Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World (31 page)

It wasn’t exactly love at first sight for Paulistas. A few days after the lunch at Álvaro Ramos’s house, João Gilberto was one of the fifty Odeon artists who made an impromptu appearance at a benefit performance held in the old Piratininga theater in the Brás neighborhood. (The sound system was provided courtesy of the recording company.) The radio stations and stores still hadn’t
started promoting the record, and it was expecting too much for the same audience that thrilled over the square Catarino and his orchestra to receive it enthusiastically. João Gilberto sang—or at least, started to sing—”Chega de saudade” and was, quite simply, booed off the stage.

This disastrous beginning did not prevent him from being behaving like a model of cooperation with Odeon and submitting to the humiliating promotional schedule needed to market the record. With Adail Lessa permanently riding his back in São Paulo and, later, in Rio, João Gilberto went to radio and TV stations, granted short interviews, sang live on shows like Oswaldo Sargentelli’s
Viva meu samba
(Long Live My Samba) on Rádio Mauá, and posed for photographs—all for the sake of “Chega de saudade.” It was all right, he’d do what they told him, but no one could force him to like it. He even commented to Luís Cláudio, “We could be the only ones on the radio, don’t you think, Luís? You, me, Tom and Vinícius …Without all that crap that infests it …”

Probably only God knew how difficult it was for him, but one of the most important performances in his schedule was his appearance on
Programa Paulo Gracindo
(Paulo Gracindo’s Show), one of TV Rio’s highest-rated variety shows on Sunday nights. A few years earlier, the ground floor of the TV Rio building, in Posto 6 in Copacabana, had housed the now closed Clube da Chave, where Jobim and Vinícius had met. Now it was a theater, and its seats were in high demand for Gracindo’s show. On the night on which João Gilberto made his appearance, there were other strong acts lined up. One of them was the first Brazilian rock ‘n’ roll group, Bolão e seus Rockettes. Another was a competition for dogs in fancy dress. It was between these two acts that João Gilberto sat on a stool and sang.

But it was worth it. The “Chega de saudade” 78 r.p.m. made the
Radiolândia
(Radioland) and
Revista do Radio
(Radio Magazine) music charts at the end of the year, fighting with Celly Campello singing, mind you, “Lacinhos cor-de-rosa” (Pink Shoelaces) for play time on the air.

You may not have liked them, but your maid adored them. Another Bahian, Anísio Silva, and a Pernambuco native, Orlando Dias, dominated the toothpick-legged Victrolas when João Gilberto came along. They were both thirty-five years old and were classified as
sentimental
singers, although Anísio Silva, whose hit was a brassy bolero entitled “Alguém me disse” (Someone Told Me) (revived by Gal Costa in 1990), seemed somewhat reserved compared to Orlando Dias. The latter, famous for being a widower, gave a really heartrending performance when he sang, and was capable of soaking a handkerchief the size of a tablecloth during “Perdoa-me pelo bem que te quero” (Forgive Me for How Much I Love You), another insufferable bolero. Both of them worked to promote their popularity in
the cinemas, circuses, town squares, amusement parks, and barbecue restaurants in both the suburbs and rural zones. Both of them sold a minimum of one hundred thousand copies of each 78 r.p.m.—equivalent to one million today, given the number of victrolas in use. And they were both contracted by Odeon, João Gilberto’s recording label.

Sustained by the six-figure sales numbers of Anísio Silva and Orlando Dias, Odeon was able to allow itself the luxury of keeping classy acts like Lúcio Alves and Sylvinha Telles on their books in order to acquire greater prestige. In 1958, Lúcio’s career was at a crossroads. In just a few years, since the days of the “singer of the little masses,” he had become too old for the younger audience, while continuing to seem too modern to old
squares
. Despite his phenomenal talent, he was at risk of being remembered for a powdered milk commercial, which he had recorded in 1956 (“The Mococa cow / Is asking / Moooooo …”), rather than for the way he influenced an entire brilliant generation of vocal ensemble singers and arrangers. Nor did Sylvinha appear to be cut out to please the proletariat. She was an extremely polished singer whose repertoire only included songs of the highest caliber, and she did not suffer from occasional vocal exhalations like Dolores or Maysa.

According to the books at Odeon, Lúcio sold no more than five thousand records, and Sylvinha barely ten thousand; but the London head office of the recording company felt that those numbers were reasonable, given that the Brazilian branch did not employ more prestigious singers.

João Gilberto had everything he needed to be included in that category. But with the launch in São Paulo and his subsequent discovery in the Rio market, “Chega de saudade” sold fifteen thousand 78 r.p.m.s from August to December 1958. Odeon still didn’t know that that minute and fifty-nine seconds of music, which had been hell to record, would be expanded, in January and February 1959, into an album entitled
Chega de saudade
that would sell, right off the bat, thirty-five thousand copies—and that, by André Midani’s 1990 calculations, would eventually pass the five hundred thousand copies-sold mark in Brazil alone. Odeon also didn’t realize that the music contained therein would, quite simply, change everything.

When the 78 r.p.m. with “Chega de saudade” came off the press, jet black and lustrous, João Gilberto took it in person to Lúcio Alves. His action can be attributed as courtesy to an old friend, but also as an example of the eager desire for approval from the man who had been his model. What did João Gilberto secretly want to hear? Probably a few gasps of admiration from Lúcio, when the latter realized that the new, modern sound that so many of his peers had sought after
for so long had finally been pulled together by João in that record. João knocked on the door of Lúcio’s apartment in Copacabana, and wanted to put the record on the turntable right away.

“Chega de saudade” started playing, but instead of delicate flutes and string instruments, what they heard was the sinister roar of engines, five floors below, with
vrooooms
fit to make the building shake. Lúcio’s apartment, on the corner of Rua Raul Pompéia and Rua Francisco Sá, in Posto 6, was located above the Snack Bar, the meeting place for neighborhood rockers, like Carlos Imperial, and a wild gang led by young Erasmo Carlos and Tim Maia. With nothing else to do but get into fights and discuss the creation of a rock group that they would name The Snakes, the boys entertained themselves by revving the engines of their parked Lambrettas, making it impossible for good Christian folk in the neighborhood to listen to music in a civilized fashion.
Any
music, much less “Chega de saudade.”

It was irritating, and João Gilberto began to feel desperate. Lúcio decided to retaliate, in a manner that his family in gentle Cataguazes, Minas Gerais, would not have approved of, but that proved to be the only way to restore peace in the block: dropping harmless but noisy firecrackers on the rabble below. The first explosions startled the rockers, and the following ones caused havoc worthy of
The Wild One
, but as they didn’t know where the missiles were coming from, the punks were unable to retaliate. João Gilberto enjoyed the game tremendously, and behaved like a child, throwing the little bombs on the louts. When they finally gave in and scattered, João Gilberto was able to play his record for Lúcio Alves.

Lúcio listened to it attentively and sarcastically declared, “This is it, João. You’ve made it.”

Was his attitude somewhat cold? Not really. Lúcio wasn’t being intentionally mean—because, after all, he thought the record was very good—but nothing about it really gave him cause for revelation. Of course, the one thing that was different about it was that João had gotten rid of the dramatic inflections and depth of voice typical of Orlando Silva (or of Lúcio himself). João was now “singing softly,” like Jonas Silva and the American singers that he, João, used to listen to at the Murray in 1950. That guitar beat vaguely reminded Lúcio of Donato’s accordion and Johnny Alf’s piano, although it seemed more organized and compact than the sounds that had emerged from those late-night jam sessions at the Plaza nightclub in 1954. And the percussion section wasn’t as overwhelming as before.

If there was one thing about the new João Gilberto that impressed him, it was his new-found ability to divide musical phrases—praise which, coming from Lúcio Alves, should have been cherished, considering that a different division, one that was full of surprises, was the great specialty of the former
Namorado da Lua. João Gilberto had indeed made it, and he knew what Lúcio meant.

Another old friend, João Donato, was caught by surprise, but for different reasons. Soon after “Chega de saudade” was recorded, André Midani was in his office at Odeon with João Gilberto when Donato stuck his Brylcreemed head round the door and shouted, “Ah-ha! So, Brazil’s greatest singer has finally made a record!”

João Gilberto leaped out of his chair as if he’d been ejected from it and tore out of the room, just like in a cartoon, causing a small whirlwind as he rushed past Donato. The latter gave a wicked giggle. Apparently, João had tried—and succeeded—in recording without Donato knowing. He would die if Donato thought he was singing “nyah nyah nyah-nyah nyahs.”

In 1958, at the age of twenty-four, João Donato behaved in the same way he had when at fifteen, still wearing shorts, he frequented the fan clubs of all his idols without feeling that he really belonged to any particular one. Only now, he was doing it professionally. With Johnny Alf’s departure to São Paulo in 1955, he had become perhaps the most respected musician in Rio. And, unfortunately, the least trustworthy. He was widely touted as someone who could hit the right chord even if he was surrounded by Flamengo fans celebrating their three-time soccer championship. The problem was that he gave the impression that he actually preferred to work under those kinds of conditions.

His accordion reigned supreme, but from 1954 on, he started to concentrate on piano also and later would take up the trombone, with which he hoped one day to overshadow his idol Frank Rosolino, Stan Kenton’s trombonist. If he was considered flighty for not settling on playing a single instrument, the genres of music he favored drove people even more crazy. João favored, quite simply, all types; it was a miracle he hadn’t invented something like the “fox-
baião
.” And he had no desire to adjust his repertoire to suit his audience.

From 1950 to 1958, Donato made appearances at dozens of jam sessions in clubs like Tatuís and Copagolf; he played
rancheiras
(a kind of Brazilian country music) on the show
Manhã na roça
(Morning in the Cornfield) on Rádio Guanabara; he played locally with master flutist Altamiro Carrilho and with the conductor Copinha’s orchestra; he spent brief periods in São Paulo, in places like the new Baiúca in Praça Roosevelt and down-market places like the dance club Cubadanças; back in Rio, he joined organist Djalma Ferreira’s combo at the Drink nightclub, that of Fafá Lemos at the Monte Carlo, and that of Ed Lincoln at the Plaza; he accompanied Vanja Orico in the Golden Room of the Copacabana Palace and several other singers in rooms that were far less golden; he played
carnival dances at a place called Ranchinho do Alvarenga (Alvarenga’s Little Lodge) in Posto 6 in 1957; and he played at all kinds of dance events, even at debutante balls and proms.