Nara Leão – Dez Anos Depois (1971)

Nara Leão
Dez Anos Depois
Released 1971
This edition, Japanese SHM mastering

Recorded in Paris and Rio de Janeiro

LP 1

1. Insensatez (Tom Jobim e Vinícius de Moraes)
2. Samba de uma nota só (Tom jobim e Newton Mendonça)
3. Retrato em branco e preto (Tom Jobim e Chico Buarque)
4. Corcovado (Tom Jobim)
5. Garota de Ipanema (Tom Jobim e Vinícius de Moraes)
6. Pois é (Tom Jobim e Chico Buarque)
7. Chega de Saudade (Tom Jobim e Vinícius de Moraes)
8. Bonita (Tom Jobim e Ray Gilbert)
9. Você e eu (Carlos Lyra e Vinícius de Moares)
10. Fotografia (Tom Jobim)
11. O grande amor (Tom Jobim e Vinícius de Moraes)
12. Estrada do sol (Tom Jobim e Dolores Duran)

LP 2

1. Por toda minha vida (Tom Jobim e Vinícius de Moraes)
2. Desafinado (Tom jobim e Newton Mendonça)
3. Minha namorada (Carlos Lyra e Vinícius de Moraes)
4. Rapaz de bem (Jony Alf)
5. Vou por aí (Baden Powell e Aloysio de Oliveira)
6. O amor em paz (Tom Jobim e Vinícius de Moraes)
7. Sábia (Tom Jobim e Chico Buarque)
8. Meditação (Tom Jobim e Newton Mendonça)
9. Primavera (Carlos Lyra e Vinícius de Moraes)
10. Este seu olhar (Tom Jobim)
11. Outra vez (Tom Jobim)
12. Demais (Tom Jobim e Aloysio de Olieveira)

I was listening to the radio the other day and caught the second half of an interview with the daughter of Nara Leão who was there to talk about Nara’s new revamped website and other subjects. She briefly mentioned this album, and how her mother had used it as a way to revisit her formative musical years as “the muse of bossa nova”, in the time before she became estranged from that crowd, a process which included switching record labels, hanging out more and more at the Zicartola club, and favoring protest music while accusing bossa nova of idle romanticism and middle-class alienation. By 1970 she was living in France and shortly about to retire from the music business almost entirely: she opted to spend most of the seventies raising her children, and earning her PhD in psychology (!!). So this album is kind of a sweet swan song, a double album overflowing with the canonical bossa nova repertoire presented in tastefully spare arrangements. The first of the two LPs is entirely acoustic, while the second LP brings in the arrangers Roberto Menescal (her first guitar instructor along with Carlos Lyra, incidentally), Luis Eça, and Rogério Duprat, who add orchestration and occasionally rhythm parts.

Nara wouldn’t record again for another five years, and that album (Meu Primeiro Amor, 1975) would steer clear of bossa nova and revel in songs and songwriters from earlier eras. She didn’t tour or play live during this period, but decided to jump back into the show business racket with both feet in 1977 after she learned that she was suffering from a malignant brain cancer.

The first time I heard this album I felt there was something distant, disembodied, or disconnected about some of it, as if Nara was looking back on the decade that had just passed from a long distance provided by the reflective insights of maturity. Well it wasn’t until looking at the credits that I understood that there was in fact an issue of distance at work, at least through the second half of it: not just because Nara was recorded in France, but because everything ELSE was recorded in Rio. That is to say, Nara’s guitar and vocal were tracked separately from the accompaniment and orchestrations, which were done at a studio in Rio. The exception to this is the second acoustic guitar provided by “special guest” Tuca – who I believe was also living in Paris at the time and recording with people like Françoise Hardy. So my imagining of the process is like this – Nara and Tuca go into Polydor, France, to be recorded by the mysterious “Mr.Bonzon” listed on the album jacket, then the tapes are flown to Rio where the songs used on the second LP are sweetened with arrangements by Menescal, Eça, and Rogério Duprat. Rogério gives us two memorable tracks in his best baroque embellishment (and both featuring harpsichord), “Minha namorada” and “Primavera.” While there is nothing to complain about with these arrangements from such talented company, I confess a predilection for the unadorned simplicity of the first half of the set. Just two acoustic guitars, the occasional stray piano line, and Nara’s alluring voice. Oh, and a blast of annoying bongos thrown in there on one track that shall remain a surprise for you.

password in comments

Elis Regina – Ela (1971)

Photobucket

ELA
Elis Regina
1971 Phonogram
CD Reissue 1998 Philips

1 Ih! meu Deus do Céu
(Ronaldo Monteiro, Ivan Lins)
2 Black is beautiful
(Paulo Sergio Valle, Marcos Valle)
3 Cinema Olympia
(Caetano Veloso)
4 Golden slumbers
(McCartney, Lennon)
5 Falei e disse
(Baden Powell, Paulo César Pinheiro)
6 Aviso aos navegantes
(Baden Powell, Paulo César Pinheiro)
7 Mundo deserto
(Erasmo Carlos, Roberto Carlos)
8 Ela
(César Costa Filho, Aldir Blanc)
9 Madalena
(Ronaldo Monteiro, Ivan Lins)
10 Os argonautas
(Caetano Veloso)
11 Estrada do Sol
(Dolores Duran, Tom Jobim)

Produced by Nelson Motta
with studio assistance from Roberto Menescal
Arrangements by Chico de Morais
Front cover by Aldo Luiz


Today, January 19, marked 30 years since the death of one of Brazil’s most beloved divas, Elis Regina. The last few years of her career saw her recording lots of crap, but during the 60s and the better part of the 70s she had a long string of solid records, even if the quality of her repertoire (and the number of songwriters from which she drew) dwindled over time. I’ve picked this record not because it’s representative or a masterpiece or anything like that — it’s neither – but because I think it probably gets overlooked since it is chronologically sandwiched between a couple of her other records that overshadow it.

I always considered this sort of a weak effort but the album has grown on me over the years. It is sort of Elis’ foray into the nascent Brazilian soul movement of the time, a genre for which she wasn’t particularly well-suited. There were two big hits off it – Madalena from Ivan Lins, and Black Is Beautiful from Marcos and Paulo Sérgio Valle. The former is classic Elis Regina and deserved to be a smash hit; the latter is much better on the original ‘Garra’ album from Marcos Valle. The lyrics are so bizarre by today’s standards (and rather politically incorrect, although kind of hilarious) that I really can’t picture anyone other than Marcos Valle pulling it off. The thing about the Brothers Valle is they could be very clever, subtle, and ironic without seeming to be any of those things, and I’ve speculated elsewhere on the different interpretations a listener could give their song ‘Black Is Beautiful’. But with Elis’ schmaltzy, cabaret-style version, what you get is an over-literal, superficial reading of the tune that drags on for at least a minute too long. And like many things superficial, it was a bigger success.

In fact this album stands out for Elis and/or Nelson Motta’s choice to tackle material that was pretty strongly associated with other popular artists. The most obvious of these being, naturally, her taking on The Beatles` “Golden Slumbers”. Although I didn’t like it the first time I heard it, I`ve changed my mind about it and now think its damn cool and is one of the strongest cuts here. Her version of Cinema Olympia, a song written by Caetano Veloso but associated with Gal Costa after appearing on one of her first records, is kind of redundant and pointless, although I appreciate the funky wah-wah guitar. And, sure, Elis could sing the phonebook and I would be happy, but when taking on material associated with one of her peers as esteemed as Gal, she ought to bring something more to the song, instead of less… Much better is her irreverent recording of Caetano’s, “Os Navegantes”, which appeared on his “white album” recorded as something like a Portuguese fado. Here, the verses are sung like a soul ballad, and the choruses are organ-fringed lounge jazz. The tune never takes off with the fire that Elis was capable of imparting to it, but in a way it’s her restraining of herself that makes it work. Not sure about the lounge arrangement though; this song makes me wonder what the whole album would have sounded like with Erlon Chaves on arrangements, who had done some wonderful work with Elis. The song “Mundo deserto” by Erasmo and Roberto Carlos is pretty bad ass. I like Elis singing their songs. Probably the most unexpected tune is a Jobim/Dolorus Duran piece that closes the album, `Estrada do sol`, which is almost outrageously bombastic and pretty goddamn original. It’s a great closer for a bit of an uneven album that I continue to appreciate more over time.


flac button

password: vibes

Harry Whitaker / Black Renaissance – Body, Mind and Spirit (1976)

Black Renaissance
Body, Mind and Spirit

1. Black Renaissance
2. Magic Ritual

Recorded at Sound Ideas, New York, NY (01/15/1976).

Arranger: Harry Whitaker.

Players: Harry Whitaker (piano); Lani Groves, Edna Holt, Sandy Nakarmura, Assata Dolby (vocals); Azar Lawrence (soprano & tenor saxophones); David Schnitter (tenor saxophone); Woody Shaw (trumpet); Buster Williams (bass); Billy Hart, Howard King (drums, percussion); Mtume, Earl Bennett (percussion)

——–

For those of you who have never heard of this album, it will come as a lovely surprise. For those who have heard about it but have yet to actually hear it, it might well seem a bit over-hyped, due in no small part to the douchebaggery of one Giles Peterson, who prattles on in the liner notes about how cool he is for knowing about it and showing it off to any other DJ’s who “dared to challenge” him. Well if you ignore that bloated musical neocolonialist (and snappy dresser), you can immerse yourself in what was truly a lost gem, lost even to its creator for decades.

Recorded on Martin Luther King Day in 1976, Whitaker invested his own hard-earned money as an arranger, writer, and session player into making this boldly uncommercial soul-jazz exercise in musical stretching. It features understated riffing from Azar Lawrence, David Schnitter, and the eternally-underrated Woody Shaw. Anchoring the rhythm is stalwart bassist Buster Williams with Howard King on drums and James Mtume on percussion. These latter two would go on to release the first album from the band Mtume the following year, and it’s interesting to keep that in mind while listening to this. While the first side of this album straddles a line between between mellow funk and spaced-out soul jazz (and is a bit long-winded at 23 minutes), the second and shorter side ‘Magic Ritual’ is a more aggressive, agitated piece of Afrocentric celebration. There is effective use of spoken word here that puts us comfortably in Strata-East and loft scene territory. More industry/label hype is compelled to claim this is “one of the earliest examples of rap” or some such nonsense. How many records are we going to bestow that honor on? At any rate claiming this for an album released as late as 1976 is a ludicrous statement that ignores so many musical ancestors it barely merits discussion. So, I’ll stop discussing it.

Since it is Martin Luther King Day in the United States, and since the next US president is likely to abolish that holiday, this makes today probably the last opportunity to celebrate this album without being locked up and held in indefinite detention without Habeas Corpus.

The sound on the CD is burdened with distortions, but given that the masters were destroyed and the source used here is presumably the Japanese bootleg that until now was the only available release, at the end of the day it sounds surprisingly good.

flac button

password: vibes

Trio Mocotó – Trio Mocotó (1973)

Photobucket
Photobucket

Trio Mocotó
Released 1973 on RGE

Fritz Escovão (Luís Carlos de Souza)- cuíca and vocals), Nereu Gargalo (Nereu São José)- pandeiro and vocals) e João Paraíba (João Carlos Fagundes Gomes) drums and vocals

with Amilson Godoi (piano), Olmir Stocker (guitar), Itiberê (bass), and Bira (percussion)

Arrangements and orchestration by Rogérgio Duprat, Sérgio Carvalho, João Carlos Pegoraro, Waldemiro Lemke

SIDE ONE
01. Desapareça, Vá, Desapareça
02. Nó na Garganta
03. Vem Cá, Meu Bem, Vem Cá
04. Recordar
05. Não Vá embora
06. Desculpe

SIDE TWO
07. Maior é Deus
08. Samba da Preguiça
09. Palomares
10. Swinga Sambaby
11. Tô Por Fora da Jogada
12. Gotas da Chuva na Minha Boca


Feeling hungry? Help yourself to a steaming plate of mocotó. Trio Mocotó to be precise. These guys are more famous for being the percussion section underpinning some of Jorge Ben’s greatest records than they are for their own material. And it’s easy to understand that – as good as this album is, their original tunes are rather lackluster and their flat, boring vocals would have made them very popular with the hipster crowd in present-day Olinda or Recife. Which is my way of saying that their vocals are bloody awful and rather irritating (with the exception of Não Vá Embora and Palomares). Trio Mocotó excels at creating a groove, but without a musically-charismatic frontman like Jorge Ben to lead them, their stuff can feel a little uninspired. But this is still essential listening for anyone interested in the samba-soul, samba-rock scene of the mid-70s and has some wonderful moments. As you can see from the album credits, there were a TON of arrangers working on this album; Unfortunately their credits are not specified as to which songs were arranged by whom, but I am willing to guess that Rogério Duprat arranged “Nó na garganta” and possibly “Palomares.” The latter tune is easily the high point of the record — Once you make it through the chord changes of the first verse, you may say to yourself, “boy these guys really took a page from the Jorge Ben textbook of songwriting”, until you look at the album credits and see that it IS actually a Jorge Ben song. Kind of a throwaway tune, as he had songs to spare. He would end up recording it himself sometime in the 90s. Get this album just for this tune, if nothing else, and you will find the rest of the songs growing on you after a while. Other strong cuts here http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifinclude ‘Maior é Deus’ (NOT the Paulo César Pinheiro tune, by the way), the mellow sentimentality of ‘Recordar’, and Ben-like “Swinga Sambaby”, and the propulsive opener, ‘Desapareça’, which features nice Hammond B3 as well as an uncredited saxophone solo. It’s a very short solo, perhaps they just grabbed a sax player from the corridor of the recording studio and asked him to play a few bars and forgot to ask his name when they payed him.. If you are like me and find Burt Bacharach-Hal David songs to be cloying potential suicide-triggers, don’t even THINK about listening to the final song, the ridiculous closer “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Cuica.”

mp3 icon

flac button

password: vibes