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

by Castro, Ruy

  One of those artists was Johnny Alf, whom the Rio public had not seen for five years. While he was away, in São Paulo, bossa nova had taken off and he had been left behind. The younger generation, who made up the majority of the audience, were unaware that it was from his piano at the Plaza nightclub that some of the primary ingredients for the bossa nova recipe had emerged. Bôscoli tried to be didactic in introducing him: “True experts on bossa nova couldn’t forget his name. He has been playing bossa nova music for ten years and because of it was often branded a fraud and a madman. Here’s Johnny Alf!”

  Alf sat down at the piano and played “Rapaz de bem” and “Céu e mar” (Sky and Sea), his two greatest hits—quavering badly out of tune, his voice failing, seemingly frightened and trembling. And indeed he was. Tearing him away from São Paulo for the show was quite an achievement. He had never sung for so many people at one time, and his overwhelming shyness threatened to engulf him. In order to fuel himself with courage, he drank an enormous quantity of booze before, during, and after the trip, and arrived at the School of Architecture completely wasted. One of the students, Luís “Chupeta,” and two other members of the Athletic Association convinced him to go with them to a bathroom in the School of Architecture. There, they stripped off his clothes and gave him a strong shower in an effort to sober him up. Taking this into account, his performance wasn’t bad at all.

  Prudently, Norma Bengell didn’t sing in an outfit that showed her long, spectacular legs. Nor did she need to do so. She came on stage squeezed into a tight jersey that accentuated every curve of her figure, and carrying a white poodle. It must have been a delight to hear her, with such a visual feast, singing, “Come, ugly girl / Let your fear disappear / You are ugly / But you will find beautiful love.” The boys in the audience went crazy, but the girls—the first bossa nova groupies, like the young Wanda Sá, who was fifteen—didn’t as much. For them, Norma Bengell was too much of a big woman to be really bossa nova.

  It’s a mystery how, but there was room for everyone: the house staff (Normando; Luís Carlos Vinhas, who came on stage riding a tricycle; Chico Feitosa; Nara Leão; Claudette Soares; Sérgio Ricardo; and Menescal’s group—with Eumir Deodato on piano—which accompanied practically everybody) as well as the two representatives from São Paulo, Pedrinho Mattar and Caetano Zama. Vinícius was the only one who didn’t sing. He came on stage leading his daughter Georgiana by the hand, and brought the house down. Última Hora maliciously dubbed him “Grandpa bossa nova,” although Vinícius was only forty-seven years old, and Georgiana, seven.

  The two biggest stars closed the show: Mr. and Mrs. João Gilberto. He came on stage to an abyss-like silence, and before three thousand mouths and noses that were trying desperately not to breathe, sang “One Note Samba” and “O pato.” He then accompanied Astrud on the guitar, providing vocal harmony, in “Lamento” (Lament) and “Brigas, nunca mais” (Fights, Never More), both by Jobim and Vinícius. People thought that Astrud sang very well, but if anyone had hinted that only four years later she’d be selling millions of records in the United States, they would have been admitted to the psychiatric hospital next door to the school. Astrud left the stage and João closed his performance with the theme of the show: love, a smile, and a flower, from the lyrics of “Meditação” (Meditation), by Jobim and Newton Mendonça—who, by the way, was not seen at the School of Architecture, and nobody could guarantee that he had even been invited. (When he died six months later, they must have felt some remorse.)

  Three days after the Night of Love, a Smile, and a Flower performance, the American star Lena Horne sang “Bim-bom” in Portuguese in the Golden Room of the Copacabana Palace and had to give a threefold encore. She had learned the song by listening to João Gilberto’s album, and now wanted to meet him in person, if possible. The reporter João Luiz de Albuquerque made it possible, taking João Gilberto to Lena’s suite at the Copacabana Palace, where she was rehearsing with her musicians. As soon as she saw the singer, Lena threw herself at him and started firing off how he was absolutely this, that, and the other. João Gilberto sensed that Lena Horne was enthusiastic about something, but began to feel a little desperate: “I don’t understand a word this woman is saying!”

  When she finally stopped squawking, João picked up his guitar to sing. Lena’s musicians tried to accompany him, hesitantly at first. But after a few minutes, the music they produced sounded as if it had been rehearsed for weeks.

  Other American singers started to discover bossa nova. The year before, Sarah Vaughan had come to Brazil for the first time, heard Johnny Alf at the Baiúca nightclub in São Paulo, and invited him to go back to America with her. Alf froze and pretended not to understand. Imagine going to America with Sarah Vaughan, if Sarah Vaughan was everything he wanted to be! Nat “King” Cole was also in Rio, performing at the Copacabana Palace and gathering material for his Latin records. Sylvinha Telles recorded two tracks with him. Nat Cole was one of João Gilberto’s idols, and João made a point of seeing him up close. He hung around in a hallway at Odeon studios and waited around for two hours next to the door of the studio Cole was in. Nat “King” Cole finally came out, smoking a cigarette in a holder, and swiftly—in a matter of seconds—passed within millimeters of João Gilberto, without stopping for a hello. That night, at Tom’s house, the mesmerized João Gilberto commented, “He’s not black. He’s blue!”

  João Gilberto wasn’t as friendly as that for everyone. One evening, he was peacefully at home with Astrud and a friend, Alberto Fernandes, when Jorge Amado, who had been the best man at his wedding, phoned him. Famous French authors Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were visiting Brazil, and were at his home in Rio, and wouldn’t it be great if João swung by there with his guitar? “OK, Jorge. I’m on my way.”

  Sartre and De Beauvoir are long dead, and João Gilberto still hasn’t made it.

  14

  It’s Salt, It’s Sun, It’s South

  Fisherman-songwriter Roberto Menescal and the 792-pound jewfish

  Collection of Roberto Menescal

  After returning Carlinhos Lyra’s ring, Ronaldo Bôscoli entered into musical nuptials with Roberto Menescal. That was the beginning of what Bôscoli classified as “the long holiday” in all their lives. It was a marriage between music and the sea. Today we can deduce that bossa nova was born with the taste of salt in its mouth, because beach songs like “Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl from Ipanema), written by Jobim and Vinícius in 1962, and “Samba de verão” (Summer Samba), written by Marcos and Paulo Sérgio Valle in 1964, were huge hits and have come to symbolize the movement so well. But it wasn’t always that way. The sea only began to be explored in the summers of 1960–1961, when Menescal and Bôscoli put their harpoons and pens together to make it happen.

  Menescal did not compose until that summer. His only previous attempt, “Jura de pombo” (The Dove’s Promise), was such a painful labor for both him and his lyricist, Bôscoli himself, that Menescal decided to settle for just being a guitarist, like Barney Kessel, Charlie Byrd, or Jim Hall. (Alayde Costa recorded the song, but that didn’t count because Alayde was a friend.) Without a doubt, the shadow of Carlinhos Lyra at Bôscoli’s side weighed heavily on him. Menescal didn’t think he could ever be as spontaneous, tuneful, and lyrical as Lyra. But now that he had fallen out with practically the entire gang (they had even broken up the guitar academies), the entire sea opened up for Menescal to compose with Bôscoli. And after diving in, the following songs emerged, almost on the first try: “Nós e o mar” (Us and the Sea), “Rio,” “Ah! Se eu pudesse” (Ah! If Only I Could), “Mar, amar” (Sea, Love), “A morte de um Deus de Sal” (The Death of a Salt God) and—does it really need mentioning?—”O barquinho” (The Little Boat). They were all part of the salt/sun/south theme.

  One decisive event that made this possible was when Menescal managed to tear Bôscoli from dry land and entice him to go on fishing expeditions in Cabo Frio, Arraial do Cabo, and Rio das Ostras with his crew: Chico
Pereira, Henrique Peropeba, Jomico Azulay, Ronaldo Cientista, former Garoto da Lua Toninho Botelho, and occasionally Luizinho Eça and Luís Carlos Vinhas. Bôscoli and Chico Feitosa joined them, and sometimes Bôscoli’s girlfriend Nara would also go. At the beginning, Menescal and Chico Pereira rented a trawler with a gasoline engine, the Thiago II, with a capacity for ten people, which became the “little boat” in the song. Afterward, they bought a share in a sailboat, the Luanda. So that they didn’t have to sleep out in the open air, they rented a fisherman’s house in Arraial de Cabo and took iron-framed canvas cots with them, or slept on beach mats, the kind where the sand seeps through the weave and stitching and tattoos the body of whoever happens to be lying on one. But they were young and it was all in the name of adventure.

  Menescal and the others went harpoon fishing, but nobody could match his skill. His fishing companions agreed that Menescal seemed unbeatable. He would find fish, either in their burrows or swimming around, in all sorts of places—yellowtail, marlin, and grouper. These were gentle fish, which made the whole affair distasteful, because although the fish were in their element, Menescal had the weapons—the harpoons—and a simply lethal aim. His every shot stained the ocean floor with blood. It’s hard to believe that such savagery spawned the bossa nova songs that eulogized the sea as an idyllic setting.

  The underwater battles were only fair when the fish he caught were jewfish or giant manta rays, fish that refused to kowtow to anyone. But Menescal always won; a photograph of him with an 800-pound jewfish, humiliatingly hooked, was published in several newspapers, much to the shame of the fish. Despite his celebrity status, his talents as a fisherman were still fodder for mockery in Ipanema—nobody who went fishing truly believed in his achievements. Until one day at the Ipanema beach, in front of Rua Farme de Amoedo, Menescal put on his wetsuit, grabbed his harpoon from the car, and said to his friends: “I’m just going to go and get a fish.”

  The others laughed, but he dove into the water and within a few minutes was back with a grouper. It’s worth noting that, in 1960, big fish still frequented the waters by the beach at Ipanema.

  Bôscoli was very impressed when Menescal tried to prove to him that God did in fact exist, by introducing him to the bottom of the sea and making him realize that there was an entire “city of lights” down there. It was possible that God did indeed exist, but Bôscoli preferred to discover this in the safest way possible: putting his mask on and immersing his head in the water merely a few feet, while his legs were held inside the boat. In fact, his main job on the fishing expeditions was as the “coach,” according to his own definition. He would place himself at the highest point on the boat and shout instructions to the gang—and the fish—down below: “Go, Chico! Pull back, Menescal! Hey fish, look out!”

  They wore wetsuits to dive, but Chico Feitosa chose to wear women’s underwear beneath his. He said they were more comfortable. On the beach, they were the first ones in Rio to wear the printed shorts now worn by surfers, which were not yet in the stores, but made for them by the wife of one of the doormen at Menescal’s building. But the fishing trips weren’t always peaceful. Menescal would not allow alcohol on board, which forced Bôscoli and Toninho Botelho to sneak Scotch or rum onto the boat, disguised in bottles of guaraná with a dark exterior.

  Ceci, the boatman who steered the Thiago II, did not believe that Bôscoli and Menescal were recording artists “on the radio.” Radios were rare items in fishermen’s homes, and televisions were nonexistent. The two of them could not accept that Ceci refused to show their success the reverence it deserved, so one weekend they brought a battery-operated radio onto the boat. Within a few minutes, Rádio Jornal do Brasil played “The Little Boat,” and the disc jockey announced the name of the song and its authors: “Sung by Maysa, and written by Menescal and Bôscoli.”

  “See, do you believe us now or not?” Menescal challenged him. “You heard what the guy said: ‘The Little Boat’ by Menescal and Bôscoli.”

  “So what?,” argued Ceci. “You’re not the only Menescal and Bôscoli in the world.”

  Perhaps not, although the duo’s songs about the sea became the talk of the town in Rio. But Ceci, for sure, probably wouldn’t even believe in João Gilberto if he saw him.

  Bôscoli and Menescal also found it hard to believe in João Gilberto. The only time they had ever managed to take him to Cabo Frio, he refused to get on board the boat and take part in the fishing trip. The others went out to sea and João Gilberto sat down on a rock to wait for them to come back—fully clothed and all, in the kind of sun that would melt cathedrals, although there were a few trees in the vicinity. When they returned, it was almost nightfall and they found him sitting in the same place—completely puce, blistered from exposure to the sun, and moaning, “Why did you do this to me?” It was lucky that when this happened in 1961, he had already recorded “The Little Boat.”

  Long before João Gilberto actually recorded it, the song had already become his way of announcing himself at the window of his friends’ homes, late at night. On hearing him whistling “The Little Boat,” the man or lady of the house would know who it was and would go down to tell him who was there. Depending on the list of attendees, João Gilberto would either come in to join the gathering or leave to go and whistle under another window. He wasn’t very available. His presence at a party became more coveted in Rio than that of the state governor himself, Carlos Lacerda—perhaps because, unlike Lacerda, he accepted only one of every hundred invitations. It became a matter of pride for any hostess to be able to tell her guests, “João Gilberto is coming!,” although there was never the slightest guarantee that it really would happen—and more often than not, it didn’t.

  A large number of hostesses would also tell their guests that João Gilberto would be coming—even if they had never laid eyes on him in their life—just to guarantee the attendance of all the invitees. But even at the parties at which he did make an appearance, nobody was ever sure if João Gilberto would stay very long, or if he would even stay at all. One night, he arrived at Billy Blanco’s apartment and greeted everyone in the room, one by one, with his eyes—he knew 99 percent of them—and on completing his sweep of the living room, turned and walked back out of the door without saying a word. “The remaining one percent must have scared him off,” Blanco assumed. At the same time, he was liable to turn up at friends’ houses without being invited, when he was least expected, and sing until people started taking turns falling asleep in order to go on listening.

  At that time, João Gilberto’s main means of communication with the outside world was the telephone. He would phone his friend Laurinha, the wife of producer Abelardo Figueiredo, and talk to her for six straight hours, with a mere forty-minute break so that he could eat something—during which he would ask Laurinha to stay on the line. Which she would do, of course.

  Many began to adhere to the bossa nova style. Some adhesions could be considered perfectly natural, like that of Wilson Simonal, who sang cha-cha at the Top Club, a nightclub in Copacabana; Wilson Miranda, ex-samba, ex-rock, ex-twist, and ex-hully-gully; and Jorge Ben, who sang things like “Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini” and whose idol, besides João Gilberto, was the Brazilian rock star Ronnie Cord. Despite their dark pasts, they were all merely marking time, just waiting for bossa nova to come along. But it was best not to talk about the past because Alayde Costa had originally sung bolero, before being converted by João Gilberto, and Claudette Soares had sung baião. Far more natural was the approach to bossa nova by ex-romantic singers, like Sérgio Ricardo, Rosana Toledo, Sílvio Cesar, and Pery Ribeiro, or by jazz singers, like Leny Andrade, Flora Purim, and, years later, Rosa Maria. They made the transition very smoothly.

  Meanwhile, names that had been worshipped by the kids in the fifties, like Dick Farney, Lúcio Alves, and Tito Madi, were left by the wayside, despite all attempts at integration. The three of them, who had sown the seeds of the original bossa nova, became its greatest victims—
not to mention Johnny Alf. Dick Farney and Lúcio Alves even recorded at Elenco, the bossa nova label founded by Aloysio de Oliveira in 1963, and Lúcio took part in the first bossa nova show at the School of Architecture in 1959, but both of them felt as though they didn’t belong. At the height of bossa nova, already living in São Paulo, Dick preferred to concentrate on his piano, doing shows and making instrumental jazz records, as if he didn’t want to be mistaken for being part of the movement. Lúcio, in turn, admitted several years later that he felt “cheated” on witnessing the recently acquired liberty enjoyed by singers—which was due, in part, to him—and which was limiting his opportunities for work. And the reclusive Tito Madi was invited to Nara Leão’s apartment on several occasions, but something always prevented him from going.

  15

  Bossa Nova for Sale

  The little boat: Maysa and the gang sailing the waters of Bossa Nova

  Collection of Roberto Menescal

  While the known universe was getting acquainted with bossa nova in 1961, the latter hung out in Rua Duvivier in Copacabana, in a dead-end alleyway that humorist Sérgio Porto years earlier had christened Beco das Garrafadas (Flying Bottles Lane). The name was rapidly simplified to Beco das Garrafas (Bottles Lane), which was far more dignified, yet still refered to the residents’ annoying habit of throwing bottles at nightclubbers. The grenadiers were never identified, but they must have been extremely bad shots, because there is no record of anyone actually being hit on the head. They were more successful when they threw water or urine. One such victim was the minister of the Supreme Labor Court, Carlos Coqueijo, a friend of Vinícius de Moraes, a sometime composer, and the writer of “É preciso perdoar” (It’s Necessary to Forgive), which João Gilberto would record in 1973.