Composer

Performer: Antonio Carlos Jobim
Artist: Dick Hyman; Nelson Riddle; Claus Ogerman
Engineer: Lowell Frank; Frank Laico
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Personnel includes: Antonio Carlos Jobim (vocals, guitar); Claus Ogerman, Nelson Riddle (conductor, arranger); Dick Hyman (organ); Luiz Eca (piano). Producers include: Jimmy Hilliard, Ray Gilbert, Louis Oliveira, George Lee. Recorded between 1965 and 1967. Includes liner notes by Bob Blumenthal. This compilation focuses on an often-overlooked aspect of the legendary Brazilian composer's career: his own recordings. Jobim changed the face of Brazilian music, and pop music in general, by pioneering bossa nova, a genre that fused the Brazilian samba with a jazzy harmonic sensibility and the melodic constructions of American pop composers like Cole Porter and George Gershwin. His songs have been recorded by such American giants as Frank Sinatra and Stan Getz, as well as Brazilians like Astrud & Joao Gilberto. Jobim's own recording career has garnered far less attention than his songs. But these mid-'60s sides show that Jobim had much to offer as an interpreter of his own compositions. Jobim's music is soft and sensual, but never loses the underlying rhythmic lilt that is synonymous with bossa nova. Songs like "Agua De Beber" and "Photograph" exemplify his ability to float an elegant melodic line over an irresistible groove. The unusual chord changes and highly evolved harmonic structures of Jobim's compositions, equally influenced by American jazz and Brazilian classicists like Villa-Lobos, are exemplified on "Dindi" and "Desafinado (Off-Key)," whose lyrics cast self-deprecating aspersions on Jobim's endearingly unschooled, often flat singing. A line from "Desafinado" puts it best: "It's a crooked song, but all my love is there."

JazzTimes (3/97, p.80) - "...Tom is in good voice and has a close touch with the people. His melodies may sound like a Satie sonatina...or a tin-pan alley tango at times, but here he's at his best cruising Rio's beaches like Corcovado with Bonita, Carioca, Dindi, Surfboard, Desafinado, and yes, that omnipresent girl from Ipanema..."

Antonio Carlos Jobim is one of the founding figures of bossa nova. Starting with his work with guitarist Joao Gilberto in the late 1950s ("Chega de Saudade," "Desafinado"), Jobim composed a string of unforgettable songs that combined subtle rhythms, modern harmony, and poetic lyrics, and which quickly found their way from Brazil to the rest of the world. His music has been performed and recorded by countless musicians, and by the time of his death in 1994, Jobim was widely regarded as one of the great composers of popular song.

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