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

by Castro, Ruy

  First voice: “This is a collaboration … “

  Second voice: “… between Tom … “

  Third voice: “… Vinícius … “

  Fourth voice: “… and João Gilberto … “

  Unison: “… with the special participation of Os Cariocas.”

  The voices, which were almost like resonant stars twinkling, were those of Os Cariocas introducing, at the Au Bon Gourmet restaurant, the bossa nova show to end all bossa nova shows: Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinícius de Moraes, and João Gilberto—together on stage for the first and last time—with the efficient participation of Otávio Bailly on double bass and Milton Banana on drums, directed by Aloysio de Oliveira. It was also a show intended to get bossa nova back on track, after all the liberties that had been taken in its name, and to remind people that it continued to be a refined musical genre—the most refined and musical, in fact, of them all.

  It was the idea of Flávio Ramos, the “man of the night,” who was then the owner of the Jirau nightclub, which was now a hi-fi club (one at which a disc jockey played records), where customers would digest the chicken stroganoff on the dance floor itself, to the sound of the twists and hully-gullies. Ramos, with good reason, considered those hi-fis to be poor entertainment, primarily because his self-confessed dream was to be a kind of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, and have a nightclub that was considered mandatory to frequent, like Rick’s in the movie. There was room for such a club in the Rio nightlife, which, in Ramos’s view, was restricted at the time to Sacha’s, which no longer had the same old glitter, and Baron Stuckart’s Top Club. (Bottles didn’t count, because more of its customers were outside than inside the nightclub.)

  One night in 1962 Flávio Ramos went to see Sylvinha Telles’s show at Bottles, during which she sang with a playback of Nelson Riddle’s arrangements. Put like that, it sounds like it must have been the greatest, because Riddle was Sinatra’s arranger, and what greater privilege was there than being “accompanied” by him? In actual fact, the operator of the playback, Aloysio de Oliveira, was separated from the singer by a common shower curtain, working an ancient Webster recorder that was being undernourished by an RCA amplifier that had seen better days—during World War II. It wasn’t quite what Flávio Ramos had in mind when he thought of a show worthy of that music.

  Fate gave him a hand. The caterer and restauranteur José Fernandes, a legend in Rio nightlife, was moving to Brasília and was practically giving away his restaurant, the Au Bon Gourmet in Avenida Copacabana, with all its red velvet. Flávio Ramos bid for the restaurant, changed the entire décor, and transformed its 6 X 40 meter space into a show house for three hundred people. He equipped it with a battery of spotlights, bought Shure microphones, and, together with Aloysio de Oliveira, planned the first show with none other than Tom Jobim, Vinícius de Moraes, João Gilberto, and Os Cariocas. And if Frank Sinatra happened to be passing through Rio, then he would also be included.

  The show was originally planned to run for one month, but having a full house every night made Ramos extend its run by another two weeks. The show only closed due to the terminal fatigue suffered by all of its participants—the artists and producers. They were worn out on a daily basis. The show, scheduled to begin at midnight, never started on time because, just a few minutes before it was due to begin, there was always someone missing. It was almost always João Gilberto. Flávio Ramos would telephone him in a state of desperation and he would answer the phone, with the voice of someone who had just woken up: “Oh, Flávio, is it already time? Just let me take a quick bath and I’ll be on my way.”

  Flávio was seized with panic: “No, don’t come! Don’t leave the house! Take a bath and stay where you are. The car is leaving right now to come and pick you up!”

  Flávio Ramos’s black Cadillac went to fetch João Gilberto in Ipanema, and after several such instances, Ramos decided to make it standard practice in order to avoid unexpected surprises. Later—due in part to slight paranoia—he also extended the privilege to Jobim and Vinícius, who was staying at the São Vicente Clinic. Sometimes the Cadillac would go to pick up Vinícius and would fail to find him at the clinic. But he wasn’t far from the nightclub. In fact, he was already in the neighborhood, in a bar close to the Au Bon Gourmet, inexplicably drinking a domestic whiskey called Mansion House with Badeco—when they could have been helping themselves to the Scotch that Flávio Ramos left in their dressing room.

  Vinícius needed official permission from the Itamaraty to take part in the show. As was completely understandable, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t consider it seemly for one of its vice-consuls to sing sambas in a nightclub with a glass of whiskey in his hand—and to be paid for doing so. But all would be forgiven as long as he refused the vile payoff that was offered to him. Vinícius arranged with Flávio that instead of being paid for his performance, his guests should be allowed to get in to see the show for free. Ramos agreed, but hadn’t counted on Vinícius dragging in a crowd of six or eight guests every night, who drank like fish and seemed to have insatiable appetites for the oysters and steak tartare that were the specialties of the house at the Au Bon Gourmet. By the time the show closed and accounts were tallied up, Vinícius ended up owing Flávio Ramos.

  During the first performances, Vinícius retained his diplomatic decorum, properly dressed and drinking little, just as the Itamaraty had asked him to do. By the end, he was turning up in casual clothes and didn’t bother to count the number of shots he consumed, which was when he gave his best performances. (Which, of course, weren’t as relaxed as the ones he would later give, once he no longer worked for the Itamaraty.) The show owed much of its success to the novelty of being able to see the poet-diplomat-composer singing publicly for the first time.

  The show made the magazine covers, and was showered with praise in all the newspapers. People would book for two or three nights a week; nobody was content with the mere forty-five minutes that the show lasted. Food and beverage service was suspended during the show, and everyone listened with rapt attention.

  The loudest noise was the sighs of the entrepreneur Alberto Faria, and some shriek or other from a socialite—usually, “How beauuutiful!”—when Jobim, Vinícius, João Gilberto, and Os Cariocas performed (for the very first time ever) “Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl from Ipanema).

  Five of the greatest bossa nova classics debuted at the Bon Gourmet show: “Só danço samba,” by Jobim and Vinícius; “Samba do avião” (Song of the Jet), by Jobim; “Samba da benção” and “O astronauta,” both by Baden and Vinícius—and the last, by order of performance on stage, “Garota de Ipanema.” On the night they debuted, nobody knew what would follow when Jobim played a few bars on the piano and João Gilberto sang: “Tom, what if you were to sing a song / That could tell us / What love is?”

  To which Tom replied: “Hey, Joãozinho, I wouldn’t know how / Without Vinícius to write the poetry …”

  The poet then picked up the theme: “In order for this song to happen / It needs to be sung by João …”

  To which João Gilberto, unbelievably modestly, replied: “Ah, but who am I? / I am nothing without you. / It would be better if all three of us sang …”

  And all three chimed in: “Olha que coisa mais linda, mais cheia de graça …” (“Tall and tan and young and lovely …”)

  It was a key moment in everyone’s lives—a moment that would be repeated night after night, for forty-five days, until nobody would even remember that other songs also debuted during that show. And they were far less likely to have remembered that “Corcovado” (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars), “Samba da minha terra” (Samba of My Land), “Insensatez” (How Insensitive), “Samba de uma nota só” (One Note Samba), “Se todos fossem iguais a você” (Someone to Light up My Life) and, with Os Cariocas, “Devagar com a louça” (Go Easy with the China) were also performed. Luckily, the entire show was recorded, and in fact, on more than one night—this time by the lawyer Jorge Karam, someone else who was obsesse
d with the technical aspects of sound and with bossa nova. The combined recordings on those tapes would make a fantastic album, if the participants would allow it to be released.

  The run time of the show at the Bon Gourmet was probably bossa nova’s greatest moment in Brazil. It succeeded in saving the music at a time when the innovative status of the movement was rapidly declining, during which it was being abandoned for other types of music with more commercial appeal. It was a show organized by Aloysio’s staff (not even the newest member, Baden Powell, was given a place, despite being Vinícius’s collaborating partner), and nobody there suspected that the older gang was on the verge of breaking up. In the introduction to “Samba da benção,” the poet described Jobim as “a dear collaborating partner, who has traveled with me through so many songs, and still has so many yet to travel.” Without a doubt, there truly were, but they remained firmly entrenched in the realms of wistful nostalgia, because following that fantastic production run in 1962, the two did not compose together again.

  The reason given by both for this was their travels. In fact, at the end of the year, Jobim went to New York and only returned sporadically; and Vinícius returned to serve once again in Paris, although this did not prevent him from continuing to write with Baden Powell, Carlinhos Lyra, Moacyr Santos, and, briefly, Edu Lobo. It was the end of the Jobim-Vinícius partnership, although their friendship stretched out over thousands of drinking sprees yet to come. But if indeed they had to stop working together, there couldn’t have been a greater swan song than one of the last songs they wrote together: “The Girl from Ipanema.”

  It’s already been explained, but people find it hard to accept the truth: Jobim and Vinícius did not write “The Girl from Ipanema” in the Veloso bar (today called Garota de Ipanema), which was on the street that used to be known as Rua Montenegro and is now Rua Vinícius de Moraes, at the intersection with Rua Prudente de Moraes (no relation). It was never the duo’s style to write music sitting at a table in some bar, although they had probably spent the best hours of their lives in them. Jobim composed the melody meticulously on the piano at his new home in Rua Barão da Torre, and it was originally intended for a musical comedy entitled Blimp, which Vinícius already had worked out in his head but not yet committed to paper.

  Vinícius, in turn, had written the lyrics in Petrópolis, near Rio, as he had done with “Chega de saudade” six years earlier, and it took him just as much work. To begin with, it wasn’t originally called “Garota de Ipanema,” but “Menina que passa” (The Girl Who Passes By), and the entire first verse was different.

  As for the famous girl, Jobim and Vinícius did in fact see her pass by as they sat in the Veloso bar, during the winter of 1962—not just once, but several times, and not always on her way to the beach but also on her way to school, to the dressmaker, and even to the dentist. Mostly because Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, better known as Helô, who was eighteen years of age, five feet, eight inches tall, with green eyes and long, flowing black hair, lived in Rua Montenegro and was already the object of much admiration among patrons of the Veloso, where she would frequently stop to buy cigarettes for her mother—and leave to a cacophony of wolf-whistles.

  The song was released at the Bon Gourmet show in August. The first artists in Brazil to record it were Pery Ribeiro at Odeon and the Tamba Trio at Philips, both in January 1963, in order to keep both recording companies happy. (Claudette Soares managed to record it next.) And in May of the same year, 1963, Jobim himself released the song in the United States on the first record he made there, The Composer of “Desafinado.” After that, in just the first two years (which were also the first two years of Beatlemania), “Garota de Ipanema” was recorded more than forty times in Brazil and the United States, among which were recordings by Nat “King” Cole, Peggy Lee, and Sarah Vaughan.

  The girl, Helô, whistled the song daily on her way to the beach, without realizing that she had been its inspiration. Although she must have already begun to suspect something because, since 1962, two well-informed young men from Fatos & Fotos (Facts & Photos) magazine—reporter Ronaldo Bôscoli and photographer Hélio Santos—spent every waking moment pestering her to allow them to photograph her on the beach, wearing one of those new bikinis that at the time seemed daring, but that today would make do for manufacturing several parachutes. They ended up succeeding, but only after the girl’s father, a hard-line army general, assured himself of their honorable intentions. It was only three years later, in 1965, when Helô was twenty-one and engaged to be married, that Jobim and Vinícius revealed to her—and to the paparazzi—who she really was.

  There followed a veritable stampede, which generated a mixture of pride and anxiety in her father and her fiancé: everyone wanted to meet the “tall and tanned and young and lovely girl from Ipanema.” Rio was celebrating its fourth centenary that year, and no one was considered more appropriate than Helô to be the official symbol of the city, dressed in public school uniform. Her father and her fiancé would not permit it. Two years later, in 1967, Brazilian Cinema decided to film Garota de Ipanema—and who would be better suited to playing the title role, sunbathing in a bikini beneath the Rua Montenegro sun? But once again, her father and her now husband placed themselves firmly between Helô and the eyes of the rest of the world.

  The song continued to inspire universal fantasies about the mythical girl, but the years passed and the world, weary of fighting, decided to get on with life and pursue other interests. In fact, it had almost forgotten about the affair when, twenty-five years after that evening in the Veloso bar, the world was finally able to appreciate, this time au grand complet, the attributes of the original Girl from Ipanema: in the May 1987 edition of Brazilian Playboy. But, you know, twenty-five years isn’t exactly twenty-five days.

  “This is great music, Mr. Oliveira. I’m going to take it back to my country and make it a hit,” exclaimed the American disc jockey, Felix Grant, enthusiastically at the Bon Gourmet during the running of the Jobim-Vinicius-João Gilberto show.

  It would have been great if Grant had done just that, but had he been listening a little more carefully to the what the other disc jockeys in his country were playing, he would have realized that in August of 1962, bossa nova was a far cry from being the best-kept secret in the world. In 1959, the year that bossa nova burst onto the Brazilian music scene, Sarah Vaughan, Nat “King” Cole, and Billy Eckstine were in Brazil—and Vaughan, at least, had heard bossa nova. In 1960, Lena Horne and Sammy Davis, Jr. went over there, and not only did Lena sing “Bim-bom” at the Copacabana Palace and smooch with João Gilberto, but Sammy Davis was accompanied, at the Record Theater in São Paulo, by Hélcio Milito and his tamba, the percussion section that would be the leading feature of the Tamba Trio. But the most important visit in 1960 was that of the least famous musician: guitarist Charlie Byrd. He came, heard, and took bossa nova back to the United States with him.

  At the end of that same year, the American record company Capitol released the album Brazil’s Brilliant João Gilberto in the United States (O amor, o sorriso e a flor in Brazil). In May 1961, it was Tony Bennett’s turn to go to Brazil to perform. And he went already “in the know.” At a gathering at the home of entrepreneur Flávio Ramos, the future owner of Bon Gourmet, Bennett and his musicians listened to Luizinho Eça’s technical dissections of bossa nova’s beat and rhythmical division. One of them, double bass player Don Payne, took the records and gave advice to his friend, saxophonist Stan Getz. At the same time, Reprise released the album The Hi-Los Happen to Bossa Nova, which already included English versions of “Chega de saudade,” “O pato,” “Chora tua tristeza,” “Outra vez,” and eight other bossa novas.

  In July 1961, a battalion of jazz enthusiasts converged on Rio and São Paulo for the American Jazz Festival, and the after-hours fraternization with bossa nova musicians was not restricted to drinking and joint-smoking marathons. One of the visitors, Herbie Mann, had spent the last two years hanging out on the beaches of Ca
lifornia with João Donato and learning this and that about bossa nova. Mann was the first American jazz musician to record an album in Rio using local musicians. So when Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd recorded “Desafinado” in March of 1962 and sold an unbelievable one million copies, the United States had already more than done its homework on the matter.

  It’s very strange that the disc jockey Felix Grant, a man who was paid to listen to records, should have been unaware of all this—and only sheer courtesy on the part of Aloysio de Oliveira could explain the fact that, on that night at the Bon Gourmet, the latter did not call his attention to the fact that Grant had missed the boat in that respect. But nothing can really explain why, following that incident, Aloysio de Oliveira insisted on repeating the story of his encounter with Grant as being of the utmost importance for the dissemination of bossa nova in the United States.

  17

  A Bite of the Apple

  The historic concert: the cover of the Carnegie Hall program

  The New York taxi driver turned around and asked his passenger, “Hey, aren’t you Agostinho dos Santos?”

  Agostinho dos Santos almost looked around him to see who the man was talking about. He had just touched down at Idlewild airport, jumped into that yellow taxi bound for the Diplomat Hotel on 47th Street, and he was already being recognized in New York! The driver explained: his wife listened to the soundtrack of the film, Black Orpheus, from dawn till dusk. Agostinho’s photo wasn’t on the record sleeve, but on hearing the young black man speaking with the same accent, and in the same incomprehensible language as the singer on the record, he deduced that it could only be him. Pleased, Agostinho admitted that he was indeed himself, and thought that the taxi driver might waive his fare in exchange for an autograph. The driver accepted the autograph, but charged him for the ride—the autograph was for his wife, not for himself.