castro-Neves, Oscar, 91, 162, 168, 179, 245–46, 254, 286–88, 303–4, 308–9, 322, 325, 331, 335

Castro-Neves brothers, 91, 173–74, 199–200

Catita, 133

Cavalcanti, Armando, 320

“Cavaleiros do cèu,” 186

Cavanaugh, Dave, 305

Cavaquinho, Nelson, 265–66, 271

Caymmi, Dori, 277, 304–5, 315

Caymmi, Dorival, 11, 88, 110, 132, 156, 158, 185, 223, 225, 261, 302, 308

Caymmi, Nana, 179

Caymmi visita Tom, 110

Cesar, Sílvio, 211

“C’est si bon,” 169

“Céu e mar,” 57, 204, 226

“Ceú moreno,” 32

“Chá dançante,” 143

“Change Partners,” 328

Chaves, Erlon, 137, 268

Chaves, Juca, 203, 322

Chaves, Lúis, 294–95

Chaves, Ovídio, 98

Checker, Chubby, 150, 280

“Chega de saudade,” 25, 39, 103, 118–19, 126, 128, 130–41, 146, 148–49, 154, 157, 162, 164, 172, 174, 177–78, 196, 239, 241, 268, 299, 333, 335

Chega de saudade, 167–68, 189, 199, 223

“Cheiro de saudade,” 177

“Chica chica boom chic,” 109

Chico, 44–45, 137

Chico Viola Award, 255

Chiozzo, Adelaide, 146

Chiqhino, 146

“Chiquita bacana,” 4, 61

“Chora tua tristeza,” 172, 202, 218, 241, 284

chorinho, 119

“Chove lá fora,” 75, 84, 113

Christy, June, 17

“Chuva,” 308

Cientista, Ronaldo, 208

Cipó, 12, 24, 36, 216

Citizen Kane, 79

“Ciúme,” 202

“Clair de Lune,” 48

Clark, Walter, 79

Cláudio, Luís, 113–14, 129, 130–31, 138, 148, 153, 155, 164

Clooney, Rosemary, 333

Clube da Bossa, 150

“Coisa mais linda,” 224–25

Coisas, 262

“Coisas Nossas,” 150

Colé, 73

Cole, Nat “King,” 10, 21, 86, 87, 206, 240, 241, 333

Columbia, 9–10, 130–31

Comden, Betty, 307

Come Fly with Me, 326

“Comigo é assim,” 143

Como, Perry, 333

Compana, Alberico, 214–15

Compana, Giovanni, 214–15

Companhia Brasileira de Discos, 200

“Complicação,” 91

Composer of “Desafinado”, The, 240, 279, 327

“Conceição,” 130

Conde, Carlos, 22

Connor, Chris, 17

“Consolação,” 230, 266

Contardi, Umberto, 276

Continental, 57, 262, 281

“Conversa de botequim,” 76

“Copacabana,” 4–6, 61, 62, 146

Copacabana Palace, 165

Copa Cinco, 216

Copa Trio, 282

Copinha, 128, 141, 144, 157, 177

Coqueijo, Carlos, 214

“Corcovado,” 191, 238, 250, 252, 258, 298, 328, 331

Cornyn, Stan, 330–31

Corrêa, Ismael, 132, 134–35, 156, 223

Correio da Manhã, 216, 266

Coslow, Sam, 41

Costa, Alayde, 168, 170, 172–74, 179–80, 199–200, 203, 208, 211, 219, 245, 263, 284, 286–87, 335

Costa, Armando, 269

Costa, Carmen, 244, 249

Costa, Gal, 335

Costa, Haroldo, 81

Costa, Mário Dias, 126, 246–47, 251, 253

Coward, Noël, 264

CPC (Centro Popular de Cultura), 200–201

Cravinho, 21, 32, 40, 106, 122

Cravo, Jorge Aminthas. See Cravinho

“Criticando,” 108

Crosby, Bing, 326

“Cry,” 14

“Cry Me a River,” 147

Cunha, Baby Bocayuva, 180

Cunha, Geraldo, 287

“Curare,” 112, 302

Curi, Ivon, 57, 153, 155, 164, 231

“Da cor do pecado,” 113

Dadainha, 100–101, 103–4, 106

da Gaita, Edu, 112

Dale, Lennie, 232–35, 261, 282–83

“Dá-me tuas mãos,” 32

Damone, Vic, 333

Dance conosco, 143

Dance moderno, 314

“Dans mon óle,” 147

Dardanelle, 333

Darin, Bobby, 235

da Silva, Alfredo José. See Johnny Alf das Neves, Wilson, 216

“Das Rosas,” 308

Davis, Miles, 248, 252

Davis, Sammy, Jr., 241

Dawn, Marpessa, 166

Day, Doris, 333

“Day by Day,” 188

da Zilda, Zé, 156

de Acordeon, Chiquinho, 108

de Albuquerque, Armando, 99–100

de Albuquerque, João Luiz, 173, 202, 205

de Alencar, César, 58, 66, 153, 155, 164

de Alencar, Hélio, 134, 136

de Almeida, Harry Vasco, 223

de Almeida, Henrique, 148

de Almeida, Hianto, 39

de Almeida, Janet, 20, 177

de Almeida, Laurindo, 310

de Andrade, Carlos Drummond, 93, 129–30, 273

de Andrade, Gilberto, 28

Dearie, Blossom, 333

de Assis, Chico, 201

de Barro, João, 4, 61

de Barros, Nelson Lins, 225, 265–66

de Barros, Raul, 177

de Barros, Théo, 263, 292, 318

de Bôscoli, Héber, 78

de Carvalho, Eustórgio (Mister Eco), 22

de Carvalho, Paulinho Machado, 321

de Castro, Moacyr Werneck, 80

“De cigarro em cigarro,” 58

“De conversa em conversa,” 19, 303

de Freitas, Janio, 25

de Holanda, Chico Buarque, 319

de Holanda, Miúcha Buarque, 280, 298–302

de Holanda, Nestor, 67

“Deixa,” 267

“Deixa isso pra lá,” 292

Delfino, Sônia, 281

“Demais,” 69, 164, 290

de Mello Mattos, José Cândido See Candinho

de Melo Neto, João Cabral, 126

Démongeot, Mylène, 165, 183

de Moraes, Tati, 78

de Moraes, Vinícius, 14, 68–69, 76–78, 90, 111, 119, 123, 133, 135, 148, 156–57, 164, 165–67, 169, 172–73, 177, 181–82, 187, 191–92, 195, 202, 203, 208, 214, 217–18, 224, 234, 245, 247, 260–61, 263–64, 276–77, 280–81, 284, 286, 289, 306, 318–19, 322, 334

at Au Bon Gourmet, 235–39

and Badel Powell, 230–32, 238, 266, 295

and Carlinhos Lyra, 224–25, 293, 298

and “Garota de Ipanema,” 239–41

and Orfeu da Conceiçao, 80–82

and Ronaldo Bôscoli, 78–80

and Tom Jobim, 126–29, 267, 308

Deodato, Eumir, 120, 147, 205, 262, 263, 277, 285, 304, 308–9, 312–14, 322, 335

de Oliveira, Aloysio, 23, 69, 75, 109–12, 131–32, 135, 156, 158, 164, 168, 173, 183–84, 211, 223, 233, 236, 245, 247, 254, 264–66, 269, 276–77, 286, 290, 307–8, 322, 330, 334

and Elenco, 260–63

de Oliveira, Carlinhos, 272

de Oliveira, Dalva, 111, 156, 184–85

de Oliveira, Francisco Nepomuceno. See Chico

de Pandeiro, Jorginho, 271

“Depois do amor,” 220

Depois do carnaval, 266

Deppenschmidt, Buddy, 256

“Derradeira primavera,” 267

“Desafinado,” 91, 164, 172, 192, 194–97, 215, 242, 250, 252

“Descendo o morro,” 61

“Desejo,” 73

Desmond, Paul, 313

de Souza, Carlos Alberto, 188, 202

de Souza, Raul, 215, 322

“Deusa do cassino,” 32

“Deus brasileiro,” 278

Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (film), 318

“Devagar com a louça,” 238

de Valença, Rosinha, 261, 287, 304, 306, 322, 261, 287, 304, 306

de Vasconcellos, Marcos, 334

“De você eu gosto,” 69, 164

Dewilson, 105–6

de Xopotó, Lyra, 232

Diário Carioca, 52

Diário da Noite, 18

Diário de Noticias, 272

Dias, Orlando, 138–39

Di Cavalcanti, 80

Dick Farney & Norma Bengell, 262

Dick Haymes–Lúcio Alves Fan Club, 17–18, 61

Dietz, Howard, 307

“Dindi,” 69, 164, 217, 308, 328–29, 331

“Discussão,” 164, 191

Disney documentaries, 109

“Disparada,” 293, 318–20

Distel, Sacha, 234–35

Dixon, Mort, 186

“Diz que vou por aí,” 266–67

do Bandolim, Jacob, 266

dobrado, 108

“Dobrado de amor a São Paulo,” 81

Dois na Bossa, 293, 320

“Domingo azul do mar,” 164

“Domingo no parque,” 321

do Nascimento, Abdias, 81–82

Donato, João, 12, 14, 17–19, 25, 42–43, 57, 59, 66, 88, 92, 102, 111, 121–22, 140–44, 146, 177, 202, 226–28, 241, 245, 247, 261, 304, 313, 322, 335

Donato/Deodato, 313

do Pandeiro, Russo, 43, 45–46, 131

“Doralice,” 21, 163, 185–86, 191, 223

Dorsey, Tommy, 18, 23, 42, 100, 330

dos Santos, Agostinho, 137, 164–65, 167, 189–90, 244–45, 248, 250, 252–53, 311, 334

do Vale, João, 267–71

Down Beat, 279

Dragão, Luís Carlos, 89, 162–63

D’Rone, Frank, 235

“Drume negrita,” 169

“Duas contas,” 38, 75, 87, 108

Duchess Music, 308

Duets II, 334

Duprat, Rogério, 146, 184

Duran, Dolores, 58, 75, 88, 92, 127, 139, 168, 172, 291, 308

early life of, 66–69

Dutra, Farnésio. See Dick Farney

“Eager Beaver,” 17

Eça, Luizinho, 14, 58, 73–74, 122, 151, 173–74, 179, 208, 216, 220, 241, 293–94, 304, 308, 322, 334

Eckstine, Billy, 11, 21, 32, 241, 333

“Eclipse,” 303

“Edmundo,” 110

Einhorn, Maurício, 14, 58, 216, 245, 247, 285, 313, 315

“Ela desatinou,” 303

“Ela é carioca,” 303, 308

Elas atacam pelo telephone, 233

“Ela vai, ela vem,” 283

Elenco, 110, 260–63, 265, 267, 276, 283, 290, 312, 322

Elis & Tom, 281, 324

“É luxo só,” 156

EMI-Odeon, 312

“Em tempo de adeus,” 267

Encyclopaedia of Jazz in the Sixties, 228

“É preciso dizer adeus,” 164

“É preciso perdoar,” 214

“Errinho á toa,” 218

Ertegun, Nesuhi, 305

“É só olhar,” 57

“Esperança perdida,” 303, 308

“Esquece,” 6

“Esquecendo você,” 164

“Estamos sós,” 57

“Estatuinha,” 277

“Estatutos de gafieira,” 62

Esta vida é um carnaval, 46–47

“Este seu olhar,” 164, 224

Estevam, Carlos, 200

“Estrada do Sol,” 68

“Estrellita,” 232

“Estúpido Cupido,” 281

“Eu e você,” 298

“Eu não existo sem você,” 128

“Eu Preciso de você,” 69, 164, 169

“Eu quero um samba,” 18, 20, 25, 43, 111, 142

“Eu sambo mesmo,” 21

“Eu sei que vou te amar,” 164, 169

“Eu sonhei que estavas tão linda,” 99

Evans, Bill, 299

“E vem o sol,” 277

“Everything I Have Is Yours,” 32

Fain, Sammy, 311

Faith, Percy, 333

“Falseta,” 58

Faraj, Jorge, 55

Faria, Alberto, 238

“Farinhada,” 143

Farmer, Art, 299

Farney, Cyleno, 11, 13–14, 122

Farney, Dick, 4–8, 14, 19, 21, 58, 61–63, 88, 92–93, 102, 129, 146, 156, 191, 211, 261, 309, 324, 334

“Farolito,” 185, 303

Farroupilha, 263, 293

Farrow, Mia, 327–38

Fatos & Fotos, 240, 268

Feather, Leonard, 228, 251–52, 333

“Feio não é bonito,” 266, 292

“Feitiço da Vila,” 24, 76

“Feitinha pro poeta,” 295

“Feitio de Oração,” 76

Feitosa, Chico, 78, 80, 82, 88, 89, 91, 148, 149–50, 162–63, 168, 172–73, 177, 179, 205, 209, 216, 218, 245–47, 322

Felice, Ernie, 25, 143

“Felicidade,” 48

Ferguson, Maynard, 17

Fermata, 245

Fernandes, Alberto, 99, 206

Fernandes, Alcides, 68, 98

Fernandes, José, 236

Ferreira, Aurino, 216

Ferreira, Breno, 87

Ferreira, Djalma, 59, 141, 177

Ferreira, Durval, 14, 58, 216, 246, 263, 285, 304, 308, 312, 315

Fest, Manfredo, 263, 294

Festa, 126–27

“Fever,” 147, 169

“Fibra de herói,” 136

Fields, Dorothy, 307

Figueiredo, Abelardo, 188, 211, 282

Filho, Jardel, 78

Filho, José Delphino, 262

Filho, Mário Gennari, 146

Filho, Oduvaldo Viana, 200, 269

Filho, Severino, 25, 184, 294

“Fim de caso,” 69

“Fim de noite,” 88

Fiorini, Luvercy, 179, 218, 287, 308

Fischer, Clare, 305

Fitzgerald, Ella, 22, 333

“Fiz a cama na varanda,” 98–99

Fjorini, Luvercy, 172

Flack, Roberta, 313

Florence, Bob, 305

“Fly Me to the Moon,” 334

“Foi a noite,” 75, 84, 111, 117, 144, 152, 195–96, 291

“Folha de papel,” 155

Fonseca, Talita, 176

“Fool on the Hill,” 314

Forma, 262, 312

Forrest, George, 329

“Fotografia,” 164, 180, 303, 308

“fox-baião,” 141

Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim, 328

Frank, Waldo, 78

Franklin, Aretha, 313

Freire, Lula, 180, 295, 304

Freire, Vitorino, 180

“Frevo,” 166

Frey, Sidney, 245–49, 254, 294

Fuks, Moysés, 149–50, 173, 201

Funaro, Heraldo, 59

Gagliano, Oswaldo, 76, 88, 177

Gaguinho, 282

Garcia, Irineu, 126–27

Garcia, Isaurinha, 164, 255, 309

Garcia, Léa, 81

Garcia, Stenio, 201

Garner, Erroll, 248, 333

Garota de Ipanema (film), 240

“Garota de Ipanema” (“The Girl from Ipanema”), 208, 246, 253, 257–58, 267–69, 278–79, 283–84, 298, 328, 333

“Garota moderna,” 283

Garoto, 22, 73, 75, 88, 108, 148, 150

Gasper, Elizabeth, 179

gaúchos, 288

Gaya, Lindolfo, 110, 184, 262

Gelin, Daniel, 86

Gemini V, 283–84

“General da banda,” 4

“Gente,” 278

Gente bem e champanhota, 73, 84

“Gente Humilde,” 108

“Gentle Rain,” 310

Gershwin, George, 88

Gershwin, Ira, 143, 307

Getz, Stan, 241–42, 250, 298–99

and recording with João Gilberto, 256–58

Getz Au Go Go, featuring Astrud Gilberto, 298

Getz/Gilberto, 256–58, 278, 298–99

Getz/Gilberto #2, 299

Gil, Gilberto, 320–21, 335

Gilbert, Ray, 306–9, 315, 325–26, 330

Gilberto, Astrud Weinert, 187–89, 257–58, 279–80, 298, 306, 313, 322, 331, 335

at A noite de amor, do sorriso e a flor, 205

Gilberto, Bebel, 301

Gilberto, João, 25, 29, 40–42, 53, 58–59, 66, 74, 77, 96–106, 112, 121, 143, 146, 162–63, 164–65, 166–69, 173, 176–78, 179, 182, 184–85, 189–92, 194–95, 197, 199, 202, 210–12, 214, 216, 218, 219, 222–24, 227, 234, 254–56, 260, 264, 277, 279–80, 284, 289, 291, 309, 311, 319, 322, 331, 333, 335

and Astrud Weinert Gilberto, 187–89

and Canção do amor demais, 126–30

and “Chega de saudade,” 130–41, 148

and “Desafinado,” 153–58

and Esta vida é um carnaval, 46–47

and João Donato, 42–43

and Lena Horne, 205–6

and Mariza, 43–47

and Miúcha Buarque de Holanda, 298–302

and Nat “King” Cole, 206

and Os Garotos da Lua, 32–37

and Quitandinha Serenaders, 47–48

and recording with Stan Getz, 256–58

and Roberto Menescal, 91–94

and Sylvinha Telles, 37–39

at A noite do amor, do sorriso e a flor, 203–5

at Au Bon Gourmet, 235–38

at Carnegie Hall, 244–53

first recording of, 39–40

in Mexico, 302–4

Gillespie, Dizzy, 248, 252, 301

Gimbel, Norman, 306

“Girl from Ipanema, The.” See “Garota de Ipanema”

Girls from Bahia, The, 286, 310, 322, 331

Gnatalli, Radamés, 5, 27, 54, 57, 61, 88, 99, 184, 281, 334

Godoy, Amílson, 294

Gonçalves, Lélio, 152

Gonzaga, Chiquinha, 78

Gonzaga, Luís, 26, 122, 146

Gonzaga, Zé, 146

Gordine, Sacha, 166–67, 217–18, 311

Gormé, Eydie, 333

“Gosto de você,” 202

Goulart, Jorge, 61

Gouveia, Evaldo, 283

“Grande mágoa,” 45

Grant, Felix, 241–42

Grappelli, Stèphane, 333

Greco, Buddy, 235

Green, Adolph, 307

Gross, Walter, 6

Grupo X, 24

Guarany, 133, 155

Guarnieri, Gianfrancesco, 201, 276–77

Guerra, Adroaldo, 99

Guerra, Ray, 222, 264–65, 267, 276, 289

Guimarães, Roberto, 129, 176

Guinle, Carlinhos, 11

Guinle, Jorginho, 11, 14

Gullar, Ferreira, 200, 273

Gurzoni, Oswaldo, 134–37

Gusmão, Manoel, 216

Hall, Jim, 208

Hall, Lani, 314

Harburg, E.Y., 307

Harrison, George, 328

Hart, Lorenz, 307

Hartman, Johnny, 333

“Hava Nagila,” 150

“Hawaiian War Chant,” 34

Haymes, Dick, 5, 17–19, 20, 70

Heath, Percy, 244

Hebraico, Grupo, 151

Hendricks, Jon, 306

Henrique, 179

Henrique, Luís, 287, 334

Herman, Woody, 7, 10

Hermanny, Sigrid, 235

Hi-Los, The, 333

Hi-Los Happen to Bossa Nova, The, 241

Hime, Francis, 147, 263, 277, 289, 304, 322

Hines, Earl, 333

“Hino ao sol,” 61

Hirszman, Leon, 200

Hitchcock, Bill, 5, 291, 324

“Hô-ba-la-lá,” 92, 114, 118, 130, 148, 155, 169, 218

Holman, Bill, 17

Hora, Rildo, 216

Horn, Bill, 150, 178, 216

Horne, Lena, 205–6, 241

“How High the Moon,” 9, 22

“I Apologize,” 11

“I Concentrate on You,” 329–30

“ideology of poverty,” 270

“I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” 17

Ieda, 98

“Ilusão à toa,” 227

“Imagem,” 308

“I Make My Money with Bananas,” 308

“I’m in the Mood for Love,” 9

“I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover,” 34, 186

Imperial, Carlos, 140, 283, 321

“Influência do jazz,” 252

“Insensatez,” 224, 238, 328

“In the Mood,” 6, 23, 27, 249

Introspection, 313

Inútil paisagem, 262, 312, 328

“Inútil Paisagem,” 276, 308, 331

Invitation (movie), 142

“Invitation,” 142–43

Ipanema Music, 306, 308

Irani, 128

Itamaraty, 126–27

It Might as Well Be Spring, 329

“Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini,” 211

“I Wish I Knew,” 12

“Jacarapaguá,” 4

Jackie & Roy, 333

Jackson, Calvin, 291

Jacques, Geraldo, 26

Jambeiro, 73

James, Harry, 17–18, 326

Janner, Biana, 179

Januário, Velho, 146

Jarreau, Al, 333

Jazz Samba, 256

Jazz Samba Encore!, 258

“Jeepers Creepers,” 58

Jemanjá, 231

Jesus, Alberto, 39

“Jezebel,” 11

João Gilberto, 222, 254

João Gilberto en México, 303

“João Marcelo,” 303

Jobim, Antonio Carlos “Tom” 54, 55–57, 60–61, 62, 75, 76–78, 80, 84, 88, 90–92, 94, 99, 117–19, 122–23, 130, 131, 133, 135, 143, 148–49, 154, 168, 172–73, 177, 178–79, 181–82, 184–85, 188, 190–92, 194–96, 198, 202, 205, 208, 216–18, 223–24, 227, 230, 234, 238, 254, 256–58, 261, 264, 276–77, 279, 280–81, 284–86, 289–90, 302, 306–7, 310–12, 322, 324, 333–34

at Au Bon Gourmet, 235–39

at Carnegie Hall, 244–51, 253

and “Desafinado,” 151–58

and Dolores Duran, 67–68

and Frank Sinatra, 325–31

and “Garota de Ipanema,” 239–41

at Odeon, 110–11

and Orfeu do Carnaval, 164–67

and Vinìcius de Moraes, 80–82, 126–29, 267

“Joga a rede no mar,” 113

Johnson, Arthur, 41

Jongo Trio, 293–95

Jongo Trio, 263, 289, 292–93

Jorginho, 39, 177, 216

Jornal do Brasil, 272

José, Carlos, 164

José, Francisco, 290

Jovem Guarda, 321–22

“Juazeiro,” 26

“Juguete,” 98

“Julie Is Her Name,” 84, 312

Juquinha, 128, 133

“Jura de pombo,” 172, 208

“Just One More Chance,” 41

Kaempfert, Bert, 326

Kafka, 200

Kaper, Bronislau, 142

Kapp Records, 292, 329

Kennedy, Jackie, 254

Kennedy, John, 326

Kennedy, Robert, 314, 326

Kenton, Stan, 7, 9, 11, 21, 23, 102, 141–42, 215, 227, 316

Kern, Jerome, 143

Kessel, Barney, 84, 147, 208, 305, 312

Kéti, Zé, 265–66, 270–71

Kilgore, Rebecca, 333

“King” Cole Trio, 7, 8, 73

Klein, Jacques, 12

Koellreutter, Hans Joachim, 184

Konitz, Lee, 10, 17

Korb, Kristin, 333

Kubitshcek, Juscelino, 100–101, 113, 231

“Labareda,” 230, 267

“Lábios que beijei,” 32

la bostella, 234

Lacerda, Carlos, 261

“Lacinhos cor-de-rosa,” 138, 281

“Lady is a Tramp, The,” 70

Lafita, Alfonso, 116–17, 120–21

“Lágrima primeira,” 218, 220

Lai, Francis, 324

Laine, Frankie, 11

“Lamento,” 205

“Lamento no morro,” 82

“Lapinha,” 231

Lara, Augustin, 303

Lara, Odette, 261

Laranjeira, Elza, 164, 255

La Rosa, Julius, 235

“Las secretarias,” 281

Lawrence, Steve, 235

Leão, Nara Lofego, 86, 88–91, 93, 120, 149–51, 168, 173, 178–79, 181, 199, 203, 205, 208, 219–22, 234, 247, 261, 263–73, 276–78, 287, 304, 312, 318–19, 322, 334

Lebendiger, Henrique, 82, 245

Lecuona, Ernesto, 303

Lee, Peggy, 7, 147, 240, 248, 252, 279, 333

Lees, Gene, 306

Leigh, Carolyn, 307

Lemos, Fafá, 11, 134, 141

Lennon, John, 314, 328

Lerner, Alan Jay, 307

Lessa, Adail, 135–36, 138

Lessa, Ivan, 11, 22

Letters to a Young Poet, 93

Libion, Jacques, 323

Libion, Lidia, 217–18, 234, 323

Lieberson, Goddard, 111

Light, Enoch, 333

Lincoln, Ed, 58, 122, 141, 177, 231

Lindenbergh, Carlos Alberto, 198

Lippman, Joe, 22

Livre, Som, 315

Lobo, Edu, 147, 239, 261, 266–68, 276–78, 289, 304–6, 315, 318, 321–22, 324

Lobo, Fernando, 53, 67, 182

“Lobo bobo,” 90, 150, 156, 168, 218, 284

London, Julie, 84, 147, 312, 333

“Long Ago and Far Away,” 143

Look Around, 314

“Louco,” 148

“Loura ou Morena,” 81

“Louvação,” 320

“Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing,” 311

Lucáks, Gyorg, 200

Lúcia, Ana, 245, 248, 263, 287

“Luciana,” 128

Luís, Edgardo, 37

Luís, João, 24, 39

Luiz Eça & cordas, 294

“Lunik 9,” 320

Lutcher, Nellie, 7

“Luz Negra,” 266

Lyra, Carlinhos, 54, 58, 59, 73, 75, 94, 108, 111, 116–17, 120, 148, 150–51, 156–57, 168, 172–73, 179–80, 182, 187, 190, 194, 199–203, 208, 216, 218, 219, 222, 227, 232, 239, 245–47, 250, 252, 254, 263–67, 276, 280–81, 286, 322, 334

and Roberto Menescal, 84–90

and Vinícius de Moraes, 224–25, 293, 298

Machado, Carlos, 5, 46–47, 82, 167, 169, 232

Machado, Edison, 216, 267–68, 287, 294, 331, 334

Maciel, Edmundo, 128, 144, 157, 215

Maciel, Edson, 215

Madi, Tito, 75, 84, 88, 92, 113, 129, 130–31, 148–49, 153–54, 177, 196, 211, 255–56, 283, 304

“Mãe solteira,” 88

Magalhães, Oldemar, 109

Maia, Déo, 46

Maia, Lauro, 223

Maia, Lurdinha, 146

Maia, Tim, 140

“Mais valia não chorar,” 283

“Malagueña Salerosa,” 48

“Mal–me–quer,” 267

“Mamã passou açúcar em mim,” 283

“Mamadeira atonal,” 91, 172

“Mambinho,” 143

Manchete, 163, 173, 318

Manchete Esportiva, 149

Mancini, Henry, 312

Manga, Carlos, 9, 13–14, 169

Manga, Vítor, 85, 216, 334

“Manhã de carnaval,” 166–67, 252, 311

Manhã na roça, 141

“Manias,” 62

Mann, Herbie, 168, 227, 241, 248

Mann, Thomas, 200

Manne, Shelly, 17, 305

“Mar, amar,” 208

“Maracangalha,” 132

Marano, Nancy, 333

“Marcada,” 70

“Marcha da quarta-feira de cinzas,” 293

Marchinha, 267, 302, 320

Marconi, Umberto, 216–18

Maria, ângela, 281

Maria, Antônio, 29, 36, 52–55, 67, 81, 87–88, 166, 181–83, 252

Maria, Rosa, 211

“Maria Moita,” 264, 266

“Maria Ninguém,” 90, 150, 156, 168, 199, 203, 225, 254

Mariano, César Camargo, 202, 263, 294

marijuana, 41–42

“Marina,” 6

Marinho, Tião, 216

Mário, João, 150, 168, 179

Mariza, 43–47, 102

Marotta, Ugo, 147, 216

Martin, Hugh, 303

Martino, Bruno, 280

Martino, Telmo, 254

Martins, Herivelto, 182, 302

Martrand, Mick, 330

Mascarenhas, Mário, 146–47, 277

Mascarenhas, Pacífico, 101–2, 129, 176, 179, 312

Mascarenhas, Raul, 12, 14, 86

Matarazzo, André, 69, 71–72

Mathis, Johnny, 333

Matoso, Francisco, 99

Mattar, Pedrinho, 205, 219, 263, 286, 294

Maurílio, 216

Mazoier, Roberto, 68

McCartney, Paul, 314

McCorckle, Susannah, 333

McRae, Carmen, 333

Medaglia, Julio, 184, 301

Medeiros, Elton, 266

“Meditação,” 152, 164, 190–91, 197, 205, 328

“Meia Luz,” 39–40, 45

Meirelles, J.T., 216

“Melancolia,” 220

Mello, Acyr Bastos, 22–23, 28–29, 114–15, 155

Mello, Breno, 166

Melo, Dilu, 146

Mel-Tones, 23, 28

Mendes, Sérgio, 189, 214–16, 233, 245–46, 254, 261, 263, 267, 282, 287, 290, 294, 304–6, 309, 322, 335

and Brasil ‘66, 314–16

at Carnegie Hall, 248, 253

Mendonça, Newton, 54, 69, 75, 80, 88, 90, 92, 94, 111, 117–18, 148, 157, 164, 190–92, 194–98, 202, 205, 214, 227, 306

and “Desafinado,” 151–53

early life of, 56–67

Menescal, Roberto Batalha, 54, 84–94, 117, 120, 147–48, 150–51, 163, 167–68, 172–73, 179, 182–83, 185, 187, 199–201, 205, 208–10, 216–18, 220, 222, 245–47, 249, 252, 254, 261, 264, 269, 276–77, 283–84, 286, 288, 290, 298, 312, 322

“Menina,” 75, 111

“Menina feia,” 174, 215

“Menina Moça,” 149

“Menina que passa,” 239

“Menino das laranjas,” 263, 292, 295

Mens sana in corpore samba, 287

Mercer, Johnny, 7, 306–7

Mercky, Z.J., 132

Merrill, Helen, 333

Merry-Macs, 34

Mesquita, Custódio, 88, 185

“Meu limão, meu limoeiro,” 283

“Meu mundo caiu,” 219

Midani, André, 119–20, 132, 141, 155, 162, 168–69, 173–74, 182, 184, 199, 260, 264, 321

“Midnight Sun,” 306

Miéle, Luís Carlos, 162–63, 188, 214, 283, 285, 322–23

Migliori, Gabriel, 183–84

Milfont, Gilberto, 61

Milito, Hélcio, 178, 216, 241, 293–94, 322, 335

Miller, Glenn, 23

Miller, Sidney, 261, 303

“Minha palhoça,” 232

“Minha Saudade,” 121, 143, 215

Miranda, Aurora, 109

Miranda, Carmen, 5–6, 10, 109

Miranda, Claudio, 245

Miranda, Milton, 312

Miranda, Wilson, 211

Mocambo, 285

“Mocinho Bonito,” 75

moda, 293, 318, 320

Modernaires, 23

Modern Jazz Quartet, 244

modinhas, 285

Monjardim, Alcebíades, 69–70

Monjardim, Jayme, 71

Monjardim, Maysa Figueira, 66, 130, 139, 155, 164, 208, 261, 290, 312, 334

early life of, 69–74

and Ronaldo Bôscoli, 219–22

Monteiro, Cyro, 80, 150, 183

Monteiro, Doris, 14, 35, 61

Montero, Ed, 333

Montes, Henrique, 150, 168

Montgomery, Wes, 313

Mooney, Joe, 29, 102

Moreira, Airto, 216, 314, 319, 335

“More I See You, The,” 12

“Morena boca de ouro,” 156

Morgan, Russ, 34, 186

“Morrer de amor,” 308

Motta, Nelsinho, 180

Motta, Nelson, 180, 277

Moura, Paulo, 8, 14, 58, 142, 216, 246

movies, silent, 79

MPB (Música Popular Brasileira), 292–93

“Muié rendera,” 121

“Mulher, sempre mulher,” 82

Müller, Maneco, 81

Mulligan, Gerry, 10, 168, 248

Murphy, Mark, 333

Murphy, Rose, 7

Muse Records, 313

Música e Romance, 74–75

Musical Três Leões, 189

música sertaneja, 292

Musidisc, 186

“Muskrat Ramble,” 307

“Na Baixa do Sapateiro,” 302, 307

Namorados da Lua, 23–25, 141

“Nanã,” 266, 283

Nanai, 144

“Não faz assim,” 91, 150, 172, 215

“Não tem soluçao,” 11

“Não tenho lágrimas,” 86

“Na paz do Senhor,” 62

Nara, 265

Nascimento, Roberto, 115

National Radio, 4

Navarro, Osmar, 109

“Nel blu di pinto di blu,” 134

Neto, Macedo, 38

Neto, Ranmalho, 58

Neto, Silvino, 20

Neto, Tião, 215–16, 267–68, 279–80, 294, 304, 314–15, 322

Netto, Hortênsia, 108

Netto, Ismael, 25, 35, 54–55, 108

Netto, Severino, 108

New Face of Luiz Bonfà, The, 313

Ney, Nora, 14, 53–54, 58, 61

Ney, Paulo, 122

“Nick Bar,” 62, 87

Niemeyer, Oscar, 81

“Night and Day,” 4–5

“Ninguém me ama,” 53–54, 146

“Noa-noa,” 216

Noel, Noélia, 98

Nogueira, Paulinho, 263, 286–87

Noite de gala, 165, 188, 219, 282

“Noite do Sambalanço,” 203

“Noites do Rio,” 61

“No meido do caminho,” 129

Norival Reis, 36

“Nós e o mar,” 208, 218

Nova geração em ritmo de samba, 285

Novas estruturas, 262

Nunes, Armando, 75

Nunes, Bené, 179–80

Nunes, Dulce, 281

O amor, o sorriso e a flor, 177, 190–91, 223

“O amor é chama,” 278, 309

“O amor em paz,” 224, 328

“O astronauta,” 230, 238

“O barquinho” (“the Little Boat”), 172, 208, 210, 218–19, 222, 324

O bem do amor, 281

O bom Tom, 165, 188–89, 286

O cangaceiro, 183

O Circo do Carequinha, 72

O Cruzeiro, 179–80, 252–53

O’Day, Anita, 10, 17, 333

Odeon, 109–11, 117, 120, 126, 130, 132–33, 137–39, 157–58, 163, 168–69, 174, 184–85, 199–201, 203, 222–23, 240, 254, 260

“Odete,” 302

O fino, 322–23

O fino da Bossa, 287, 289, 302, 320–21

O fino do fino, 283

O formigueiro, 201

Ogerman, Claus, 279, 327–30

O Globo, 52, 221, 272

O homem do Sputnik, 169

Oito Batutas de Pixinguinha, 86

O jogo de verdade, 291

O Jornal, 52

“Ojos verdes,” 232

“Olê, olá,” 319

“Olhe-me, diga-me,” 130

Oliveira, José Carlos, 196

“O morro náo tem vez,” 292, 308

“Onde está você?,” 285, 287

Only the Lonely, 326

“O Nossa amor,” 164

“O nosso amor,” 166–67

“On the Sunny Side of the Street,” 169

“On the Town,” 12

Ooooooh! Norma, 169

“O pato,” 186, 190–91, 205, 233–34, 241

“O Pecado de Nina,” 13

O pick–up do Picapau, 137

Opinião de Nara, 267–68

“Opinião,” 267

Opinião, 269–72, 284

“O que é amar,” 57

“O que tinha de ser,” 164

O remédio é Bossa, 285, 286–87

Orfeu da Conceião (Black Orpheus), 76–82, 88, 111–12, 119, 127, 149, 165–66, 217, 244, 310

Orico, Vanja, 141

Orpheus (film), 218

Ory, Kid, 307

Os afro-sambas, 231, 262

“O samba da minha terra,” 223

“O samba de amanhã,” 61

Os Anjos do Inferno, 185

“O sapo,” 304

Os cafajestes, 264

Os Cariocas, 24–26, 33, 35, 54–55, 61, 88, 94, 108–9, 121, 129, 131, 149, 165, 174, 203, 219, 232, 235–38, 245, 263–64, 285–87, 294, 319, 322, 334–35

Os Garotos da Lua, 23–24, 28–29, 32, 53, 102, 114–15, 155, 168, 172, 177, 186–87

Os Gatos, 263, 312

Os Gatos and Aquele som dos Gatos, 312

“Os Grilos,” 278

Os Modernistas, 24–25

Os Namorados da Lua, 18, 20, 25, 35, 111, 142, 144

“O sobrinho da Judite,” 110

“O Sol Nascerá,” 266

Ossanha, 231

Os Tocantins, 24

Os Trovadores, 24

Os Vocalistas Tropicais, 177

Otelo, Grande, 46

“Ouça,” 219

“Outra Vez,” 62, 126, 128, 149, 191, 241

“O vendedor de laranjas,” 189

Pacheco, Diogo, 184, 285

Pacheco, Francisco, 47

Paciência, Roberto, 115

Page Cavanaugh Trio, 23, 29, 102

“País tropical,” 283

Paiva, Dirce, 81

Paiva, Roberto, 82, 112

Palma, João, 216, 306

Palmieri, Eddie, 227–28

Panicalli, Lyrio, 27, 184

“Panorâmica,” 218

Papudinho, 222

Parada de sucessos, 24, 134, 136

“Para tí,” 228

Parreira, Paulo, 99

Pastels, 17, 23, 32

Patu, Dona, 104–6

“Pau-de-arara,” 264

Paul, Les, 7

Paulo, João, 85

Paulo, José, 249

Paulo, Pedro, 216, 246

Payne, Don, 241, 300

“Pede passagem,” 303

“Pedreiro Waldemar,” 4

“Pedro pedreiro,” 319

“Peguei um ita no norte,” 143

Peixe, Guerra, 136, 184

Peixoto, Cauby, 130

Peixoto, Luís, 156

Penteado, Roberto, 39

Peracchi, Léo, 27, 81, 110–11, 184

“Perdido de amor,” 311

“Perdoa-me pelo bem que te quero,” 138

Pereira, Chico, 117, 119–20, 148, 162, 169, 171, 208, 214, 261

Pereira, Geraldo, 223

perfect pitch, 156

Pernambuco, João, 182

“Pernas,” 155

Peropeba, Henrique, 208

Peterson, Oscar, 333

Philips, 177, 199, 199–203, 232, 240, 261, 263, 267, 272, 282, 293–94, 312, 314, 318–19, 322

Phillips, Karen, 314

“Picapau,” 302

Pied Pipers, 23, 28

Pingarilho, Carlos Alberto, 147–48, 304

Pinheiro, Toninho, 223, 295

“Pinky,” 32

Pinto, Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes (Helô), 239–40

Pinto, Marino, 69, 88, 156, 164, 199

Pittigliani, Alberto, 200

Pittigliani, Armando, 263, 282, 314–15

Pittman, Booker, 13

Platters, The, 113

Pobre menina rica, 286, 289, 324

“Pobre menina rica,” 280–81

Poema, 281

Poemas, sonetos e baladas, 79

“Poinciana,” 10

Pongetti, Henrique, 71

Pontes, Paulo, 269

pontos de candomblé, 231

“Por causa de você,” 68, 92, 308

Porter, Cole, 4, 70, 88, 307, 329

Porto, Sérgio, 22, 67, 150, 252, 273

“Por toda minha vida,” 164

“Por um amor maior,” 289

Powell, Baden, 58, 116, 142, 177, 202, 216, 218, 245, 261, 289–90, 292, 295, 304, 334

and Vinícius de Moreas, 230–32, 238–39, 262, 266, 267, 308, 320, 325

“Praça Onze,” 302

“Pra que chorar,” 231

“Pra que discutir com madame?,” 177

“Preciso aprender a ser só,” 278, 308

“Preciso de você,” 308

Prelude, 313

“Presente de Natal,” 223

Preto no branco, 182

“Primavera,” 264

Primeiro Tempo: 5X0, 285

Programa Maurício Sobrinho, 255

Programa Paulo Gracindo, 138

Prudente, Dona Carmen, 71

Pualo, José, 244

Puente, Tito, 227

Purim, Flora, 211, 314, 335

“Quando chegares,” 203

“Quando ela sai,” 39–40, 45

“Quando tu passas por mim,” 81

“Quando você recordar,” 34

Quartera, 26

Quarteto, 312

Quarteto de Bronze, 24

Quarteto em Cy, 110, 261

Quarteto Novo, 319

Quartin, Roberto, 262, 312

Quatro Ases e um Coringa, 24

Queiroz, Nilo, 230, 232

“Quem é,” 109

“Quem foi?,” 67

Quem tem medo de Elis Regina?, 322

“Quero que vá tudo pro informo,” 321

“Que samba bom!,” 4

Quintana, Mário, 97

“Quintessência,” 216

Quinteto Bottles, 216

Quitandinha Serenaders, 24, 47–48, 96, 100, 311

Rádio, 177

Rádio Bandeirantes, 137, 244, 248

Rádio Excélsior-Nacional, 135, 136

Rádio Gaúcha, 99, 254

Rádio Globo, 7

Rádio Guanabara, 141

Radiolândia, 138, 173

Rádio Mauá, 138

Rádio Mayrink Veiga, 53, 109

Rádio Nacional, 26–27, 40, 54, 62, 66–68, 108, 219, 303

Rádio Tupi, 28, 32, 42, 53, 66

Rafael, 216

Rafaelli, José Domingos, 22

Raimundo, Pedro, 146

Ramos, Álvaro, 135–37

Ramos, Flávio, 236–37, 241, 260, 263–64, 289–90

rancheiras, 141, 146

“Ranchinho de palha,” 62, 311

Rangan, Lívio, 292

Rangel, Flávio, 201

Rangel, Lúcio, 67, 77, 266

“Rapaz de bem,” 57, 75, 151, 177, 202, 204, 227

Rapaz de bem, 226

Rasa, Ilha, 191

Ratinho, 13

Ray, Johnnie, 14

Ray Charles Singers, The, 333

Rayol, Selma, 281

“Razão de viver,” 308

“Razão do amor,” 277

Razuk, Samir, 137

RCA Victor, 261, 284

Real, Roberto Corte, 69–70, 130–31

“Recordar é viver,” 46

Regina, Elis, 235, 277, 280–83, 285–88, 291, 292–93, 302, 312, 318, 320–21, 334

and Ronaldo Bôscoli, 321–24

Reichenbach, Bill, 256

Reis, Mário, 261

Reis, Norival, 36

“Reloginho do vovô,” 91

Reprise, 241, 326

“Réquiem para um amor,” 266

“Response, The,” 278

Revista do Rádio, 138, 147, 289

RGE, 248, 261, 263, 276

Ribeiro, Alberto, 4

Ribeiro, Almir, 82, 220

Ribeiro, Pery, 211, 235, 240, 283, 288, 291, 312, 322

Ribeiro, Solano, 288–89

Ricardo, Sérgio, 154–55, 158, 179, 199, 205, 211, 219, 245, 248, 253–54, 260–61, 268, 276, 304, 318

Riddle, Nelson, 233, 236, 291, 325

Rilke, Rainer Maria, 93

Rimsky-Korsakov, 100

“Rindo de Mim,” 70

“Rio,” 208

RioCali, 306, 308, 325

Rio de Janeiro a janeiro, 169

Roberto, Luís, 121, 129, 131, 334

“Roda,” 320

Rodra, 315

Rodrigues, Jair, 289, 291, 292–93, 318, 320, 322

Rodrigues, Lupicínio, 48, 88, 143

Rodrigues, Nelson, 272, 320

Rodriguez, Johnny, 227

Rogers, Shorty, 17

Romão, Dom Um, 216, 246, 282, 314–15, 322, 331, 335

Rômulo, 129

Roome, Yvonne, 333

Rosa, Noel, 55, 76, 150

“Rosa morena,” 156, 223

Rosemary, 281

“Rosinha,” 114, 177

Rosolino, Frank, 17, 102, 141

Rossano, Herval, 112

“Round Midnight,” 70

Rugolo, Pete, 9, 17, 22

Ruschel, Alberto, 47–48

Ruschel, Paulo, 48

Russo, Bill, 17

Russo and the Samba Kings, 43

Sá, Wanda, 263, 276, 287, 304–6, 312

Sabá, 226, 293, 295

“Sábado em Copacabana,” 62

“Sabe você?,” 264

Sabino, Fernando, 250

Sablon, Jean, 280

Sacha Music, 217

Salvador, Don, 294, 335

Salvador, Henri, 147, 216, 288

Samba-Cana, 129, 312

samba-canção, 39, 52, 53, 58, 62, 75, 111, 118–19, 135, 152, 202

“Samba da benção,” 231, 238–39, 325

“Samba da legalidade,” 265

“Samba da minha terra,” 238, 252

“Samba da pergunta,” 147, 304

samba de moro, 200

“Samba de Orfeu,” 166, 311

samba-de-roda, 231

“Samba de uma nota só” (“One Note Samba”), 164, 191–92, 194–97, 205, 238, 250, 256, 298

“Samba de verão,” 208, 278, 308–9

“Samba do avião,” 238

“Samba do carioca,” 264, 292

“Samba em prelúdio,” 230

Samba esquema novo, 263

Samba eu canto assim, 283

sambalanço, 199, 202, 225–26

Sambalanço Trio, 263, 294

samba moderno, 173

Samba Novo, 287

“Samba saravah,” 325

Samba These Days, 110

“Samba torto,” 308

“Samba triste,” 232

sambistas, 265–66

sambistas de morro, 265

sambões, 266, 293

“Sambop,” 285

sambra de morro, 318

“Sandália de prata,” 43

Santamaria, Mongo, 227–28

Santoro, Fada, 13

Santos, Clóvis, 45

Santos, Hélio, 240

Santos, Moacyr, 184, 239, 262, 266, 283–84, 322, 335

Santos, Normando, 91, 150, 168, 172, 173, 179, 182, 199, 220, 245, 249

Santos, Paulo, 22, 168

Santos, Walter, 114, 128, 179, 263, 286, 304

“São Paulo Quatrocentão,” 108

Sargentelli, Oswaldo, 138

Satã dirige o espectáculo, 47

“Saudade de Bahia,” 223

“Saudade fez uma samba,” 156, 168

“Saudade querida,” 177

“Sayonara,” 134

Scatena, José, 71, 263

Schifrin, Lalo, 244

Schmidt, Augusto Frederico, 126, 181

“Se acaso você chegasse,” 143

Se a lua contasse, 109

“Se é por falta de adeus,” 67, 75

“Se é tarde me perdoa,” 90, 150, 190

“Sem ela,” 34

“Sem esse céu,” 62, 311

“Sem você,” 164

“Senhorita,” 114

Senna, Alvinho, 23, 28–29

“Sente,” 91, 150, 169

“Se o tempo entendesse,” 62

“Serenata de adeus,” 128

Sèrgio, Nilo, 186

“Ser ou não ser,” 6

Serrano, Luís, 7–8, 9–10

Serrano, Paulo, 7, 25, 58, 60–61, 142–43

Sete, Bola, 244, 249

Sétimo Céu, 163

“Se todos fossem iguais a você,” 81–82, 118, 146, 166, 238

“Seu Chopin, desculpe,” 295

“Seu encanto,” 278, 308

“Se você soubessse,” 177

Sexteto, 216

Shaw, Artie, 23

Shearing, George, 227

Sherman, Daryl, 333

Sherman, Maurício, 188

Shore, Dinah, 7, 23

Short, Bobby, 333

Silva, Anísio, 133, 138–39, 184

Silva, Jaime, 186–87

Silva, Jonas, 22–23, 28–29, 33–34, 35, 53, 102, 114, 140, 177–78, 187, 285

Silva, Milton, 23, 28–29, 33–34, 155, 186

Silva, Orlando, 20, 32, 39, 102, 105, 111, 118, 140, 223, 291

Silva, Walter, 137, 244, 253, 287, 292–93

Silveira, Orlando, 39

Silver, Horace, 215

Simonal, Wilson, 211, 235, 282–83, 292, 312

“Sina de Caboclo,” 267, 270

Sinatra, Frank, 4–5, 10, 17–18, 88, 102, 313, 315, 333

and Antonio Carlos Jobim, 325–31, 334

Sinatra-Farney Fan Club, 8–14, 17–19, 26, 58, 61, 216, 228

“Sinceridade,” 32

“Sinfonia da alvorada,” 224

“Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro,” 59–61, 80, 91, 111, 284

Singery, Irene, 180

Sinter, 7, 111, 200

Sirotsky, Maurício, 255

Sivuca, 146

Smith, Jimmy, 310

Snakes, The, 140

Soares, Claudette, 122, 199, 205, 211, 240, 282, 284–85, 287, 309, 335

Soares, Elza, 203

“Só danço samba,” 234, 238

“Só em teus braços,” 164, 190

Softly, 306

“Solamente una vez,” 307

Soledade, Paulinho, 68, 288

“Solidão,” 69, 99, 117

Sondheim, Stephen, 307

“Sonhando contigo,” 184

“Sonho de Maria,” 277

“Só por amor,” 230

“Sorriu para mim,” 108

“Só saudade,” 152

“Só tinha de ser com você,” 286, 308

“Southern Scandal,” 17

“Spaniard That Blighted My Life, The,” 12

“Splish Splash,” 321

Stafford, Jo, 23

Starlighters, 20, 23

“Stella by Starlight,” 12

Stockler, João, 68

Stordahl, Axel, 5, 188

Strangers in the Night, 326

Stuckart, Baron, 236

“Sucedeu assim,” 169

Sued, Ibrahim, 81, 221

Suero, Orlando, 253

“Suicído,” 87

Surdi, Letícia, 235

Surf Board, 261, 308

Tablóide UH, 149

Taiguara, 287

Tamba Trio, 14, 216, 220, 222, 233, 240–41, 245, 248, 261, 263, 293–94

Tamba Trio, 293

Tangel, Tasso, 263

“Tangerine,” 36

Tapajós, Haroldo, 81

Tavares, Marly, 235, 282

Tavares, Odorico, 33

Taylor, Creed, 256–58, 278–79, 298, 309, 313

Teixeira, Humberto, 26, 181

Teixeira, Neuza, 187

Teixeira, Patrício, 86

“Telefone,” 283, 298

Telles, Luís, 47–49

and João Gilberto, 96–101, 112, 115–16

Telles, Mário, 72–73, 103, 108, 113, 115–16, 220, 283, 304

Telles, Sylvinha, 36–39, 58, 66, 72–75, 84, 88, 102, 111–12, 115, 139, 149–51, 164–65, 168, 170, 172–74, 179, 194–95, 199, 206, 219, 233, 236, 245, 247, 254, 260–61, 268–69, 286, 288, 290–92, 322, 329

“Tempo de amor,” 230

“Tenderly,” 6, 143

Tenório Jr., 216, 263, 294, 334

“Teresa da praia,” 61, 63

Teresinha, 271

“Terra de ninguém,” 286

“Tetê,” 217, 308

“That Old Black Magic,” 169

“That Old Feeling,” 10

“There’ll Never Be Another You,” 187

Thielemans, Toots, 324

Thiré, Carlos, 188–89

“Three Bears, The,” 23

Tijuana Brass, 314

Tinhorão, José Ramos, 252, 265, 278

Tita, 312

Titulares do Ritmo, 24, 134

Tjader, Cal, 227–28

Toledo, Ary, 322

Toledo, Maria Helena, 258, 312–13, 322

Toledo, Rosana, 203, 211

Tonico e Tinoco, 320

Toninho, 216

“Too Marvelous for Words,” 21, 307

Toquinho, 80, 287

Tormé, Mel, 6–7, 10, 23, 333

“Trenzinho,” 223

“Trevo de quatro folhas,” 163, 186, 191

Trio Irakitan, 87, 117, 134, 203, 219

Trio Nagô, 24

Trio Penumbra, 73

Trio Surdina, 38

Tristano, Lennie, 10

“Tristeza de nòs dois,” 308

“Trolley Song, The,” 303

Tropicalismo, 302

“Tudo de você,” 278

“Tu e eu,” 75

“23° N–83° W,” 228

Última Hora, 52, 79, 149, 173, 203, 205

“Um abraço no Bonfá,” 191, 218

“Uma loura,” 62, 87

Um milhão de melodies, 26–27, 54, 62

“Um minuto só,” 41

“Um nome de mulher,” 82

Un homme et une femme, 325

“Upa Neguinho,” 277

Vadico. See Oswaldo Gagliano

Vagalumes do Luar, 24

Valdir, 26

Valente, Assis, 48

Valle, Ana Maria, 306, 331

Valle, Marcos, 147, 208, 277–78, 286–87, 304, 306, 308–9, 312, 315, 322, 331, 335

Valle, Paulo Sérgio, 208, 277–78, 308–9

“Valsa de ‘Porto das Caixas’,” 308

“Valsa de uma cidade,” 54, 62

Valzinho, 88, 150

“Vamos pranchar,” 278, 308

Vandré, Geraldo, 263, 276, 288, 293, 304, 318–21

Vandré, Théo, 293

Van Heusen, Jimmy, 88

Vasconcellos, José, 109

Vasconcellos, Marcos, 147

Vassourinha, 55

Vaughan, Sarah, 22, 32, 206, 240, 241, 333

Vaughn, Billy, 333

Velasquez, Consuelito, 303

Veloso, Caetano, 147, 304, 335

Vermelho, Alcyr Pires, 43

Verve, 253, 299

Viana, 201

Vilar, Léo, 20, 186

Villarim, Inaldo, 23

Villela, César, 261

“Vingança,” 88

Vinhas, Luís Carlos, 91, 168, 172, 174, 179, 208, 216, 219–22, 283, 294, 335

Vinícius e Caymmi no Zum-zum, 262

“Viola Enluarada,” 278

Viva a brotolândia, 281

Viva meu samba, 138

Vocalistas Tropicais, 24

“Você,” 308

“Você e eu,” 224–25

“Você esteve com meu bem?,” 43–44, 131

“Vocêzinha,” 177

“Vous qui passez sans me voir,” 280

Voz do Morro, 269

Wainer, Samuel, 86

Waller, Fats, 310

Wanderléa, 281

Wanderly, Walter, 222, 263, 287, 294, 308–10, 312, 322, 334

Warwick, Dionne, 324

“Wave,” 324

Webster, Paul Francis, 311

Welding, Pete, 279

“What Is This Thing Called Love?,” 23

Whiting, Margaret, 7

Williams, Andy, 279

Williams, John, and the Boston Pops, 333

Wilson, Jack, 279

Wonderful World of Antonio Carlos Jobim, The, 325

Woods, Harry, 186

Wright, Bob, 329

Xangô, 231

xaxados, 146

Yáconis, Cleide, 201

ye-ye-ye, 295, 302, 318

“You Better Go Now,” 169

“You Never Say ‘Never’ Again,” 34

Zama, Caetano, 245, 248–49, 254

“Zambi,” 277

Zan, Mário, 146

Zé, Tom, 335

“Zelão,” 253–54

Zimbo Trio, 263, 286–87, 292, 294

“Zip-a-dee-doo-dah,” 307