Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World

by Castro, Ruy

  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.