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

by Castro, Ruy

  This time, Bôscoli was the last one to find out about it. When the plane landed, he was astonished to see such an enormous crowd of his press colleagues waiting for them at the airport, and just about had a stroke when Maysa announced: “This is the news. I’m going to marry Ronaldo Bôscoli, who’s right here, and nobody can stop me.”

  The cat appeared to have swallowed Bôscoli’s tongue. He did not react. Having made her announcement, Maysa grabbed him by the arm and steered him with the greatest of ease toward the airport buildings. Photographs of this event show a gigantically fat Maysa, huddled inside an overcoat with buttons the size of saucers, staring firmly with those eyes that were like two non-Pacific oceans, with the determination of one who was about to leave for the battle of Normandy. At her side was a disheveled and sheepish-looking Ronaldo, carrying his suitcase and overcoat, slightly off-balance by the weight of Maysa’s heavy arm clamped over his, apparently contemplating life with an air of sad resignation.

  Anyone who knew Nara Leão can imagine how the sky must have fallen in on her when the reporters phoned her from the airport to ask her what she thought of her fiancé marrying Maysa. Nara’s denial was broadcast through the most official channel possible: Ibrahim Sued’s society column in O Globo. There wasn’t going to be any wedding, she assured. The following day, Maysa contradicted her denial in the other newspapers: there would indeed be a wedding, no matter what anyone said. Nara then confirmed that her own engagement was off. Throughout those entire few days, the reporters were unable to locate the groom. He was hiding in the Hotel Plaza.

  Bôscoli merely wanted to bide his time to see if things would cool down. Until Nara forgave him for his affair with Maysa, he would stay with Maysa, by whom he was, despite everything, completely fascinated. He didn’t stay fascinated for very long, but during the slightly more than a year that they were together, she recorded a great album at Columbia, Barquinho, which finally gave bossa nova a national boost and put the song that was meant for Nara on the map. She also took part, with Ronaldo Bôscoli, in some of the best and worst moments in the battle of the sexes.

  Almost all their daily fights were about drinking. Bôscoli, who was not exactly teetotal, was stupefied by the amount of alcohol that Maysa put away. He spent the whole day hiding booze from her, at least before a show—or there wouldn’t be any show. She would react, and blows were exchanged. During one of their fights, a few minutes before she was due to go on stage at a nightclub in São Paulo, one of Maysa’s tooth implants flew out and landed quite a distance away, on the dance floor. Despite the dark lighting in the nightclub, the gap in her mouth could be clearly seen. Suddenly, there was a team of men—Bôscoli, Vinhas, and others—crawling around on their hands and knees in the middle of the dance floor, looking for the tooth.

  All of his fights with A Gorda (The Fat One), as Bôscoli called her, seemed very funny the next day when he told his friends about them. But they weren’t quite as funny while they were happening. When he grabbed his jacket to leave Maysa’s apartment in Copacabana—”for good”—she swore that she would stop drinking—”for good”—and emptied her bottles down the toilet. Bôscoli thought her drinking days were over, until he noticed a piece of twine hanging out of the bathroom window. He pulled on it and hoisted up a bottle of Scotch. He had already seen a scene like this, only it had been in a film with Ray Milland.

  But Maysa did manage one achievement: getting Ronaldo to overcome his fear of flying. He, in turn, dragged her to Cabo Frio one time, although admittedly only to prove to Ceci the boatman that they were the Menescal and Bôscoli mentioned on the radio—because after all, Ceci knew who Maysa was. Finally, in 1962, she convinced Bôscoli (and Menescal, Vinhas, and the Tamba Trio) to move to Vitória, in Espírito Santo state, far from this crazy world. The amazing thing is, they went. Until, some weeks later, when Bôscoli finally grew tired of watching Maysa trying to destroy herself, took the car in secret, and returned to Rio, without even leaving her a note.

  Everyone was affected by the Maysa/Bôscoli affair. The two of them, obviously, and Nara Leão also. Nara took years to forgive Ronaldo, and did so only once there was no longer any hope for the two of them. Bôscoli’s friends confirm that for a long time, he continued to look for Nara in all the women he dated—actresses Betty Faria, Joana Fomm, Mila Moreira. Bossa nova also suffered, because during the affair, Menescal and the others became Maysa’s companions, and obviously could no longer go to Nara’s apartment. An important cohesion among the gang had been lost. But only for that particular gang, because almost immediately Nara made peace with Carlinhos Lyra, got her head straightened out by her new boyfriend, the Mozambican filmmaker Ruy Guerra, and began to get interested in a type of music that, compared to bossa nova, would make her radically change her mind.

  “Be patient, Waltinho,” João Gilberto implored pianist-arranger Walter Wanderley, who was already showing signs of wanting to be somewhere other than the studio.

  It was the recording of the third (in fact, the last) album by João Gilberto for Odeon—which was to be called merely João Gilberto. He wanted Wanderley to make a particular sound on his keyboard that would mimic the roar of a ship, for the introduction to “The Little Boat.” Wanderley couldn’t get the right sound, and João Gilberto showed him—with his voice—exactly the kind of roar he wanted. Walter’s musicians (Papudinho on trumpet, Azeitona on double bass, Toninho Pinheiro on drums) were astonished: João Gilberto was capable of producing any sound with his voice.

  The day before, March 9, 1961, he had recorded the first track on the album “Bolinha de papel” (Little Paper Ball), by the late sambista Geraldo Pereira, another hit by the Anjos do Inferno in 1945. It was the third song in the Anjos do Inferno’s repertoire that João Gilberto had recovered, dusted off, polished up, and re-recorded, putting into practice the miracle of doing it even better than them. (The other songs were “Rosa morena” [Brunette Rose] and “Doralice”). And he did it while removing hardly anything from the original version—in “Bolinha de papel,” for example, he made sure that the “nasal trumpeting” by Harry Vasco de Almeida in the introduction of the Anjos’ recording was re-created by a real trumpet.

  Nobody really paid much attention to those details, but he didn’t care. The most modern music in Brazil was undergoing a renaissance of influences from the Brazilian musical past, and on that day alone he recorded three songs that fell into the old-timer category: “Saudade de Bahia” (Longing for Bahia) and “O samba da minha terra” (Samba of My Land), both by Caymmi, and “Trenzinho,” by Lauro Maia. And he even intended to include on the album another old samba by the duo Bide and Marçal, “A primeira vez” (The First Time), which had been a hit for Orlando Silva in 1940. Where were the bossa novas?

  João Gilberto was at odds with bossa nova. He had never liked labeling his music, but now that bossa nova had come to represent just about anything and had been adopted by people he didn’t even know, he had started to say that he didn’t play bossa nova—he played samba. His relationship with Jobim was also in a terrible state. Jobim “had no patience,” and Aloysio de Oliveira’s departure from Odeon the previous September had complicated everything. João didn’t much like Aloysio (he merely referred to him as “that American”), but when he started having difficulties with Jobim over work issues, Aloysio came to the rescue. Without him on the scene, Jobim had no wish to participate in the production of the album, so João was recording with Walter Wanderley.

  Former sales director Ismael Corrêa had taken over the artistic directorship at Odeon and gave João Gilberto the freedom to do whatever he wanted. He would have taken this liberty anyhow. Chega de saudade had already sold thirty-five thousand albums, and O amor, o sorriso e a flor was heading the same way. The third album couldn’t fail. But it was failing. João had done the arrangements himself—or rather, he had tried to explain to Walter what he wanted—but he was extremely dissatisfied with what he was recording. The next day, March 11, he recorded “Presente de Natal�
� (Christmas Gift) and put the album on hold. He only returned to it five months later, in August, with Jobim in charge once again. It was the only way to save it. Jobim and João appeared to be incapable of achieving what they both most wanted out of life: freeing themselves from each other.

  From August 2 to September 28, they recorded the rest of the album in fits and starts, with a splendid bossa nova repertoire. Jobim managed to produce the sound of a ship’s roar that João wanted for the introduction to “The Little Boat” with trombones, and, where possible, simplified the amount of work that went into the other songs: “O amor em paz” (Love in Peace) and “Insensatez” (How Insensitive) by himself and Vinícius, “Este seu olhar” (That Look You Wear) by him alone, and “Você e eu” (You and Me) and “Coisa mais linda” (Most Beautiful Thing) by the new and surprising musical partnership, Carlinhos Lyra and Vinícius de Moraes.

  It was merely by chance that, on looking for Vinícius at his huge apartment in Parque Guinle in 1961, Carlinhos Lyra didn’t find him in the bathtub. It was where Vinícius spent most of the time, submitting himself to an involved ritual. The water had to be scalding when he got in. Around him, on benches, stools, and footrests, would be scattered what in those days were still termed “paraphernalia”: coffee, bottles of Scotch, ice, cigarettes, sandwiches, books, newspapers, magazines, a notepad, a pen, and the telephone. Nobody would have been surprised at seeing a rubber ducky in there somewhere, too. If anyone came to see him—a guest, or even reporters and photographers—Vinícius would invite them to take off their clothes and get in, and he would meet with them right there, in the bathtub. There was no hanky-panky involved, even with the steady flow of luscious female reporters who came to interview him. It was to prove the restorative properties of taking a bath.

  And Vinícius needed to be restored every day. His favorite saying, that man’s best friend wasn’t the dog, it was whiskey, wasn’t just a joke. “Whiskey is bottled dog,” he said—in all seriousness. But the image that remains for posterity, that he was merely an extension of his glass, isn’t quite accurate. In the forties and fifties, he could even have been considered a moderate drinker, compared to the professional carousers. Jobim placed Vinícius’s escalating alcohol consumption (and his own) in 1960, beginning at their vacation in Brasília to write “Sinfonia da alvorada” (Dawn Symphony). Up until that point, he was merely warming up. Tom himself was sometimes startled: “Are you sure you can handle it, Vinícius?”

  And Vinícius replied, “The body has to endure. The body is the laboratory which has to distill the alcohol and transform it into energy. Because blood only flows smoothly in the veins when there is alcohol.”

  The stories of his admittance to the São Vicente Clinic in Gávea for treatment to sober up were true, as much as they seem made up. Vinícius was given the key to the clinic and had permission to come and go as he pleased. “I have a taste for some snacks,” he told the nutritionist, as he was putting on his pants to go out on a binge. Also true was the story that he would rock himself to sleep, softly singing children’s songs like “Tutu marambaia.” The irony is that, without this naïve and almost childlike side to his character, Vinícius, being the great poet that he was, might not have liked popular music. (He also didn’t like the fact that his poetry was becoming “a formula for sappy sweet nothings whispered between lovers.”)

  It was that childish side of him that, although he had diabetes, made him raid the refrigerator in the middle of the night in search of papos-de-anjo—and be found out the following morning, having left his eyeglasses inside the refrigerator. Papo-de-anjo, an ultra-sweet homemade candy, was his downfall. He eulogized it as if the entire world shared his taste for it. During the show he did with Dorival Caymmi at the Zum-zum nightclub in 1964, Vinícius announced that the best thing in the world was to “eat papo-de-anjo with the woman you love at your side.” His friend Rubem Braga, who was in the audience, shouted back: “You’re crazy. Don’t you think it’s much more fun to eat the woman you love, and have a papo-de-anjo by your side?”

  Vinícius was also the great initiator of diminutives in the world of bossa nova, a musical milieu whose stars were always quarreling fiercely, but called each other “Tomzinho” (Tommy), “Joãozinho” (Johnny), “Carlinhos” (Charlie), and “Ronaldinho” (Ronnie). But Vinícius, quite naturally, addressed everyone like that. When he didn’t know a person’s name, he called him neguinho (“buddy”).

  He was adamantly jealous of his collaborating partners, but would write lyrics even for teenagers who brought him small compositions. When Carlinhos Lyra went to look for him that day and Vinícius wasn’t in the bath, he had planned to ask him to write lyrics to one or two songs he had written and he felt went well with the poet’s style. Since splitting with Ronaldo Bôscoli, Lyra had been writing in collaboration with his CPC companion and roommate, Nelson Lins de Barros, who shared an apartment with him in Rua Barão da Torre, or else alone. But Lyra felt he needed something special for those two songs. Vinícius, who admired him for “Maria Ninguém” (Maria Nobody) and was following the ridiculous sambalanço vs. bossa nova affair with dismay, immediately agreed. Lyra became his parceirinho (“little partner”) and the two songs became none other than “Coisa mais linda” and “Você e eu.”

  Vinícius also wrote the sleeve text for Lyra’s second album in 1961, in which he was cautionary and, alas, prophetic: “Carlinhos Lyra is a part of what might be called ‘the most nationalistic segment of bossa nova,’ which has led him, with the desire to differentiate his music, to create the term sambalanço for his compositions. I personally refute the necessity for such a term, and have told him as much. I think the term bossa nova characterizes perfectly adequately all that is good and wholesome about Brazilian popular music, which has to find its own place in the sun without interference from group rivalry and the spirit of division,” et cetera, et cetera.

  Vinícius must have been guessing at that spirit of division, which became even more marked after 1964. Even he, who thought of himself “left-wing” and had considered joining the Communist Party in 1945, also wrote “social” bossa nova, but without the demagogic poverty that seemed to be the sub-genre’s indicator.

  In 1961, while bossa nova was lending depth to arguments, two of the people most responsible for its existence were going on with their lives on opposite sides of the continent, and on opposite sides of the music. In São Paulo, Johnny Alf was finally recording his first album, Rapaz de bem, and showing how, back in 1955 in Brazil, he had already been keeping up with the Americans. In California, João Donato (or Joao Donato, due to the absence of tildes in local typography) was taking part in a revolution that pointed to the future—the reincorporation of Afro-Cuban music into jazz—and making one or two contributions himself. It’s amazing how two careers that appeared to run so parallel, such as those of Alf and Donato, could have taken off on run-ways that landed them at such different destinations.

  Johnny Alf swapped his small-time glory at the piano of the Plaza nightclub in Rio for the prospect of success in São Paulo in 1955. He had only been at the Baiúca in Rua Major Sertório for a few months, and his piano-bass duo, the latter played by Sabá, already had a substantial following. One night in early 1956, he was in the middle of the eternally fascinating “Céu e mar” (Sky and sea, stars in the sand / Green sea, mirroring the sky / My life is a distant island / Floating in the sea), when he heard a series of shouts: “Stop the music! We’re closing you down!”

  The cook, Lucila, who was frying shrimp in the kitchen, jumped. It was the Health Inspectors, who were shutting down the Baiúca for lack of hygiene and kicking out the Matarazzos, Pignataris, Marques da Costa, and other personalities from the society set who frequented the club. Those millionaires only went to the Baiúca to hear Johnny Alf and wisely kept their distance from Lucila’s crustaceans, but the Health Inspectors weren’t interested in that fact. Alf and Sabá were deemed unfit for human consumption, like the shrimp.

  For Johnny Alf
, it was the beginning of the usual pilgrimage by evening musicians, going from nightclub to nightclub, having to move on before managing to establish a regular clientele because the nightclub went under, or was converted to a whorehouse or a gas station. In the years that followed, until 1961, he played at the Michel and the Feitiço, also in Rua Major Sertório; the Golden Ball, on the corner of Rua Augusta with Avenida Paulista; the Tetéia, in Avenida Ipiranga; the La Ronde, in Praça da República; the new Baiúca, in Praça Roosevelt; and the After Dark, in Avenida Indianópolis. He played at several of them more than once. Wherever he went, he took his small but elite audience with him.

  It’s possible to argue that he wasn’t ever out of work. Sometimes he had the honor of being invited to play at good clubs, like the nightclub at the Hotel Lancaster, on Rua Augusta, where he played with a trio. That was when the going was good. But when times were harder, he was forced to play at two whorehouses, the Stardust and the Club de Paris.

  There was nothing very serious about all that bouncing back and forth, if his music, despite being popular, hadn’t remained the same. While Alf was hiding out in nightclubs in São Paulo, his former fans at the Plaza (Jobim, João Gilberto, Carlinhos Lyra) were making the music scene in Rio happen. (Newton Mendonça also hid out in nightclubs, only in Copacabana, and had Jobim there to keep his head above water.) So when Johnny Alf was finally able to record an album six years later in 1961, it was as if Brazil had moved up a year and he had been left behind to repeat. Formidable songs like “Rapaz de bem,” “Ilusão à toa,” and “O que é amar” (What It Is to Love) seemed to have lost their impact. On stage at the School of Architecture in 1960, at the invitation of Ronaldo Bôscoli to the Night of Love, a Smile, and a Flower, Johnny Alf could almost be classified as retro. And what good was it for him to hear Bôscoli announcing at the microphone that “Johnny Alf has been playing bossa nova music for ten years” if nobody was interested?