Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World (48 page)

“Be patient, Waltinho,” João Gilberto implored pianist-arranger Walter Wanderley, who was already showing signs of wanting to be somewhere other than the studio.

It was the recording of the third (in fact, the last) album by João Gilberto for Odeon—which was to be called merely
João Gilberto
. He wanted Wanderley to make a particular sound on his keyboard that would mimic the roar of a ship, for the introduction to “The Little Boat.” Wanderley couldn’t get the right sound, and João Gilberto showed him—with his voice—exactly the kind of roar he wanted. Walter’s musicians (Papudinho on trumpet,
Azeitona on double bass, Toninho Pinheiro on drums) were astonished: João Gilberto was capable of producing
any
sound with his voice.

The day before, March 9, 1961, he had recorded the first track on the album “Bolinha de papel” (Little Paper Ball), by the late
sambista
Geraldo Pereira, another hit by the Anjos do Inferno in 1945. It was the third song in the Anjos do Inferno’s repertoire that João Gilberto had recovered, dusted off, polished up, and re-recorded, putting into practice the miracle of doing it even better than them. (The other songs were “Rosa morena” [Brunette Rose] and “Doralice”). And he did it while removing hardly anything from the original version—in “Bolinha de papel,” for example, he made sure that the “nasal trumpeting” by Harry Vasco de Almeida in the introduction of the Anjos’ recording was re-created by a real trumpet.

Nobody really paid much attention to those details, but he didn’t care. The most modern music in Brazil was undergoing a renaissance of influences from the Brazilian musical past, and on that day alone he recorded three songs that fell into the old-timer category: “Saudade de Bahia” (Longing for Bahia) and “O samba da minha terra” (Samba of My Land), both by Caymmi, and “Trenzinho,” by Lauro Maia. And he even intended to include on the album another old samba by the duo Bide and Marçal, “A primeira vez” (The First Time), which had been a hit for Orlando Silva in 1940. Where were the bossa novas?

João Gilberto was at odds with bossa nova. He had never liked labeling his music, but now that bossa nova had come to represent just about anything and had been adopted by people he didn’t even know, he had started to say that he didn’t play bossa nova—he played samba. His relationship with Jobim was also in a terrible state. Jobim “had no patience,” and Aloysio de Oliveira’s departure from Odeon the previous September had complicated everything. João didn’t much like Aloysio (he merely referred to him as “that American”), but when he started having difficulties with Jobim over work issues, Aloysio came to the rescue. Without him on the scene, Jobim had no wish to participate in the production of the album, so João was recording with Walter Wanderley.

Former sales director Ismael Corrêa had taken over the artistic directorship at Odeon and gave João Gilberto the freedom to do whatever he wanted. He would have taken this liberty anyhow.
Chega de saudade
had already sold thirty-five thousand albums, and
O amor, o sorriso e a flor
was heading the same way. The third album couldn’t fail. But it was failing. João had done the arrangements himself—or rather, he had tried to explain to Walter what he wanted—but he was extremely dissatisfied with what he was recording. The next day, March 11, he recorded “Presente de Natal” (Christmas Gift) and put the album on hold. He only returned to it five months later, in August, with
Jobim in charge once again. It was the only way to save it. Jobim and João appeared to be incapable of achieving what they both most wanted out of life: freeing themselves from each other.

From August 2 to September 28, they recorded the rest of the album in fits and starts, with a splendid bossa nova repertoire. Jobim managed to produce the sound of a ship’s roar that João wanted for the introduction to “The Little Boat” with trombones, and, where possible, simplified the amount of work that went into the other songs: “O amor em paz” (Love in Peace) and “Insensatez” (How Insensitive) by himself and Vinícius, “Este seu olhar” (That Look You Wear) by him alone, and “Você e eu” (You and Me) and “Coisa mais linda” (Most Beautiful Thing) by the new and surprising musical partnership, Carlinhos Lyra and Vinícius de Moraes.

It was merely by chance that, on looking for Vinícius at his huge apartment in Parque Guinle in 1961, Carlinhos Lyra didn’t find him in the bathtub. It was where Vinícius spent most of the time, submitting himself to an involved ritual. The water had to be scalding when he got in. Around him, on benches, stools, and footrests, would be scattered what in those days were still termed “paraphernalia”: coffee, bottles of Scotch, ice, cigarettes, sandwiches, books, newspapers, magazines, a notepad, a pen, and the telephone. Nobody would have been surprised at seeing a rubber ducky in there somewhere, too. If anyone came to see him—a guest, or even reporters and photographers—Vinícius would invite them to take off their clothes and get in, and he would meet with them right there, in the bathtub. There was no hanky-panky involved, even with the steady flow of luscious female reporters who came to interview him. It was to prove the restorative properties of taking a bath.

And Vinícius needed to be restored every day. His favorite saying, that man’s best friend wasn’t the dog, it was whiskey, wasn’t just a joke. “Whiskey is bottled dog,” he said—in all seriousness. But the image that remains for posterity, that he was merely an extension of his glass, isn’t quite accurate. In the forties and fifties, he could even have been considered a moderate drinker, compared to the professional carousers. Jobim placed Vinícius’s escalating alcohol consumption (and his own) in 1960, beginning at their vacation in Brasília to write “Sinfonia da alvorada” (Dawn Symphony). Up until that point, he was merely warming up. Tom himself was sometimes startled: “Are you sure you can handle it, Vinícius?”

And Vinícius replied, “The body has to endure. The body is the laboratory which has to distill the alcohol and transform it into energy. Because blood only flows smoothly in the veins when there is alcohol.”

The stories of his admittance to the São Vicente Clinic in Gávea for treatment to sober up were true, as much as they seem made up. Vinícius was given the key to the clinic and had permission to come and go as he pleased. “I have a taste for some snacks,” he told the nutritionist, as he was putting on his pants to go out on a binge. Also true was the story that he would rock himself to sleep, softly singing children’s songs like “Tutu marambaia.” The irony is that, without this naïve and almost childlike side to his character, Vinícius, being the great poet that he was, might not have liked popular music. (He also didn’t like the fact that his poetry was becoming “a formula for sappy sweet nothings whispered between lovers.”)

It was that childish side of him that, although he had diabetes, made him raid the refrigerator in the middle of the night in search of
papos-de-anjo
—and be found out the following morning, having left his eyeglasses inside the refrigerator.
Papo-de-anjo
, an ultra-sweet homemade candy, was his downfall. He eulogized it as if the entire world shared his taste for it. During the show he did with Dorival Caymmi at the Zum-zum nightclub in 1964, Vinícius announced that the best thing in the world was to “eat
papo-de-anjo
with the woman you love at your side.” His friend Rubem Braga, who was in the audience, shouted back: “You’re crazy. Don’t you think it’s much more fun to eat the woman you love, and have a
papo-de-anjo
by your side?”

Vinícius was also the great initiator of diminutives in the world of bossa nova, a musical milieu whose stars were always quarreling fiercely, but called each other “Tomzinho” (Tommy), “Joãozinho” (Johnny), “Carlinhos” (Charlie), and “Ronaldinho” (Ronnie). But Vinícius, quite naturally, addressed everyone like that. When he didn’t know a person’s name, he called him
neguinho
(“buddy”).

He was adamantly jealous of his collaborating partners, but would write lyrics even for teenagers who brought him small compositions. When Carlinhos Lyra went to look for him that day and Vinícius
wasn’t
in the bath, he had planned to ask him to write lyrics to one or two songs he had written and he felt went well with the poet’s style. Since splitting with Ronaldo Bôscoli, Lyra had been writing in collaboration with his CPC companion and roommate, Nelson Lins de Barros, who shared an apartment with him in Rua Barão da Torre, or else alone. But Lyra felt he needed something special for those two songs. Vinícius, who admired him for “Maria Ninguém” (Maria Nobody) and was following the ridiculous
sambalanço
vs. bossa nova affair with dismay, immediately agreed. Lyra became his
parceirinho
(“little partner”) and the two songs became none other than “Coisa mais linda” and “Você e eu.”

Vinícius also wrote the sleeve text for Lyra’s second album in 1961, in which he was cautionary and, alas, prophetic: “Carlinhos Lyra is a part of what might be called ‘the most nationalistic segment of bossa nova,’ which
has led him, with the desire to differentiate his music, to create the term
sambalanço
for his compositions. I personally refute the necessity for such a term, and have told him as much. I think the term bossa nova characterizes perfectly adequately all that is good and wholesome about Brazilian popular music, which has to find its own place in the sun without interference from group rivalry and the spirit of division,” et cetera, et cetera.

Vinícius must have been guessing at that spirit of division, which became even more marked after 1964. Even he, who thought of himself “left-wing” and had considered joining the Communist Party in 1945, also wrote “social” bossa nova, but without the demagogic poverty that seemed to be the sub-genre’s indicator.

In 1961, while bossa nova was lending depth to arguments, two of the people most responsible for its existence were going on with their lives on opposite sides of the continent, and on opposite sides of the music. In São Paulo, Johnny Alf was finally recording his first album,
Rapaz de bem
, and showing how, back in 1955 in Brazil, he had already been keeping up with the Americans. In California, João Donato (or Joao Donato, due to the absence of tildes in local typography) was taking part in a revolution that pointed to the future—the reincorporation of Afro-Cuban music into jazz—and making one or two contributions himself. It’s amazing how two careers that appeared to run so parallel, such as those of Alf and Donato, could have taken off on run-ways that landed them at such different destinations.

Johnny Alf swapped his small-time glory at the piano of the Plaza nightclub in Rio for the prospect of success in São Paulo in 1955. He had only been at the Baiúca in Rua Major Sertório for a few months, and his piano-bass duo, the latter played by Sabá, already had a substantial following. One night in early 1956, he was in the middle of the eternally fascinating “Céu e mar” (Sky and sea, stars in the sand / Green sea, mirroring the sky / My life is a distant island / Floating in the sea), when he heard a series of shouts: “Stop the music! We’re closing you down!”

The cook, Lucila, who was frying shrimp in the kitchen, jumped. It was the Health Inspectors, who were shutting down the Baiúca for lack of hygiene and kicking out the Matarazzos, Pignataris, Marques da Costa, and other personalities from the society set who frequented the club. Those millionaires only went to the Baiúca to hear Johnny Alf and wisely kept their distance from Lucila’s crustaceans, but the Health Inspectors weren’t interested in that fact. Alf and Sabá were deemed unfit for human consumption, like the shrimp.