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

by Castro, Ruy

  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 Portugues
e.

  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.