Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World (15 page)

That same year, 1952, his friend Newton Mendonça also decided he needed to change his life. And he did, but not significantly. He passed an exam and became an employee of the Civil Servants’ Hospital (by chance, in the Finance Department), where he only ever turned up to collect his paycheck, and he continued to play the piano at night. The theory is worthy of discussion, but this break in the symmetry between Tom and Newton might perhaps explain why, between those two boys of similar talents, Tom Jobim became Tom Jobim—and why Newton Mendonça did not become Tom Jobim.

Although the future would take them down very different roads, it’s likely that, had it been possible, either one of them would have traded places at the time with a man who was doing everything they loved with the piano: Johnny Alf.

Alf was the pianist at the Hotel Plaza nightclub, in Avenida Princesa Isabel, in Copacabana. He played his own compositions, like “Rapaz de bem” (Nice Guy), “Céu e mar” (Sky and Sea), “O que é amar” (What It Is to Love), “Estamos sós” (We’re Alone), and “É só olhar” (Just look), which he had written some time before and which would be the precursors to bossa nova. Alf also played all sorts of jazz themes stamped with the imprimatur of George Shearing or Lennie Tristano; and occasional songs by other singers and musicians who would make pilgrimages to hear him play: Tom Jobim, João Donato,
João Gilberto, Lúcio Alves, Dick Farney, Dolores Duran, Ed Lincoln, Paulo Moura, Baden Powell, and a group of young people who were barely old enough to frequent clubs, like Luizinho Eça, Carlinhos Lyra, Sylvinha Telles, Candinho, Durval Ferreira, and Maurício Einhorn.

Does that mean then that Johnny Alf was a success? No. The Plaza had the reputation of being bad luck and hardly anyone went there. But, for the modern musicians of 1954, it was
the
place because the lack of customers meant that they could play whatever they wanted. Almost all the regulars had been followers of Alf’s career since he made his first professional appearance in 1952 at César de Alencar’s recently inaugurated Cantina do César (Caesar’s Canteen). Alencar needed a pianist to aid the digestion of the guests who ate at his restaurant, and young Johnny Alf was recommended to him by Dick Farney and Nora Ney, his friends from the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club. César de Alencar had such protruding ears that his nickname in some circles was “Dumbo,” but it appeared he also used them to listen. When the Cantina food proved indigestible, he converted the restaurant into an
inferninho
(little hell) and permitted Alf to play whatever he wanted.

The first to go and see him at the Cantina were João Donato and Dolores Duran, his neighbors in Tijuca, and they took others with them. Dolores, during her breaks from the Clube da Chave, would sometimes grant the favor of an impromptu performance, accompanied by a young pianist named Ribamar; or sometimes Alf himself would accompany João Gilberto, who would restrict himself to singing, without his guitar, in the darkest corner of the nightclub. The repertoire was always the same:
lúcios
and
dicks
by the dozen, that is,
samba-canções
and some foxtrots. People felt as if they were on New York’s 52nd Street when Alf and Donato revealed their knowledge of jazz; and Alf, as a singer, could almost be mistaken for Sarah Vaughan, even singing in Portuguese.

A Sinter producer, Ramalho Neto, convinced his recording company to make a 78 r.p.m. with Alf, even if it was just an instrumental. Alf sat down at the piano and formed a Nat “King” Cole–style trio with Garoto on guitar and Vidal on double bass. They recorded “Falseta” (Deceit) by Alf and “De cigarro em cigarro” (From Cigarette to Cigarette) by Luiz Bonfá. Nobody expected the record to top the charts or to be danced to, but it received such an indifferent response that Paulo Serrano did not want to persist with Alf, the opposite of what he would do almost immediately with Donato. In the sixties, those two tracks (which few people heard) would be readily described as “already being bossa nova.” This is an exaggeration. In fact, they’re
samba-canções
with jazz improvisations (Alf inserted a small interval from “Jeepers Creepers” into “Falseta” [Deceit]), and an extreme richness of harmony, but there was nothing new in the rhythm. Alone and more independent,
he would be much better, which would explain why those boys followed him like rats followed the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

During the next two years, the group tried to follow Johnny Alf as he moved from nightclub to nightclub, but sometimes he was hired to play at places that were a little too expensive for the gang’s pockets, like the Monte Carlo in Gávea, or the Clube da Chave itself. Then Alf returned to Leme, starting at the Mandarim, in Rua Gustavo Sampaio; then the Drink, in Avenida Princesa Isabel; and finally he crossed the street and established himself at the Plaza in 1954. With so much young talent gathered together, almost all the bold rhythms and harmonics that gave rise to bossa nova were developed in the early hours when the nightclub was empty. Drummer Milton Banana, who played dance music at the Drink with organist Djalma Ferreira, on the other side of the street, would take advantage of his breaks and go and participate in the jams.

One memorable moment, according to Carlinhos Lyra, was when an impromptu vocal quartet composed of Carlinhos himself, Alf, Donato, and João Gilberto—who, according to Carlinhos, was nicknamed Zé Maconha (“Reefer Joe”)—was formed under the light of the street lamp in the Plaza doorway. Carlinhos also described João’s appearance as invariable—a blue square jacket, a white shirt, and high-water trousers—and he doesn’t remember hearing him play guitar at that time.

Not all of Johnny’s fans crossed paths at the Plaza. Tom Jobim and Carlinhos Lyra, for example, would often go and never saw each other there. But for more than a year, until the middle of 1955, experiences were being cooked up that would soon result in something. And just as the dish was about to be served, Johnny Alf accepted an offer from a show-business agent from São Paulo named Heraldo Funaro, and moved there to inaugurate a place called Baiúca.

His young Rio disciples suddenly felt like orphans because São Paulo, at that time, seemed further away than the Belgian Congo. But people were already earning higher salaries in São Paulo than in Rio. Certain that Alf would not return, the boys had to make their own musical revolution.

In Billy Blanco’s version of events, “Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro” (Rio de Janeiro Symphony) was conceived on board a bus in the summer of 1954, when he was going from Praça Mauá to his home in Ipanema. The bus took a turn onto Avenida Princesa Isabel, and when it reached gorgeous Avenida Atlàntica, the mountain, sun, and sea of Copacabana would suddenly open up in the distance, in cinemascope. As if Billy had not passed this area every day
for years, the panorama he viewed from the window struck him as a divine revelation, and a musical phrase, complete with lyrics, filled his head:

“Rio de Janeiro, that I shall always love / Rio de Janeiro, the mountain, sun and sea.”

Billy went into ecstasy, and then immediately panicked. It was too good an idea to lose, and he was concerned that he would forget a melodic line he had just composed before he reached home. He sang over and over to himself:

“Rio de Janeiro, that I have always loved / Rio de Janeiro, the mountain, sun and sea.”

He couldn’t stand it any longer, and in the middle of the journey indicated that he wished to get off the bus. The bus stopped and he jumped off, running in search of a phone. There were no public telephones in 1954, and if you wanted to make a call from the street, you had to call from a bar. He went into the first one he came across, in Rua República do Peru, and told the Portuguese cashier that it was an emergency. (And in a way, it was.) The cashier reluctantly agreed, and Billy called Tom Jobim:

“Tom, listen to this: ‘Rio de Janeiro, that I have always loved / Rio de Janeiro, the mountain, sun and sea.’”

But telephone connections then were much worse than today, and the bar was crammed with its regular vagrants in Bermuda shorts and thong sandals, discussing soccer. And there was the noise from the hellish traffic. Billy had to repeat the musical phrase several times, shouting at the top of his lungs, causing every pair of ears and eyes in the bar to flash in his direction like arrows:

“‘Rio de Janeiro, that I have always loved / Rio de Janeiro, the mountain, sun and sea.’” Tom, write this down before I forget it! I’m on my way there!”

And thus, without much ado, the first few chords of the beautiful “Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro” by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Billy Blanco were created.

Regardless of where it was conceived, on board a bus or on a piano in Rua Nascimento Silva, “Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro” was completed at the beginning of 1954, but was not recorded until the end of that year. Paulo Serrano, of Sinter, managed to get Billy and Jobim to sign a contract giving priority to his record label. But the record was expensive to produce; after being orchestrated and arranged for the several voices that Tom and Billy had in mind, “Sinfonia” ended up being at least fifteen minutes long and had to be recorded on a
long-play
. Long-plays (people had not yet become familiar enough with them to call them LPs), even the small ten-inch ones, were luxury items in
Brazil, so much so that only music that was guaranteed a good return was recorded on them. And nothing guaranteed that “Sinfonia” would be a huge success with the masses. Serrano left the musical scores in a drawer, waiting for better days, and it was likely that they would have stayed there for a good long while if João de Barro (the eclectic composer of “Copacabana” and “Chiquita bacana” and at the time the A&R man of Continental) had not heard it played by Tom—who was, by the way, his employee at the recording company.

The cast of Continental was also eclectic. It included radio idols, like Emilinha Borba and Jorge Goulart, and even classy acts like Dick Farney, Lúcio Alves, Gilberto Milfont, Nora Ney, Doris Monteiro, and Os Cariocas. With a team like that and Radamés Gnatalli’s arrangements, it was possible to make “Sinfonia” a great record, one that would even be profitable. João de Barro negotiated with Serrano to be awarded the project. Serrano said it wouldn’t be a problem, if Continental would loan them Lúcio Alves for one record with Sinter. João de Barro agreed, “Sinfonia” was recorded at Continental, and Lúcio Alves made a record at Sinter, without knowing that he had been used as the bargaining chip in a transaction.

The original ten-inch LP of “Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro” is today an almost priceless collector’s item, mainly because it was a resounding failure. Continental only cut one thousand copies and still had to face the annoyance of a surplus. The entire symphony, with the vocals from that cast, took up the whole of side A; side B bore an instrumental version of the piece, with Gnatalli’s quintet. It was truly a great record, but none of the songs (“Arpoador,” “Noites do Rio” [Rio Nights], “O samba de amanhã” [Tomorrow’s Samba], “Hino ao sol” [Ode to the Sun] and “Descendo o morro” [Descending the Hill]) were successes or even survived independently, except in local gatherings, where small amateur groups (like that of the Castro-Neves brothers, in Laranjeiras) used them as jazz themes.