by Castro, Ruy
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 accor
dionist 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?
