This is a very useful anthology for Antonio Carlos Jobim collectors, who can now acquire on one CD the entire contents of the Warner Bros albums The Wonderful World of Antonio Carlos Jobim and A Certain Mr. Jobim, plus four unreleased tracks from the latter session and the two Jobim-penned songs from Love, Strings and Jobim. These sessions present the great man mainly as an English-language vocalist who thus might sell his songs to American easy listening consumers. In the Wonderful World sessions, Nelson Riddle takes the reigns of the orchestra, but the man who could brilliantly reveal Frank Sinatra's soul doesn't quite mesh with Jobim's; the backings are too bright for the composer's dark, yearning undercurrents. The two cuts from Love, Strings and Jobim are too brash (could this really be the work of Eumir Deodato?) but with A Certain Mr. Jobim, Jobim is back in the more delicate hands of Claus Ogerman, who lays on the elusive saudade shadings most effectively in the four lovely Portuguese-language outtakes. There are generous quotas of Jobim classics here, several forgettable songs too, but also some instrumental sleepers like the tone poem "Surfboard" (heard twice) and the stunningly beautiful "Estrada de Sol." Jobim nuts will want this, of course.
This is one of the best examples of how closely Jobim and Riddle worked with each other. Riddle’s orchestral accompaniment never overshadows Jobim, instead he gives the composer/singer one of great sparsely orchestrated counter melodies for which he was so well known.
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Riding high on the crest of the bossa nova craze during the 1960's, Antonio Carlos Jobim collaborated with the great arranger Nelson Riddle in 1965 on a recording which is valuable for it’s understanding of this most intimate of music styles. The strings are very impressionistically scored by Riddle to give one the idea of the seaside expanse with flutes and horns delicately balanced against the
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