Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World (46 page)

Meanwhile, names that had been worshipped by the kids in the fifties, like Dick Farney, Lúcio Alves, and Tito Madi, were left by the wayside, despite all attempts at integration. The three of them, who had sown the seeds of the original bossa nova, became its greatest victims—not to mention Johnny Alf. Dick Farney and Lúcio Alves even recorded at Elenco, the bossa nova label founded by Aloysio de Oliveira in 1963, and Lúcio took part in the first bossa nova show at the School of Architecture in 1959, but both of them felt as though they didn’t belong. At the height of bossa nova, already living in São Paulo, Dick preferred to concentrate on his piano, doing shows and making instrumental jazz records, as if he didn’t want to be mistaken for being part of the movement. Lúcio, in turn, admitted several years later that he felt “cheated” on witnessing the recently acquired liberty enjoyed by singers—which was due, in part, to him—and which was limiting his opportunities for work. And the reclusive Tito Madi was invited to Nara Leão’s apartment on several occasions, but something always prevented him from going.

The little boat: Maysa and the gang sailing the waters of Bossa Nova

Collection of Roberto Menescal

W
hile the known universe was getting acquainted with bossa nova in 1961, the latter hung out in Rua Duvivier in Copacabana, in a dead-end alleyway that humorist Sérgio Porto years earlier had christened Beco das Garrafadas (Flying Bottles Lane). The name was rapidly simplified to Beco das Garrafas (Bottles Lane), which was far more dignified, yet still refered to the residents’ annoying habit of throwing bottles at nightclubbers. The grenadiers were never identified, but they must have been extremely bad shots, because there is no record of anyone actually being hit on the head. They were more successful when they threw water or urine. One such victim was the minister of the Supreme Labor Court, Carlos Coqueijo, a friend of Vinícius de Moraes, a sometime composer, and the writer of “É preciso perdoar” (It’s Necessary to Forgive), which João Gilberto would record in 1973.

In 1961, the nightclubs in the Lane were, in order from the inside of the alleyway out, the Little Club, the Baccara, the Bottles Bar, and the Ma Griffe. Of the four, only Ma Griffe dedicated itself primarily to the business of prostitution, although it also had a piano that, until recently, had been the charge of Newton Mendonça. The other three merely hosted the best music that could be heard south of Guanabara bay. Two of them, the Little Club and Bottles, had the same owners, the Italians Giovanni and Alberico Campana, who were always willing to support young talent, as long as they drew a full house.

This wasn’t hard. The two nightclubs each had a maximum capacity of seventy people, as long as they didn’t wear shoulder pads in their jackets—and there were far more than this who were interested in seeing the “pocket shows” staged nightly by the new duo, Miéle and Bôscoli. They introduced Brazil to a new kind of show: that of “deluxe” poverty. Just like Miéle, who two years previously had only one pair of pants, but they were dress pants, the Lane shows had great music provided by artists whom shortly thereafter money couldn’t buy, but everything else about the shows was poorer than poor, starting with the production. Miéle and Bôscoli planned the entire show, organized the artists, wrote the repertoire, did the lighting (with a single spotlight and empty toilet paper rolls), projected the slides, looked after the sound (with the help of Chico Pereira), and directed the performance—all without remuneration, and they even thought it was fun.

Instead of money, they settled for free Scotch, but even then they had to drink it straight up because none of the nightclubs had refrigerators. The ice, bought in blocks by Giovanni and Alberico, was for the customers. In order to have their drinks on the rocks, Miéle and Bôscoli would arrange for pianist Sérgio Mendes to play a thunderous introduction—Oscar Peterson– style—to certain songs, during which they would chip off a few chunks of ice without the owners (who were also the waiters) noticing, or noticing only when it was too late. The only ones who were paid properly (in cash, at the
end of the show) were the artists, but they didn’t get to drink for free. And there was one who, at the beginning, actually paid for the privilege of playing: Sérgio Mendes.

At the age of twenty in 1961, Mendes was not only unpaid, he was expected to buy drinks and pay for what he consumed. “You’re still learning,” Alberico would say, with his Italian accent. “So you have to pay to learn.” Mendes submitted himself to the experience because he could now afford to do so. In the mid-fifties, while still in short pants, he caught the ferry in Niterói to go to the Lojas Murray and hear his idols’ records for free: Stan Kenton, who was still the craze, and a young pianist named Horace Silver. At the end of the afternoon, the Murray customers would all chip in and pay his fare for the return ferry back to Niterói. It wasn’t as though he was poor. His father, a doctor, wouldn’t give him any money. His childhood had been gloomy, ravaged by scoliosis, which for years forced him to wear a plaster cast while he studied the piano. His parents would shave his head when he got bad grades in school. In order to make some pocket money, he formed a trio with his friend Tião Neto, also from Niterói, who played the double bass, and a rotating cycle of percussionists. The three played at all sorts of dances—only they played jazz, which nobody could dance to. When they were asked to play waltzes at graduation dances, the only one they knew was “Lover,” by Rodgers and Hart. After all of this, Sérgio Mendes, who was already an accomplished pianist, thought it child’s play when some idiot threw firecrackers under his piano at Bottles during a verse of “All the Things You Are.”

Around 1960, he started leading impromptu jazz and bossa nova jams on Sunday afternoons at the Little Club, which served as rites of initiation for hundreds of Rio teenagers and many amateur musicians. The jams were good business for everyone. The kids got in for free and filled the place to capacity, but paid for the rum-and-Cokes they consumed. The professional musicians also played for free, but in their case, they could drink more or less what they wanted and were able to play the music they really liked, far from the constraints of their
square
work at the dance halls, at nightclub dances, or in the orchestras at TV Tupi or TV Rio. What they loved was jazz, until bossa nova provided them with a series of modern and unrestrained themes that were marvelous for improvising: songs like “Menina feia” (Ugly Girl), “Não faz assim” (Don’t Do That), “Desafinado” (Off-Key), “Batida diferente” (Different Beat), and “Minha saudade” (My Saudade), which became the first jazz standards of bossa nova.

A veritable Who’s Who of great musicians participated in those afternoon jam sessions at the Little Club and, afterward, in Bottles at night: trombonists Raul de Souza (at the time already highly acclaimed, and known as Raulzinho) and brothers Edmundo and Edson Maciel; saxophonists and
flutists J. T. Meirelles, Aurino Ferreira, Paulo Moura, Juarez Araújo, Cipó, Jorginho, and Bebeto; trumpet players Pedro Paulo and Maurílio; pianists Toninho, Salvador, Tenório Jr., Luizinho Eça, and Luís Carlos Vinhas; guitarists Durval Ferreira and Baden Powell; double bass players Tião Neto, Tião Marinho, Otávio Bailly, Manoel Gusmão, and Sérgio Barroso; drummers Dom Um, Edison Machado, Vítor Manga, Chico Batera, Airto Moreira, Wilson das Neves, João Palma, Hélcio Milito, and Rafael; and experts who played those instruments that
Down Beat
magazine categorized as “miscellaneous,” such as harmonica players Maurício Einhorn and Rildo Hora, vibraphonist Ugo Marotta, French horn player Bill Horn, and percussionist Rubens Bassini. Compared to the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club, the Lane was to bossa nova what Minton’s Playhouse, the club on 118th Street in Harlem, was to bebop in the early forties.

From 1961 on, this crowd divided into several permanent groups, like Luizinho Eça’s Tamba Trio, Luís Carlos Vinhas’s Bossa Três, Sérgio Mendes’s Sexteto, Meirelles’s Copa Cinco, and Tenório Jr.’s Quinteto Bottles, but its stronghold remained in the Lane. What they played wasn’t exactly the featherweight bossa nova played by Jobim, João Gilberto, Roberto Menescal, and Milton Banana, but a variation approaching bop that jazz columnist Robert Celerier of the newspaper
Correio da Manhã
termed “hard bossa nova,” which was a lot heavier. So heavy, in fact, that had João Gilberto dropped by the Lane while those groups were performing their own themes, like “Quintessência” (Quintessence) and “Noa-noa,” he would have fled in terror. All the drumsticks he thought he had eliminated from Brazilian drumming were there in full force, making more noise than ever. And in the hands of drummer Edison Machado, they were even worse; he had been a machine gunner in the Army and at times played as if he were facing the Germans.

Transformed into a mere bauble, displayed as merchandise, and starting to become commonplace as a result of so much propaganda, bossa nova was already starting to suffocate by the middle of 1961. Menescal and Bôscoli hated seeing their music regulated by figures, contracts, and invoices; they needed to fight back. They had the vague feeling that the money they were making was “dirty.” In order to keep their hands clean and in a fit state for composing, they appointed a musical editor, Umberto Marconi, who became their assignee to take care of the business side of things. They weren’t the only ones to do this.

João Gilberto, Carlinhos Lyra, Luiz Bonfá, and Chico Feitosa also left their guitars at home and went to Marconi’s downtown office in Rua Evaristo da
Veiga, where they signed letters giving him the authority to resolve absolutely any matter relating to their musical production: publishing, selling, licensing, supervising, protecting, and, of course, receiving what the songs were already making in Brazil and abroad—and paying them any income. It was like allowing Marconi free access to their bank accounts, but why not? Marconi was like a father to them. The first time he was summoned to Marconi’s office to collect a check, Menescal was astonished; he never imagined that a song like “Tetê” would make so much money. (After all, he and Bôscoli had only written it because Jobim had just finished composing “Dindi,” and they had decided to write something along the same lines.) As Menescal would soon discover, the money he received was in fact a small percentage of what he should have gotten, but being ignorant of that fact, he was perfectly happy. He spent it on a new pair of flippers.

So when Marconi tried to convince the gang to give a performance at the Copacabana Palace to play some of their songs for a French editor who had come to Brazil for the express purpose of meeting them, they didn’t need to be asked twice. The Frenchman was a friend of Vinícius, Sacha Gordine, the producer of
Black Orpheus
. Gordine had a publishing house in Paris, Sacha Music, and wanted to launch bossa nova in France. So what did the guys have to show him? They picked up their guitars and sang their stuff, while Gordine, drinking Pernod, told them yes or no according to the rattle of coins in his ears that the musical notes from each song produced: “Je veux ça” (I want that one) or “Pas ça, jouez autre chose” (Not that one, play something else).

For each song approved by Gordine, his representative in Brazil, Lidia Libion, copied a contract at a small table off to the side. There was one contract per song, giving Gordine the right to resell them “in all the countries of the world” and “for as long as they are legally protected.” This meant that the boys were transferring to him all rights of “sheet music publishing, representation, execution, phonomechanical reproduction, and dissemination by radio” in exchange for percentages that ranged from 10 percent to 75 percent (in biannual installments) of whatever the song earned. As a bonus, they would get an additional thirty copies of each song that was printed “absolutely free.”

In order to prove that the arrangement was legitimate, Gordine gave them all an advance payment, which he explained corresponded to 50 percent of what he would earn for the sublicensing of the publishing rights to the songs in the United States. Those explanation were deathly boring to the boys, especially Menescal, who was itching to jump in his car and go fishing at Cabo Frio. Lidia handed them their contracts, which they signed without reading. Some hours later, each of them went about his own business, with his advance check in his pocket. One can only hope that they made good use of
that money, because during the years that followed, it was the only money they would receive for those songs. Want to know which ones they were?