Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World (59 page)

Nothing happens very fast in the United States, not even when your name is Antonio Carlos Jobim and you’ve been showered with stars by
Down Beat
. During the many months that passed in 1963, Jobim had to play a little guitar—because, to Americans, this particular instrument lent itself better than the piano to their image of the Latin lover they wanted him to be. He also wrote arrangements for several singers, including Peggy Lee; he accompanied Andy Williams several times on his TV show, one of the first to be broadcast coast-to-coast via satellite; and he paid his bill at the California hotel where he was hiding out from the New York cold with a practically unheard-of record by pianist Jack Wilson on which he appeared as “Tony Brazil.” On the road the entire time, his song production in 1963 was almost zero. One of the few he wrote was called “Bonita” (Beautiful), and with good reason: its inspiration was a young woman, Candice Bergen, whom he had the pleasure of meeting at the home of the president of Atlantic Records, Nesuhi Ertegun. The pleasure, by the way, was mutual. Jobim was about to start his long pilgrimage in the name of bossa nova. Nobody traveled more than he to take his songs to so many people in so many places (not even João Gilberto, whose only committment, after all, was to sing them). It was fortunate that he had already written such a vast repertoire of songs before crossing the sea in 1963—or not even he would have been able to take playing “The Girl from Ipanema” zillions of times over.

João Gilberto also took to the road at that time, but he did so wearing his bedroom slippers. In July 1963, he left New York for Europe with João Donato, who had come out from California especially to accompany him, together with double bassist Tião Neto and drummer Milton Banana. Astrud went with them, but only as João’s wife, although the marriage was already breaking up—her rendition of “The Girl from Ipanema” remained unpublished and she did not sing at any of the group’s performances. They started in Rome, where they spent a week at the Foro Italico, and then left for Viareggio, in the south of Italy, where they packed the Bussoloto, the private function room of an
enormous show hall called La Bussola. (The four of them never rehearsed together, and João Gilberto and João Donato spent the entire show laughing under their breath at the others’ mistakes, but even so, according to Tião Neto, their performance was sensational.)

The Bussoloto was a private room on the top floor, frequented by intellectuals. In the large ground-floor hall, Bruno Martino’s orchestra played hully-gullies and counteracted with a bolero written by the conductor, called “Estate”—which, many years later, João Gilberto would remember and record. Well-known, commercially-billed artists also performed at the Bussola, such as the chansonnier Jean Sablon, who sang “Vous qui passez sans me voir” (You Who Pass By Without Seeing Me), and Chubby Checker, King of the Twist. Both of them went up to the Bussoloto after their shows to hear João Gilberto play. It’s not hard to imagine what Sablon, who had many old Brazilian friends, thought of him. But it’s impossible to guess what went through the mind of Chubby Checker on hearing João Gilberto, except that it probably starting flashing “tilt.”

A beach that was four kilometers (almost two and a half miles) in length opened up barely fifty meters in front of the hotel where the group was staying, in Marina Pietrasanta. In the three months they were there, João Gilberto didn’t leave his footprints in the sand once, not even wearing his shoes. He stayed shut up in the apartment, stroking a little cat he had brought from Rome, named Romaninha, and worrying about the first signs of a sprain that would affect his hand and part of his right arm. The hours he had spent playing the guitar every day over the last few years, contorting his fingers into that position that everyone considered impossible, were finally taking their toll.

They had to close the show in October, decline invitations to perform in Tunisia, and take down their tent. Donato, Tião Neto, and Milton Banana went back to New York, and Astrud returned to Rio. João Gilberto went to Paris to consult an acupuncturist, Dr. Zapalla, who “had treated [soccer superstar] Pelé.” The doctor did not manage to cure him (the problem was taken care of the following year, in New York), but in Paris he met a student named Miúcha Buarque de Holanda.

“This
gaúcha
is a bit of a country bumpkin,” stated Tom Jobim in the CBS studio in Rio, in July 1964. “You can still smell the barbecue on her.”

Elis Regina didn’t hear his comment, which was what eliminated her from the recording of “Pobre menina rica,” by Carlinhos Lyra and Vinícius. But she was told by Carlinhos that the arranger—Jobim, who was back in Rio—didn’t
feel she was appropriate for the role of the poor little rich girl. With her calico dress and Farah Diba–style hairdo (a beehive with a steel wool stuffing), she may not have made the Year’s Ten Most Elegant Women list, but hell, this was a record. Nobody was going to see her and know that she was much better suited to playing a poor little poor girl than Vinícius’s sophisticated character.

But on the other hand, it was hard to imagine that anyone who dressed like Elis Regina would be suitable for the role. Besides, Jobim already had someone in mind: Dulce Nunes, wife of the pianist Bené Nunes, an old friend of theirs. Dulce could no longer really be called a “girl” (she was almost thirty), but she was rich, chic, and her voice was very girlish. Jobim made the replacement of Elis with Dulce a condition for his own participation in the record. The switch was made, but Jobim ended up not handing over the arrangements—according to Carlinhos Lyra, for fear of getting involved, during those turbulent post-military coup d’état days, in an album with “social overtones” (which could complicate his return to the United States); according to Jobim, it was because he simply didn’t have time. The arrangements ended up in the magical hands of Radamés Gnatalli, so “Pobre menina rica” missed out on the opportunity to unite Tom Jobim and Elis Regina ten years before their collaboration actually happened, with the album
Elis & Tom
, released in 1974.

In fact, in those days Elis Regina really was recently arrived from the Pampas. She arrived in Rio “to stay” on March 28, 1964, shortly after her nineteenth birthday. She had been “discovered” in Porto Alegre (if you were to gather together all of the people who claim to have “discovered” Elis Regina, they wouldn’t fit in a sports stadium) and while living there had recorded three albums for Rio recording companies:
Viva a brotolândia
(Long Live Teeny-Bopper Land) in 1961 and
Poema
(Poem) in 1962, both for Continental; and
O bem do amor
(The Good of Love) in 1963, for CBS, with whom she was contracted. On those records, particularly the first two, she did not deny the influence of the singer whom she had always most admired—the powerful-voiced, but corny Ângela Maria—and the repertoire was pitiful: boleros, ballads, covers, and even the cha-cha “Las secretarias” (The Secretaries).

CBS sponsored her trip to Rio in 1964, with the aim of establishing her as a candidate to replace Celly Campello on the throne as the “queen of the teenyboppers.” After bursting onto the scene with “Lacinhos cor-de-rosa” (Pink Shoelaces), “Banho de Lua” (Moon Bathing), and “Estúpido Cupido” (Stupid Cupid), Celly married, retired at twenty, and went to live in Taubaté, upstate São Paulo. Sônia Delfino, her natural replacement, decided to sing songs with more adult themes and left Cinderella’s throne empty. In the recording companies’ plans, the candidates were Selma Rayol, Elis Regina, Cleide Alves, Rosemary, and Wanderléa. The businessman Marcos Lázaro made the
brunette Wanderléa dye her hair with henna and convinced CBS to hire her. We don’t know how the others reacted, but Elis didn’t care: she had come from Porto Alegre with a promise from Armando Pittigliani that she would be signed with Philips if things didn’t work out with CBS. The “Poor Little Rich Girl” episode merely gave her an excuse to switch recording companies.

Philips treated her better: they put her on the program
Noite de gala
(Gala Night), hosted by Abelardo Figueiredo, a man with close connections to bossa nova. Elis’s father, Mr. Romeu, with hands roughened from his work as a glazier and an ambition befitting the mother of a beauty pageant contestant, came with her from the South and appointed himself her manager, agent, and fee collector. He wasn’t always very capable. When Pittigliani approached Ronaldo Bôscoli about doing a show with Elis in Beco das Garrafas, he already knew them both: “That squinty-eyed little girl? Her father’s a pain.”

The Miéle-Bôscoli duo created a show for Elis at the Little Club, in which she appeared with percussionist Dom Um Romão’s band, Copa Trio, with dancer Marly Tavares, and tambourine player Gaguinho. It’s a mystery how on earth they managed to fit as many people as they did on stage for the finale. It’s true that Elis, at five feet, two inches, was the size of a transistor radio, which did not prevent her from snarling like a wildcat at Claudette Soares, who was even two inches shorter, when she saw her entering Copacabana’s Beco do Fome (Hunger Lane): “That little dwarf!”

Beco da Fome, in Avenida Prado Júnior, was a little alleyway frequented by the carousers and musicians of the other musical lanes of the neighborhood, like Beco das Garrafas and Beco do Joga-a-Chave-Meu-Amor. During those late nights, many of those guys survived on the oxtail and collard green soups made by the mulatta Lindaura, and the raw Arab kibbe, cheap meals that were nourishing enough to keep the bossa nova gang going until the following morning. (The other option was the
Frango de Ouro
[The Golden Chicken] next door, which offered “a bowl of chicken soup with two spoons”—that is to say, one portion to split between two people. The two were usually Sérgio Mendes and Ronaldo Bôscoli.) Another must in the area was the Leme Pharmacy, where the musicians purchased their Stelamine, Pervitin (methamphetamine), and Preludin (phenmetrazine), the “pick-meups” in vogue at the time.

Elis didn’t like Claudette Soares and didn’t really get along well with Leny Andrade, who was then Empress of Beco das Garrafas, either. Leny, like Wilson Simonal, was also a disciple of Lennie Dale, but only Elis would become famous for having been his pupil. Dale always denied that it was he who had taught her to whirl her arms like windmills, which earned Elis the nickname “Hélice” (Propeller) Regina. According to Dale, it was her idea and
he merely agreed with her. But it was Elis herself who referred to rehearsals with him as “swimming lessons.” What is amazing is the evidence that Lennie Dale influenced Elis Regina’s style of singing: all you have to do is listen, in order, to Elis’s first three corny records; the two Lennie Dale himself made with Elenco, recorded when she knew him in the Lane; and Elis’s subsequent records,
Samba eu canto assim
(I Sing Samba Like This) and
O fino do fino
(The Best of the Best).

Her style of singing wasn’t that different from that of Wilson Simonal, who, when he first performed in the Lane in 1963, caused a furor that today is indescribable and perhaps even unbelievable. He was quite simply the best singer of his generation: a tremendous voice, a sense of phrasing equal to that of the best American singers, and the ability to bend the rhythm to his will, without slipping out of the tune or settling for the easy scats that were Leny Andrade’s specialty. Bôscoli, who had managed to coax him away from rock-oriented producer Carlos Imperial, armed him with original material like “Telefone” (Telephone) and “Ela vai, ela vem” (She Comes and Goes) (written with Menescal) and “Mais valia não chorar” (It’s Better Not to Cry) (with Normando). But Simonal was also perfect for bossa-jazz themes like “Nanã,” by Moacyr Santos, after Mário Telles had written the definitive lyrics for it. He had released late bossa nova compositions by Tito Madi, such as “Balanço Zona Sul” (Zona Sul Swing), and by Evaldo Gouveia and Jair Amorim, such as “Garota moderna” (Modern Girl), and became the best singer of Jorge Ben until “País tropical” (Tropical Country).

During that phase, Simonal was capable of encapsulating the most original tricks within a theme and making it irresistible. But when the tricks became the only important feature of his style, Simonal became repetitive and went back to Carlos Imperial’s domain. In 1966 he was singing silly pop things like “Mamãe passou açúcar em mim” (Momma Sprinkled Sugar on Me). In 1971, he led—with just one finger—fifteen thousand people at the Maracanãzinho stadium in a tiresome song appropriated from Imperial, “Meu limão, meu limoeiro” (My Lemon, My Lemon Tree). A few months later, he got into trouble with an obscure rumor that branded him an informant in the arts for the dictatorship’s security administration, and it ruined his career. To use the jargon that he coined during his glory days, Simonal “allowed himself to fall and got hurt.” But he cannot be left out of the bossa nova story.

His singing style opened up the realms of bossa nova to the extent that singers with strong, deep voices, like Pery Ribeiro, who up until that point had been forced to remain on the fringes of the musical movement, became immediate converts. In 1963 Pery released “The Girl from Ipanema” and in 1965 he starred with Leny Andrade and Luís Carlos Vinhas’s Bossa Três in the show
Gemini V
at the Porão 73 (Basement 73) nightclub in Copacabana.
Gemini V
,
a show typical of the style of Miéle and Bôscoli, began its run at the same time that
Opinião
, now starring Maria Bethânia in Nara’s place, was denouncing the military dictatorship every night in Rua Siqueira Campos. Any tourist who went to both shows on consecutive nights would feel as if he were visiting two different countries. In
Opinião
, a predatory bird, the caracara, flew over a rural Brazil of slums and cassava fields, in which the northeastern inhabitants either died of thirst or drowned, with figures from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics to prove it; in
Gemini V
, seagulls circled in a Technicolor blue sky, to the sound of passages from “Sinfonia do Rio de Janeiro” (Rio de Janeiro Symphony), to Jobim and Vinícius’s drops of dew on a flower petal, and to Menescal and Bôscoli’s sun-salt-souths, with an elaborateness that left the audience virtually seasick. For the youngsters of 1965, choosing between
Opinião
and
Gemini V
was practically a political decision, especially at the tables of bars like the Paissandu in Flamengo or the Zeppelin in Ipanema.