Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World (45 page)

Three days after the
Night of Love, a Smile, and a Flower
performance, the American star Lena Horne sang “Bim-bom” in Portuguese in the Golden Room of the Copacabana Palace and had to give a threefold encore. She had learned the song by listening to João Gilberto’s album, and now wanted to meet him in person, if possible. The reporter João Luiz de Albuquerque made it possible, taking João Gilberto to Lena’s suite at the Copacabana Palace, where she was rehearsing with her musicians. As soon as she saw the singer, Lena threw herself at him and started firing off how he was absolutely this, that, and the other. João Gilberto sensed that Lena Horne was enthusiastic
about something, but began to feel a little desperate: “I don’t understand a word this woman is saying!”

When she finally stopped squawking, João picked up his guitar to sing. Lena’s musicians tried to accompany him, hesitantly at first. But after a few minutes, the music they produced sounded as if it had been rehearsed for weeks.

Other American singers started to discover bossa nova. The year before, Sarah Vaughan had come to Brazil for the first time, heard Johnny Alf at the Baiúca nightclub in São Paulo, and invited him to go back to America with her. Alf froze and pretended not to understand. Imagine going to America with Sarah Vaughan, if Sarah Vaughan was everything he wanted to be! Nat “King” Cole was also in Rio, performing at the Copacabana Palace and gathering material for his Latin records. Sylvinha Telles recorded two tracks with him. Nat Cole was one of João Gilberto’s idols, and João made a point of seeing him up close. He hung around in a hallway at Odeon studios and waited around for two hours next to the door of the studio Cole was in. Nat “King” Cole finally came out, smoking a cigarette in a holder, and swiftly—in a matter of seconds—passed within millimeters of João Gilberto, without stopping for a hello. That night, at Tom’s house, the mesmerized João Gilberto commented, “He’s not black. He’s blue!”

João Gilberto wasn’t as friendly as that for everyone. One evening, he was peacefully at home with Astrud and a friend, Alberto Fernandes, when Jorge Amado, who had been the best man at his wedding, phoned him. Famous French authors Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were visiting Brazil, and were at his home in Rio, and wouldn’t it be great if João swung by there with his guitar? “OK, Jorge. I’m on my way.”

Sartre and De Beauvoir are long dead, and João Gilberto still hasn’t made it.

Fisherman-songwriter Roberto Menescal and the 792-pound jewfish

Collection of Roberto Menescal

A
fter returning Carlinhos Lyra’s ring, Ronaldo Bôscoli entered into musical nuptials with Roberto Menescal. That was the beginning of what Bôscoli classified as “the long holiday” in all their lives. It was a marriage between music and the sea. Today we can deduce that bossa nova was born with the taste of salt in its mouth, because beach songs like “Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl from Ipanema), written by Jobim and Vinícius in 1962, and “Samba de verão” (Summer Samba), written by Marcos and Paulo Sérgio Valle in 1964, were huge hits and have come to symbolize the movement so well. But it wasn’t always that way. The sea only began to be explored in the summers of 1960–1961, when Menescal and Bôscoli put their harpoons and pens together to make it happen.

Menescal did not compose until that summer. His only previous attempt, “Jura de pombo” (The Dove’s Promise), was such a painful labor for both him and his lyricist, Bôscoli himself, that Menescal decided to settle for just being a guitarist, like Barney Kessel, Charlie Byrd, or Jim Hall. (Alayde Costa recorded the song, but that didn’t count because Alayde was a friend.) Without a doubt, the shadow of Carlinhos Lyra at Bôscoli’s side weighed heavily on him. Menescal didn’t think he could ever be as spontaneous, tuneful, and lyrical as Lyra. But now that he had fallen out with practically the entire gang (they had even broken up the guitar academies), the entire sea opened up for Menescal to compose with Bôscoli. And after diving in, the following songs emerged, almost on the first try: “Nós e o mar” (Us and the Sea), “Rio,” “Ah! Se eu pudesse” (Ah! If Only I Could), “Mar, amar” (Sea, Love), “A morte de um Deus de Sal” (The Death of a Salt God) and—does it really need mentioning?—”O barquinho” (The Little Boat). They were all part of the salt/sun/south theme.

One decisive event that made this possible was when Menescal managed to tear Bôscoli from dry land and entice him to go on fishing expeditions in Cabo Frio, Arraial do Cabo, and Rio das Ostras with his crew: Chico Pereira, Henrique Peropeba, Jomico Azulay, Ronaldo Cientista, former Garoto da Lua Toninho Botelho, and occasionally Luizinho Eça and Luís Carlos Vinhas. Bôscoli and Chico Feitosa joined them, and sometimes Bôscoli’s girlfriend Nara would also go. At the beginning, Menescal and Chico Pereira rented a trawler with a gasoline engine, the
Thiago II
, with a capacity for ten people, which became the “little boat” in the song. Afterward, they bought a share in a sailboat, the
Luanda
. So that they didn’t have to sleep out in the open air, they rented a fisherman’s house in Arraial de Cabo and took iron-framed canvas cots with them, or slept on beach mats, the kind where the sand seeps through the weave and stitching and tattoos the body of whoever happens to be lying on one. But they were young and it was all in the name of adventure.

Menescal and the others went harpoon fishing, but nobody could match his skill. His fishing companions agreed that Menescal seemed unbeatable. He would find fish, either in their burrows or swimming around, in all sorts of places—yellowtail, marlin, and grouper. These were gentle fish, which made the whole affair distasteful, because although the fish were in their element, Menescal had the weapons—the harpoons—and a simply lethal aim. His every shot stained the ocean floor with blood. It’s hard to believe that such savagery spawned the bossa nova songs that eulogized the sea as an idyllic setting.

The underwater battles were only fair when the fish he caught were jewfish or giant manta rays, fish that refused to kowtow to anyone. But Menescal always won; a photograph of him with an 800-pound jewfish, humiliatingly hooked, was published in several newspapers, much to the shame of the fish. Despite his celebrity status, his talents as a fisherman were still fodder for mockery in Ipanema—nobody who went fishing truly believed in his achievements. Until one day at the Ipanema beach, in front of Rua Farme de Amoedo, Menescal put on his wetsuit, grabbed his harpoon from the car, and said to his friends: “I’m just going to go and get a fish.”

The others laughed, but he dove into the water and within a few minutes was back with a grouper. It’s worth noting that, in 1960, big fish still frequented the waters by the beach at Ipanema.

Bôscoli was very impressed when Menescal tried to prove to him that God did in fact exist, by introducing him to the bottom of the sea and making him realize that there was an entire “city of lights” down there. It was possible that God did indeed exist, but Bôscoli preferred to discover this in the safest way possible: putting his mask on and immersing his head in the water merely a few feet, while his legs were held inside the boat. In fact, his main job on the fishing expeditions was as the “coach,” according to his own definition. He would place himself at the highest point on the boat and shout instructions to the gang—and the fish—down below: “Go, Chico! Pull back, Menescal! Hey fish, look out!”

They wore wetsuits to dive, but Chico Feitosa chose to wear women’s underwear beneath his. He said they were more comfortable. On the beach, they were the first ones in Rio to wear the printed shorts now worn by surfers, which were not yet in the stores, but made for them by the wife of one of the doormen at Menescal’s building. But the fishing trips weren’t always peaceful. Menescal would not allow alcohol on board, which forced Bôscoli and Toninho Botelho to sneak Scotch or rum onto the boat, disguised in bottles of
guaraná
with a dark exterior.

Ceci, the boatman who steered the
Thiago II
, did not believe that Bôscoli and Menescal were recording artists “on the radio.” Radios were rare items in fishermen’s homes, and televisions were nonexistent. The two of them
could not accept that Ceci refused to show their success the reverence it deserved, so one weekend they brought a battery-operated radio onto the boat. Within a few minutes, Rádio Jornal do Brasil played “The Little Boat,” and the disc jockey announced the name of the song and its authors: “Sung by Maysa, and written by Menescal and Bôscoli.”

“See, do you believe us now or not?” Menescal challenged him. “You heard what the guy said: ‘The Little Boat’ by Menescal and Bôscoli.”

“So what?,” argued Ceci. “You’re not the only Menescal and Bôscoli in the world.”

Perhaps not, although the duo’s songs about the sea became the talk of the town in Rio. But Ceci, for sure, probably wouldn’t even believe in João Gilberto if he saw him.

Bôscoli and Menescal also found it hard to believe in João Gilberto. The only time they had ever managed to take him to Cabo Frio, he refused to get on board the boat and take part in the fishing trip. The others went out to sea and João Gilberto sat down on a rock to wait for them to come back—fully clothed and all, in the kind of sun that would melt cathedrals, although there were a few trees in the vicinity. When they returned, it was almost nightfall and they found him sitting in the same place—completely puce, blistered from exposure to the sun, and moaning, “Why did you do this to me?” It was lucky that when this happened in 1961, he had already recorded “The Little Boat.”

Long before João Gilberto actually recorded it, the song had already become his way of announcing himself at the window of his friends’ homes, late at night. On hearing him whistling “The Little Boat,” the man or lady of the house would know who it was and would go down to tell him who was there. Depending on the list of attendees, João Gilberto would either come in to join the gathering or leave to go and whistle under another window. He wasn’t very available. His presence at a party became more coveted in Rio than that of the state governor himself, Carlos Lacerda—perhaps because, unlike Lacerda, he accepted only one of every hundred invitations. It became a matter of pride for any hostess to be able to tell her guests, “João Gilberto is coming!,” although there was never the slightest guarantee that it really would happen—and more often than not, it didn’t.

A large number of hostesses would also tell their guests that João Gilberto would be coming—even if they had never laid eyes on him in their life—just to guarantee the attendance of all the invitees. But even at the parties at which he did make an appearance, nobody was ever sure if João Gilberto would stay very long, or if he would even stay at all. One night, he arrived at Billy Blanco’s apartment and greeted everyone in the room, one by one, with his eyes—he knew 99 percent of them—and on completing his sweep of the living room, turned and walked back out of the door without saying
a word. “The remaining one percent must have scared him off,” Blanco assumed. At the same time, he was liable to turn up at friends’ houses without being invited, when he was least expected, and sing until people started taking turns falling asleep in order to go on listening.

At that time, João Gilberto’s main means of communication with the outside world was the telephone. He would phone his friend Laurinha, the wife of producer Abelardo Figueiredo, and talk to her for six straight hours, with a mere forty-minute break so that he could eat something—during which he would ask Laurinha to stay on the line. Which she would do, of course.

Many began to adhere to the bossa nova style. Some adhesions could be considered perfectly natural, like that of Wilson Simonal, who sang cha-cha at the Top Club, a nightclub in Copacabana; Wilson Miranda, ex-samba, ex-rock, ex-twist, and ex-hully-gully; and Jorge Ben, who sang things like “Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini” and whose idol, besides João Gilberto, was the Brazilian rock star Ronnie Cord. Despite their dark pasts, they were all merely marking time, just waiting for bossa nova to come along. But it was best not to talk about the past because Alayde Costa had originally sung bolero, before being converted by João Gilberto, and Claudette Soares had sung
baião
. Far more natural was the approach to bossa nova by ex-romantic singers, like Sérgio Ricardo, Rosana Toledo, Sílvio Cesar, and Pery Ribeiro, or by jazz singers, like Leny Andrade, Flora Purim, and, years later, Rosa Maria. They made the transition very smoothly.