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

by Castro, Ruy

  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 si
nger 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.