by Castro, Ruy
In 1961, the nightclubs in the Lane were, in order from the inside of the alleyway out, the Little Club, the Baccara, the Bottles Bar, and the Ma Griffe. Of the four, only Ma Griffe dedicated itself primarily to the business of prostitution, although it also had a piano that, until recently, had been the charge of Newton Mendonça. The other three merely hosted the best music that could be heard south of Guanabara bay. Two of them, the Little Club and Bottles, had the same owners, the Italians Giovanni and Alberico Campana, who were always willing to support young talent, as long as they drew a full house.
This wasn’t hard. The two nightclubs each had a maximum capacity of seventy people, as long as they didn’t wear shoulder pads in their jackets—and there were far more than this who were interested in seeing the “pocket shows” staged nightly by the new duo, Miéle and Bôscoli. They introduced Brazil to a new kind of show: that of “deluxe” poverty. Just like Miéle, who two years previously had only one pair of pants, but they were dress pants, the Lane shows had great music provided by artists whom shortly thereafter money couldn’t buy, but everything else about the shows was poorer than poor, starting with the production. Miéle and Bôscoli planned the entire show, organized the artists, wrote the repertoire, did the lighting (with a single spotlight and empty toilet paper rolls), projected the slides, looked after the sound (with the help of Chico Pereira), and directed the performance—all without remuneration, and they even thought it was fun.
Instead of money, they settled for free Scotch, but even then they had to drink it straight up because none of the nightclubs had refrigerators. The ice, bought in blocks by Giovanni and Alberico, was for the customers. In order to have their drinks on the rocks, Miéle and Bôscoli would arrange for pianist Sérgio Mendes to play a thunderous introduction—Oscar Peterson– style—to certain songs, during which they would chip off a few chunks of ice without the owners (who were also the waiters) noticing, or noticing only when it was too late. The only ones who were paid properly (in cash, at the end of the show) were the artists, but they didn’t get to drink for free. And there was one who, at the beginning, actually paid for the privilege of playing: Sérgio Mendes.
At the age of twenty in 1961, Mendes was not only unpaid, he was expected to buy drinks and pay for what he consumed. “You’re still learning,” Alberico would say, with his Italian accent. “So you have to pay to learn.” Mendes submitted himself to the experience because he could now afford to do so. In the mid-fifties, while still in short pants, he caught the ferry in Niterói to go to the Lojas Murray and hear his idols’ records for free: Stan Kenton, who was still the craze, and a young pianist named Horace Silver. At the end of the afternoon, the Murray customers would all chip in and pay his fare for the return ferry back to Niterói. It wasn’t as though he was poor. His father, a doctor, wouldn’t give him any money. His childhood had been gloomy, ravaged by scoliosis, which for years forced him to wear a plaster cast while he studied the piano. His parents would shave his head when he got bad grades in school. In order to make some pocket money, he formed a trio with his friend Tião Neto, also from Niterói, who played the double bass, and a rotating cycle of percussionists. The three played at all sorts of dances—only they played jazz, which nobody could dance to. When they were asked to play waltzes at graduation dances, the only one they knew was “Lover,” by Rodgers and Hart. After all of this, Sérgio Mendes, who was already an accomplished pianist, thought it child’s play when some idiot threw firecrackers under his piano at Bottles during a verse of “All the Things You Are.”
Around 1960, he started leading impromptu jazz and bossa nova jams on Sunday afternoons at the Little Club, which served as rites of initiation for hundreds of Rio teenagers and many amateur musicians. The jams were good business for everyone. The kids got in for free and filled the place to capacity, but paid for the rum-and-Cokes they consumed. The professional musicians also played for free, but in their case, they could drink more or less what they wanted and were able to play the music they really liked, far from the constraints of their square work at the dance halls, at nightclub dances, or in the orchestras at TV Tupi or TV Rio. What they loved was jazz, until bossa nova provided them with a series of modern and unrestrained themes that were marvelous for improvising: songs like “Menina feia” (Ugly Girl), “Não faz assim” (Don’t Do That), “Desafinado” (Off-Key), “Batida diferente” (Different Beat), and “Minha saudade” (My Saudade), which became the first jazz standards of bossa nova.
A veritable Who’s Who of great musicians participated in those afternoon jam sessions at the Little Club and, afterward, in Bottles at night: trombonists Raul de Souza (at the time already highly acclaimed, and known as Raulzinho) and brothers Edmundo and Edson Maciel; saxophonists and flutists J. T. Meirelles, Aurino Ferreira, Paulo Moura, Juarez Araújo, Cipó, Jorginho, and Bebeto; trumpet players Pedro Paulo and Maurílio; pianists Toninho, Salvador, Tenório Jr., Luizinho Eça, and Luís Carlos Vinhas; guitarists Durval Ferreira and Baden Powell; double bass players Tião Neto, Tião Marinho, Otávio Bailly, Manoel Gusmão, and Sérgio Barroso; drummers Dom Um, Edison Machado, Vítor Manga, Chico Batera, Airto Moreira, Wilson das Neves, João Palma, Hélcio Milito, and Rafael; and experts who played those instruments that Down Beat magazine categorized as “miscellaneous,” such as harmonica players Maurício Einhorn and Rildo Hora, vibraphonist Ugo Marotta, French horn player Bill Horn, and percussionist Rubens Bassini. Compared to the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club, the Lane was to bossa nova what Minton’s Playhouse, the club on 118th Street in Harlem, was to bebop in the early forties.
From 1961 on, this crowd divided into several permanent groups, like Luizinho Eça’s Tamba Trio, Luís Carlos Vinhas’s Bossa Três, Sérgio Mendes’s Sexteto, Meirelles’s Copa Cinco, and Tenório Jr.’s Quinteto Bottles, but its stronghold remained in the Lane. What they played wasn’t exactly the featherweight bossa nova played by Jobim, João Gilberto, Roberto Menescal, and Milton Banana, but a variation approaching bop that jazz columnist Robert Celerier of the newspaper Correio da Manhã termed “hard bossa nova,” which was a lot heavier. So heavy, in fact, that had João Gilberto dropped by the Lane while those groups were performing their own themes, like “Quintessência” (Quintessence) and “Noa-noa,” he would have fled in terror. All the drumsticks he thought he had eliminated from Brazilian drumming were there in full force, making more noise than ever. And in the hands of drummer Edison Machado, they were even worse; he had been a machine gunner in the Army and at times played as if he were facing the Germans.
Transformed into a mere bauble, displayed as merchandise, and starting to become commonplace as a result of so much propaganda, bossa nova was already starting to suffocate by the middle of 1961. Menescal and Bôscoli hated seeing their music regulated by figures, contracts, and invoices; they needed to fight back. They had the vague feeling that the money they were making was “dirty.” In order to keep their hands clean and in a fit state for composing, they appointed a musical editor, Umberto Marconi, who became their assignee to take care of the business side of things. They weren’t the only ones to do this.
João Gilberto, Carlinhos Lyra, Luiz Bonfá, and Chico Feitosa also left their guitars at home and went to Marconi’s downtown office in Rua Evaristo da Veiga, where they signed letters giving him the authority to resolve absolutely any matter relating to their musical production: publishing, selling, licensing, supervising, protecting, and, of course, receiving what the songs were already making in Brazil and abroad—and paying them any income. It was like allowing Marconi free access to their bank accounts, but why not? Marconi was like a father to them. The first time he was summoned to Marconi’s office to collect a check, Menescal was astonished; he never imagined that a song like “Tetê” would make so much money. (After all, he and Bôscoli had only written it because Jobim had just finished composing “Dindi,” and they had decided to write something along the same lines.) As Menescal would soon discover, the money he received was in fact a small percentage o
f what he should have gotten, but being ignorant of that fact, he was perfectly happy. He spent it on a new pair of flippers.
So when Marconi tried to convince the gang to give a performance at the Copacabana Palace to play some of their songs for a French editor who had come to Brazil for the express purpose of meeting them, they didn’t need to be asked twice. The Frenchman was a friend of Vinícius, Sacha Gordine, the producer of Black Orpheus. Gordine had a publishing house in Paris, Sacha Music, and wanted to launch bossa nova in France. So what did the guys have to show him? They picked up their guitars and sang their stuff, while Gordine, drinking Pernod, told them yes or no according to the rattle of coins in his ears that the musical notes from each song produced: “Je veux ça” (I want that one) or “Pas ça, jouez autre chose” (Not that one, play something else).
For each song approved by Gordine, his representative in Brazil, Lidia Libion, copied a contract at a small table off to the side. There was one contract per song, giving Gordine the right to resell them “in all the countries of the world” and “for as long as they are legally protected.” This meant that the boys were transferring to him all rights of “sheet music publishing, representation, execution, phonomechanical reproduction, and dissemination by radio” in exchange for percentages that ranged from 10 percent to 75 percent (in biannual installments) of whatever the song earned. As a bonus, they would get an additional thirty copies of each song that was printed “absolutely free.”
In order to prove that the arrangement was legitimate, Gordine gave them all an advance payment, which he explained corresponded to 50 percent of what he would earn for the sublicensing of the publishing rights to the songs in the United States. Those explanation were deathly boring to the boys, especially Menescal, who was itching to jump in his car and go fishing at Cabo Frio. Lidia handed them their contracts, which they signed without reading. Some hours later, each of them went about his own business, with his advance check in his pocket. One can only hope that they made good use of that money, because during the years that followed, it was the only money they would receive for those songs. Want to know which ones they were?
For “Lobo bobo” (Foolish Wolf), Gordine paid Carlinhos Lyra and Ronaldo Bôscoli the equivalent, at the time, of ninety-two dollars—that is, forty-six dollars each. For the same price, Menescal and Bôscoli also sold Gordine the rights to “O barquinho” (The Little Boat), “Errinho à toa” (Worthless Mistake), “Panorâmica” (Panorama), “Lágrima primeira” (First Tear), and “Nós e o mar” (Us and the Sea). He paid the same for four of Bonfá’s songs and three of Chico Feitosa’s. The worst deal was made by João Gilberto, to whom at that time it seemed too good to be true. He alone received the equivalent in 1961 of three hundred seven dollars for “Bim-bom,” “Hô-ba-la-lá,” and “Um abraço no Bonfá” (A Hug for Bonfá)—for all three. With these songs Gordine opened up, for himself, the international market for bossa nova, sublicensing them to the Leeds Corporation of the United States. The money made by these songs would be paid to him through Umberto Marconi, in his capacity as paternal trustee.
News of the international success of “Le petit bateau,” “The little boat,” and “El barquito” (and other songs) reached Brazil, but Menescal and Bôscoli never saw a single cent of it. One of two things was happening: either the money wasn’t leaving Paris, or it was being lost in some safe in Rua Evaristo da Veiga, where Marconi had his office. But the boys weren’t that persistent in their quest to recover their money. Luvercy Fiorini, Oscar Castro-Neves’s partner and one of the first in the bossa nova gang to have a song published and recorded by a dozen U.S. artists (“Chora tua tristeza” [Cry Your Sadness]), had no idea at the time that he was owed any money for this and remained uninterested in actively seeking out payment.
Jobim and Vinícius had already been scalped by Gordine for the Orpheus film. One year after the musical display at the Copacabana Palace, Gordine talked songwriter-guitarist Baden Powell into signing a contract to the effect that whatever he produced in the next twelve months would become the property of Gordine. Baden must have thought that there was something amiss, because he continued to compose but told Gordine he wasn’t writing anything. During this period, Lidia Libion quit working for Gordine and became a huge fan of bossa nova. She came to believe that the money from those songs never reached Rio.
Perhaps not. But at the end of the sixties, Menescal was one of those who had reason to be disappointed with Marconi. According to Menescal, upon a visit to Marconi’s office, he discovered a tape recorder under the desk that had recorded all their conversations. Strangely enough, it didn’t take Marconi long to vanish from Rio for good, perhaps even from Brazil. Nobody was ever able to find him again, not even if they had wanted to know where to send flowers.
This would be a good first chapter for a mystery novel that could be entitled The Great Bossa Nova Robbery.
“To save bossa nova, I’d even make love to the Trio Irakitan,” remarked Ronaldo Bôscoli, Nara Leão’s fiancé.
Someone had jokingly suggested to Bôscoli that if he had an affair with the luscious singer Maysa, she might switch to singing bossa nova—given that in 1961, bossa nova was sorely in need of a singer with national prominence. João Gilberto may have been a god to many, but they were part of the privileged elite, like the fans of Sylvinha Telles, Alayde Costa, Carlinhos Lyra, Johnny Alf, Sérgio Ricardo, and Os Cariocas. Bossa nova was now a name fought over by refrigerator manufacturers, but the music of the genre, which was what was important, wasn’t played on Rádio Nacional, for example (not that they were particularly crazy about Rádio Nacional’s taste in music).
Maysa was a household name as a singer and also as a celebrity. She was performing at the Blue Angel nightclub in New York, and it was said that Marlon Brando had all her records. From 1958 on, her drinking binges became public news, and she made the tabloid pages about as often as she did the music charts with songs like “Ouça” (Listen) and “Meu mundo caiu” (My World Fell). The reasons were always the same: she’d throw her shoe, glass, or microphone at the head of anyone who was talking loudly in the nightclub where she was singing; she would come to blows on stage with the pianist Pedrinho Mattar over a simple chord; she had to be tied to the piano to keep her upright during a live performance on the TV show Noite de gala (Gala Night); she was seen stumbling around barefoot in the street at four in the morning, saying that it was in an effort to lose weight.
It wasn’t, but it should have been, because she ballooned grotesquely once she became famous. In April 1960, Maysa weighed ninety-six kilos (211 pounds) when she decided to lose weight via the favorite method of stars at the time: surgically. Eight doctors in São Paulo worked on her over a ten-hour period, like in the famous Rembrandt painting, and completed several plastic surgery procedures simultaneously, the main one being to relieve her of the belly she had acquired during her pregnancy. Immediately afterward, they put her on a strict diet, which included the radical replacement of Scotch with milk. Maysa lost twenty-eight kilos (sixty-two pounds)—or “twenty-eight liters,” as she put it. She decided to do something worthwhile with her life, but overdid it somewhat. To everyone’s astonishment, she volunteered as a nurse at the Nossa Senhora do Carmo hospital in São Paulo, where she allowed herelf to be photographed in a white uniform, knitting and reading Pearl S. Buck novels. Everyone thought she must be keeping a promise to the saints.
If that was the case, she must have settled accounts fairly quickly, because within a few months, she was celebrating her return to the work-force. She gained weight all over again, moved to Rio, and in 1961 was persuaded by Bôscoli and Menescal to sing their songs. Bôscoli didn’t think that with her dark temperament Maysa would be suited to songs that were more typically bossa nova, like “The Little Boat,” which they had written for Nara Leão. But she would be perfect for the more sober songs, like “Lágrima primeira,” which they had both written, or “Depois do amor” (After Love), which Bôscoli had written with Normando, a
nd “Melancolia” (Melancholy), with Luizinho Eça.
But Maysa wanted to give her career a modern image, and fell in love with “The Little Boat.” She also fell in love with Bôscoli, who was never one to reject an advance, and they all left for a trip to Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay—Maysa, Menescal, Bôscoli, Vinhas, and a new trio that was being formed: Luizinho Eça, Bebeto, and Hélcio. That is, the Tamba Trio. On the tour, they tried out the new repertoire, and Ronaldo also tried out an affair with a real woman, Maysa. He wasn’t exactly naïve, and he really liked Nara, his girlfriend of four years. The two of them were engaged to be married, and had already exchanged rings. But in those pre-pill days, sex was a problem, and they were obliged to take risks with a sort of “Vatican roulette.” That was when Maysa came onto the scene, with all her experience, charm, beauty—and problems.
Since divorcing her husband, she had had affairs with the singer Almir Ribeiro, who died at Punta del Este, and with Sylvinha’s brother, Mário Telles, among others. As Bôscoli found out, Maysa threw herself into her private life with greater sensuality than she did her songs, if this were possible. It was a revelation even for him, but had it been up to Bôscoli, their torrid relationship would have ended there, in Buenos Aires. When they returned to Brazil, he planned to go back to Nara, keeping the affair with Maysa going for just a short while longer. Only she didn’t give him a chance to firm up his plans. At the Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires, a few minutes before they were due to leave to return to Brazil, Maysa phoned Columbia in Rio: “Send reporters to Galeão airport. I’m going to make a sensational announcement,” she promised.
