“BOSSA NOVA. HISTORY AND STORIES” RUY CASTRO.
Tom Jobim spent much of 1965 and 1966 in the United States, this time in California, appearing on television, giving performances and writing arrangements. To appease his nostalgia for the land, passing Brazilian friends brought him gifts from his mother; chocolate and a Brazilian liquor called cachaça. One of these bottles of cachaça, which a photographer brought him, did not reach its destination. The person in charge of the Los Angeles Customs Office was suspicious of the contents, broke the bottle without further ado and left the premises “capped.”
But Tom’s main occupation was the albums he began recording for Warner. On one of the albums, “The wonderful world of Antonio Carlos Jobim“, Tom sang for the first time. It is true that it was solidly supported by the orchestra and Nelson Riddle‘s arrangements, but this was not a relief. Quite the opposite. Nobody knows what it’s like to be almost a debutante and record with a musician whom you have admired all your life, who is also the man who had given new life to Sinatra’s career, just 11 years before. Nelson was used to Sinatra, he listened to him sing in the bathroom and was intimate enough with him to call him Frankie. It was a tremendous responsibility. But except for his limitations as a singer, one would never say, when listening to “The wonderful world of Antonio Carlos Jobim“, that Antonio Carlos Jobim was scared.
When he got really scared it was a few months later, in December, once again in Brazil and installed in his favorite hole, the Veloso, at an afternoon gathering of rods and friends. Don Armênio, owner of the bar, told him to go to the phone.
“America’s Call“.
When Tom answered, someone told him that Frank Sinatra was going to talk to him.
Pause.
In 1966 Sinatra was still the most popular singer in the world. From 1954 to 1961, he had placed all of his Capitol LPs among the top 5 best-selling albums in the US. “Only the lonely“, from 1958, and “Come fly with me” from 1959, were number 1. In 1961 he set up his own company, Reprise, which merged in 1963 with Warner, with an agreement that made him even more of a millionaire. of what it was. And in that same 1966, in the middle of the Beatle era, his single with “Strangers in the night“, a song by Bert Kaempfert, also was number one. This was the man who was calling Tom Jobim on the Veloso.
Although that wasn’t entirely a surprise to Tom. Since 1964, El Rancho Mirage, Sinatra’s fortress in the middle of the desert in Palm Springs, was emitting signals that the voice wanted to record his songs. But with Sinatra things only happened when he thought the time had come, and, on the other hand, he was in no hurry. For years its market had been the adult audience and the explosion of the Beatles, in 1964, had not affected it. What had decreased was the production of great songs in his style. In truth it was the beginning of the decline of great American music. Like other singers, he was looking for something new, and bossa nova had more than enough quality, sophistication and commercial appeal. And for Sinatra the bossa nova was Jobim.
Someone handed the phone to Sinatra and he said:
-“I would like to make an album with you and know if you like the idea“
Tom responded “It’s an honor, I’d love to.” Sinatra mentioned the German Claus Ogerman for the arrangements and Tom agreed with him immediately: Ogerman had been the arranger of Jobim’s album “The composer of detuned sings” 3 years earlier and that was, without a doubt, the album that Sinatra must have had as a guide. Sinatra suggested that Tom participate on the album as a guitarist. The pianist Jobim was already a little tired of acting as a guitarist in the United States, where the guitar was still associated with the figure of the Latin lover, but he was not going to complicate things because of that. He accepted, but asked for a Brazilian drummer. Sinatra said yes.
Finally, Sinatra asked him if he could go to Los Angeles immediately, to work with Ogerman on the arrangements, which meant that he had more or less chosen the songs. The Voice gave his last indication: “I don’t have time to learn new songs and I hate rehearsing,” said Sinatra. “We are going to stick with the best known, the classic ones.”
The recording was set for the end of January and, with that, the two said goodbye and each took their plane. Tom for the angels and Sinatra for the Barbados, a little to prepare his voice and another to recover from the tremendous crisis his marriage with Mia Farrow was going through.
At the same time he phoned Tom, Sinatra proposed to Mia to spend Christmas with him in Palm Springs, in an attempt to save what was left. She accepted, but, according to columnist Earl Wilson, it was like a visit. The two decided to take some time, during which Frank would go to Barbados. As for Mía, against the will of Sinatra, who thought she was being exploited, that same January she set sail for India, with John Lennon and George Harrison, for a meditation, relaxation and LSD spa with the guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This was the climate prior to the recording of “Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim.”
Jobim, for his part, no longer had any reason to spend the day whistling. Having exhausted the initial euphoria of having the God of his generation perform his music, he descended into the terrible reality. It was now or never of his career. He arrived in Los Angeles and settled in an apartment with a piano and refrigerator at the Sunset Marquis hotel. Claus Ogerman went to see him daily and the two prepared, with the precision of watchmakers, the delicate gears of “Garota de Ipanema“, “Dindi“, “Corcovado“, “Meditaçao“, “Inútil paisagem“, “Insensatez” and “O amor at peace”.
Three North American songs would be included in the program, after sifting them through the extra-fine mesh sieve of bossa nova.
Working with Ogerman didn’t take too long, among other things, because everything would be decided by Sinatra himself in the studio, when push came to shove. So for the next few weeks in January, the only thing left for Tom was to sit in the hotel waiting for Sinatra to return so he could start working with him.
In California the days passed slowly, even in winter, when even Nathanael West’s lobsters came out to sun themselves. Tom distracted himself by writing to Vinicius or Caymmi, painting a perhaps exaggerated picture of his situation. In one of the letters to Vinicius he described himself as “an unhappy person immobilized in a hotel room, waiting for the call to record, with that physical fatigue that precedes big events, watching TV non-stop and full of belly problems.” And it was signed “Astenio Claustro Fobim“.
On January 25 he would turn 40, a great age to record with Frank Sinatra, 30-something years after his stepfather rented a used piano for his sister Helena to study at. The piano, old, ugly and toothless, was installed in the garage of their house in Ipanema, and Helena was not too interested in it, but her brother was. From then on, he had dedicated thousands of hours to studying, many more to playing in horrible clubs and many more to working in recording studios. Things had improved. His keyboards were now shining, with the notes all in place, and there he was, in that hotel room, on the eve of playing—and precisely with the guitar!—for Sinatra. The 25th arrived and Tom, asthenic, did nothing special to celebrate his 40th birthday. Until producer Sony Burke called him to tell him that they would start recording on the 30th.
“The last time I sang so low was when I had laryngitis,” Frank Sinatra said laughing.
He had just performed “Dindi,” Tom’s first song they recorded.
Before, she did a warm-up with her old friends “Baubles, Bangles And Beads” and “I Concentrate On You“, to adapt to that guitar beat and even to the way she wanted to enunciate throughout the album.
By the 1940s, Sinatra had sparked a revolution in popular music by further softening the Crosby style. Like no other singer of his time, he had prolonged certain vowels, and even some consonants, with all the naturalness in the world, and linked the phrases forming a necklace, as if you didn’t need to breathe. Scholars loved to quote his confession that he had learned this by watching his former employer, Tommy Dorsey, do that on the trombone night after night.
But what Jobim’s songs demanded was beyond, or rather here, all softness. The session was set for 8 p.m., but Sinatra arrived earlier to go over the songs alone. When introduced to Tom shortly afterward, Frank told him that he would try to restrain himself so as not to take away from the subtlety of bossa nova.
From the studio, separated from the rest of the world by the glass wall, Sinatra could see the control booth occupied by several people who clearly had as much to do there as Dean Martin at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. There was a list on the door with the names of people who were allowed entry and those were not listed. He ordered one of his men to ask who was the guy with the yacht cap and who was the one with the gray mustache. They informed him that they were Brazilians accompanying the president of the company, Mick Martrand: one of them, Ray Gilbert, the other, Aloysio de Oliveira. Sinatra glared at them, and they both retreated to a corner of the booth.
“He has eyes of steel” – Jobim would later say -. And she also has gypsy eyes: she is never deceived by people.
“Shut the door!” Sinatra shouted, before starting to sing.
A semitone higher in his voice seemed capable of liquefying any subordinate present there. It is often said that Sinatra lived surrounded by “Yes Men“, but when he said no, everyone said no too.
A trombonist let the shaft of his instrument slide a few millimeters outside the Compass and Sinatra noticed it. The man almost went under the lectern. Aloysio de Oliveira, in his memories of that evening, would later say that “before Sinatra everyone remains under the absolute dominance of his personality.”
Would it be true?
There was one man there, at least, who didn’t seem under the influence of the voice, drummer Dom Um Romão, whom Tom had borrowed from Astrud Gilberto in Chicago. In Brazil, Dom Um was, along with Edison Machado, the jazziest bossa nova drummer. There, to accompany Sinatra and Jobim, he had padded the bass drum with a pillow and was playing as low as Milton Banana with Joao Gilberto; how he said it should be done.
According to Aloysio de Oliveira, Tom was nervous, which he admits. It was normal for any musician within earshot of Sinatra. But Tom wasn’t really that nervous.
After all, he had already recorded many times with João Gilberto.
Tom ran into the Sunset Marquis and summoned everyone to his apartment. The morning of that first day of recording, many friends had arrived from Brazil with Aloysio: Óscar Castro Neves, Marcos Valle and his wife, Ana María, and the girls from Quarteto em Cy. Tom had brought a cassette tape from the studio with the first cuts recorded: “Dindi“, “Corcovado” and “Inútil paisagem“.
Everyone was dazzled. You had to hear it to believe it, and he was very happy. The victory was not only his, but that of the entire bossa nova. The same exclamations were repeated in Rio a few days later, when the complete tape, with Tom’s vocal interventions alongside Sinatra in “Garota de Ipanema“, “Insensatez“, plus “Amor en paz” and “Meditaçao“, mysteriously arrived in the hands of from producer Roberto Quartin before anyone else. Quartin says that during that summer, friends and acquaintances left the beach, wet and covered in sand, and invaded his studio in Ipanema to listen to the tape, which had actually been conceived “millions of dreams ago.”
Sinatra was singing softly, as bossa nova demanded. So low that you couldn’t hear him outside the walls of that studio. Meanwhile, on the street, in Ipanema, in Rio, in the rest of Brazil, the sounds were different: a Babel of protests during the festivals, fights for the first places and for the big cash prizes, boos and guitars flying over the public; little music and a lot of discussion.
The bossa nova, feeling out of home, took her little boat and her guitar and left without making a sound.
Fortunately I had somewhere to go: to the world.
Extracted from “Bossa Nova. History and stories“, by Ruy Castro, Turner publishing house, 2008.
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