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

by Castro, Ruy

  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 d
ifficult—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.