Bartleby: Because you wondered....
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...a week or two ago when I made a passing reference to one of my Top Five Brazilian records what the other four were. This is Number One - in fact, it very could be the one CD I have that is closest to indispensable. It is always fresh.A bit of background, as the way most people know Joao Gilberto is through that album he did with Stan Getz - y'know, the one where his then-wife Astrud sang "The Girl From Ipanema." Gilberto deserves credit, along with Antonio Carlos Jobim, for having invented bossa nova - the real bossa nova, that is, not the loungey crud. It was designed as, in essence, a stripped-down, intimate, jazz-influenced distillation of samba. Jobim wrote many of the songs that defined the bossa nova genre, but Gilberto was the one who came up with the guitar chording and the hushed vocal approach that resulted in bossa nova's singular sound. "The Legendary Joao Gilberto" is much poppier than the Getz album, but it's anything but sweet.This song, as well as the one in comments, are both from a collection, now criminally out-of-print, called "The Legendary Joao Gilberto." It gathers up 37 songs (bossa nova is also short and to the point) that make up the first three albums of Gilberto's discography, recorded between 1958 and 1961. Lots of songs we've all heard a brazillion times made their original appearances on these sides. It's especially interesting to listen to "Chega De Saudade" knowing that its bombshell effect on a young Brazilian public in 1958 is comparable to, say, the effect "I Want To Hold Your Hand" had on the States five years later. No one had ever heard anything that sounded even remotely like this before, and they essentially went nuts. If you can find this - and it does turn up from time to time - snap it up without hesitation. It's music that will last forever.
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