Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World (63 page)

It wasn’t exactly an exhausting schedule. During those six years, João Gilberto played little and recorded even less, as if he had decreed a long vacation for his soul and all the dreams that had hatched in Juazeiro, Salvador, and Rio were suddenly things of the past. There was always some
excuse. First, it was his hand; years later, it would be his voice. He turned down many invitations to make albums on the basis that the sound engineers cleaned up the recordings, erasing the sound of the singer’s breathing: “They don’t understand that there’s a real live person behind the words and notes,” he maintained.

He also refused to work anywhere where the audience talked through the show and left halfway through, like in Washington, when he sang two songs and walked off stage, saying by way of explanation, “They weren’t enjoying it.”

Likewise, nobody could say that he was particularly cooperative with the press, either. He didn’t want to be photographed for
Life
magazine because he felt that in the magazine’s photographs, “everyone came out looking as if they were wearing makeup.” He was even more reticent with journalists (whom he referred to as “you lot”), but that was due in part to the language barrier—a problem whose magnitude he preferred to exaggerate. The stories that went around Brazil made note of the fact that João Gilberto had lived in the United States for years and still didn’t speak a word of English. One of those stories was that he had invented the famous line “Me no speak,” which he muttered whenever someone he didn’t know spoke to him in the street—prompting columnist Telmo Martino, an admirer of his, to write that “João Gilberto is the only Brazilian who learned English from Tarzan.”

In fact, it didn’t take him to long to be able to understand everything that was being said around him, and he acquired a relatively extensive vocabulary that allowed him to be understood in New York without having to resort to mime—in addition to the simple “Please, one orange juice.” He never became as proficient as his friend Luiz Bonfá—who, according to Bonfá himself, had learned to speak English “fluently incorrect”—but he was in no way the mute he made himself out to be. He probably could even have learned to speak English pretty well, had several Americans, particularly musicians like double bassist Don Payne, not taken it upon themselves to study some Portuguese in order to be able to talk to him.

In contrast to many other bossa nova Brazilians, who made an effort to give their careers a more than professional spin in the United States, João Gilberto appeared not to think in terms of his career. His performances were merely to keep him in funds for the next few months, although there were times when he had to employ some creativity to obtain certain luxuries—for example, the time when he convinced a Brazilian named Vladimir, who worked at a local delicatessen, to sneak certain spices from the store so that Miúcha could prepare him the couscous and fish
moqueca
that he couldn’t live without (with
ambrosia
for dessert). Or when João and Miúcha subleased the apartment of a couple on East 23rd Street for three months. The couple
came back from their vacation and wanted to move back into their apartment, and they managed to convince the couple that they could all live together.

Or even when they moved to Weehawken, New Jersey, and rented an abandoned house, whose only piece of furniture was a table. João and Miúcha furnished the rest of the house by going out at night and collecting up the furniture that their neighbors disposed of in the street. On one of those expeditions, they even got a Ping-Pong table, complete with net and paddles, and João only had to buy the balls. One of the advantages of the house was a secret door that led from the kitchen up to the third floor, which allowed João Gilberto to spend days without being seen by the guests that Miúcha eventually invited over—and yet still continue to eat. One of the couple’s guests, the maestro Julio Medaglia, spent three days there and only saw João Gilberto as he was leaving.

In 1965, Miúcha received a telegram from her parents, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and Maria Amélia:

NEWSPAPERS PUBLISHING ANNOUNCEMENT OF YOUR MARRIAGE TO JOÃO GILBERTO STOP AWAITING YOUR DENIAL STOP KISSES SERGIO AND MARIA AMELIA

They sent a reply confirming the news, attached to a note from author Jorge Amado to his old friend Sérgio Buarque: “Dear Sérgio and Maria Amélia. João Gilberto is a fine example of a young man, very kindhearted, extremely sensitive, shy, and a little crazy, like all the musicians I know. I’m sure you’ll like him very much. Hugs, Jorge.”

Jorge Amado’s guarantee calmed the Buarque de Holandas’s misgivings, and with João Gilberto divorced from Astrud in the United States, he and Miúcha got married in April 1965 at the UN’s Chapel of All Nations, in a ceremony complete with champagne, confetti, and departure in a car dragging a string of tin cans. Their daughter Bebel was born in 1966, and as she opened her eyes, one of the first things she saw was trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie, a friend of João’s, filling his cheeks with air to entertain her. (Anyone who has seen Dizzy Gillespie puffing out his cheeks while playing his trumpet can imagine the impression that Bebel must have had of what was waiting for her outside the womb.)

João returned to Brazil for the first time in October 1965, after almost a three-year absence. Among other reasons for his return was that he wanted to see speech pathologist Pedro Bloch, as he thought he was losing his voice. Bloch didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, but João wasn’t convinced. So Bloch recommended a few medications to keep him happy:
Disofrol, to clear his sinuses; Actiol, to reactivate the musculature of his vocal cords; and German
Ilja Rugoff
garlic tablets. And he told him,
en passant
, not to talk for a while.

João Gilberto was alarmed: ever since he had arrived in Brazil, he spoke as if he had been injected with a Victrola needle. He sang three numbers on the TV show
O fino da Bossa
, hosted by Elis Regina on TV Record and, going by what he heard there, did not leave with a good impression of the state of popular music in Brazil. At the end of the program, he mentioned to a few people: “It would be better to play rock ‘n’ roll than that retarded jazz.”

By “retarded jazz,” he could only be referring to the instrumental trios and bebop-style singers that had since taken over bossa nova. But he would lose nothing by waiting, because within just a short time, many of his former colleagues would be adopting the style of cheap
ye-ye-ye
star Roberto Carlos. And an entire new cadre of composers (coincidentally, his contemporaries) would get involved in the
ye-ye-ye
renovation movement known as
Tropicalismo
.

João Gilberto took Pedro Bloch’s advice about saving his voice to heart, and simply stopped speaking. This gave rise to the famous story that he communicated on the telephone by knocking on the receiver, using a kind of private Morse code: one knock meant yes; two meant no; and three meant hold on a minute, let me think about it. This was just one of a myriad of myths that surrounded João. Nobody bothered to ponder the fact that if this were indeed to be considered an example of his eccentricity, then the same should also have been applied to those who actually conversed with him this way, among whom was Dorival Caymmi.

The fact that he preferred not to speak much didn’t stop him from playing the guitar, which became his full-time occupation upon his return to New York. Sometimes he played for eighteen hours straight, without taking a break to even so much as clip his fingernails—and he always played music from the past, such as “Na Baixa do Sapateiro” (Bahia) from 1938, and “Picapau” (Woodpecker), a
marchinha
from 1942, both by Ary Barroso; “Curare,” by his friend Bororó, from 1940; and a veritable festival of Herivelto Martins songs written with several different partners: “Praça Onze,” from 1942; “Odete,” from 1944; “A Lapa,” from 1949. It wasn’t unusual, from that point on, for him to delve further back into the musical past, and not just that of Brazil. His lack of interest in the protest songs that were all the rage in Brazil was all-encompassing—he thought it was all “demagogic nonsense.” The few times he returned to the present, when he sang at home, were dedicated
to songs by newcomers, like “Pede passagem” (Permission to Go), by Sidney Miller, and “Ela desatinou” (She Went Crazy), by his brother-in-law Chico Buarque, and other songs by Jobim that he had never sung, such as “Fotografia” (Photograph) and “Ela é carioca” (She’s a Carioca). Until he felt it was safe to record again.

João Gilberto’s admirers had always known that he was full of surprises, but they certainly weren’t expecting his next record, recorded in Mexico in 1970 after six years of silence, to feature the boleros “Farolito” (Little Lighthouse), by Agustin Lara, “Bésame mucho” (Kiss Me Often), by Consuelito Velasquez, and “Eclipse,” by Ernesto Lecuona, the cream of that particular musical genre. His departure with Miúcha to Mexico in 1969 had also been unexpected, even for her. They had closed up the house on Hudson Street in Brooklyn Heights for a ten-show run in Guadalajara and Mexico City, for which he would earn twelve thousand dollars. They ended up staying two years.

In Mexico City, they rented a Japanese-style house on the road to Toluca, surrounded by a lush green area inhabited by peacocks and monkeys, with adjacent property that was home to an Indian tribe. In Mexico, João Gilberto perfected his Ping-Pong game with a Chinese player who taught him an effective serve that was very difficult to return. He also took driving lessons and managed to pass his test, which allowed him to get, at the age of forty, his first driver’s license. But his fondest days in Mexico were during the 1970 World Soccer Cup, in which Brazil became third-time champion. He didn’t attend a single game, but he saw them all on television, and spent hours on the telephone with Didi, the Brazilian trainer of the Peruvian team, discussing tactical moves and the structure of plays. That could explain Peru’s decent standing in that particular World Cup.

And, ah yes, his album,
João Gilberto en México
(João Gilberto in Mexico), with arrangements by Oscar Castro-Neves, was perfect, despite the almost indifferent reception it got in Brazil. It contained “De conversa em conversa” (From Conversation to Conversation), which Lúcio Alves had written in 1940 at the age of thirteen and handed over to Haroldo Barbosa for him to write the lyrics. It also included one of 600 versions that the very same Haroldo Barbosa had done for Rádio Nacional—this particular one was of “The Trolley Song,” written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, erroneously attributed on the sleeve to Irving Berlin; two songs by Jobim, “Ela é carioca,” with Vinícius, and “Esperança perdida” (I Was Just One More for You), with Billy Blanco; and two instrumental pieces that he had written in New York at the time he had dedicated himself exclusively to playing the guitar: “Acapulco” (in tribute to a city in Mexico that he had never visited) and “João Marcelo,” for his and Astrud’s son.

The new songs on the record, in addition to the boleros, were “O sapo” (The Toad), by João Donato, and “Samba da pergunta” (The Question’s Samba), by Carlos Alberto Pingarilho and Marcos de Vasconcellos. The first, which would later become known as “A rã” (The Frog) (after lyrics were put to it by Caetano Veloso), was from the only recent record by a Brazilian artist that João Gilberto had listened to a lot lately:
A Bad Donato
, the great album that his old alter-ego had recorded in California that year. What was surprising about this was that
A Bad Donato
seemed to be an infernal free jazz-style cacophony, with terrible Afro-Cuban percussion, including that which could be heard in the background of “The Frog”—apparently
nothing
to do with his, João Gilberto’s, own style. But on his Mexican record, he tossed Donato’s toad into the blender and extracted those soft and cautious vocals that were typically João Gilberto.

Another surprise track, “Samba da pergunta,” was from a group of bossa nova composers—those who started composing from 1960 on—for whom he had never had much time (and still didn’t). It’s hardly surprising that its composers, Pingarilho and Marcos Vasconcellos, jumped up and down with delight when they learned that João Gilberto had recorded one of their songs. It was a privilege that he never granted to Baden Powell, Dori Caymmi, Durval Ferreira, Edu Lobo, Eumir Deodato, Francis Hime, Geraldo Vandré, Jorge Ben, Luizinho Eça, Lula Freire, Marcos Valle, or Oscar Castro-Neves. But why should they have complained? In his entire life, João Gilberto recorded only one song each by Luiz Bonfá, Donato, and Johnny Alf, and none by Mário Telles, Sérgio Ricardo, Tito Madi, or Walter Santos—all of whom were old friends.