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Quarteto Novo – Quarteto Novo (1967)

Quarteto Novo – Quarteto Novo
1967 Odeon (S)MFOB 3505
EU Reissue 2008 EMI – 5099921674624

Holy hell somebody grab a fire extinguisher because this record cooks so much it started a grease fire and may burn your whole house down. Don’t believe me? Yes, the record starts out gently with acoustic treatments playing Northeastern musical motifs (what would have still been called ‘folklore’ back in the 60s), featuring Airto Morreira on various percussion and Hermeto Pascoal on flute.Quarteto Novo – Quarteto Novo (1967)

Walter Wanderley Trio – Chegança (1966) (1971 reissue)

The Walter Wanderley Trio – Cheganca
Original release 1966 on Verve
1971 Reissue MGM Records
Series: MGM Latino Series – 10,010 MGS 610

Like many musicians looking for reprieve from the turmoil of mid-60s Brazil, keyboardist Walter Wanderley had left the country and settled in the United States.   He emigrated at the behest of Creed Taylor and made half a dozen albums for Verve. Most of them can be classed under ‘lounge’ or ‘exotica’ music, which has its own charms, although often as sweet as the half ton of bagged sugar featured on the front of this album.  But “Chegança” is more like the bossa-jazz records Wanderley made in Brazil and has much less of the Creed Taylor background-music schmaltz factor.   The whole band grooves together.  There is appropriately unsubtle cuica playing on O Ganso (“The Goose”)  The highlight, though,  is still the organ playing.  Have a listen to the solo in “Você e eu” below.Walter Wanderley Trio – Chegança (1966) (1971 reissue)

Herbie Mann – Do The Bossa Nova (1962) (Atlantic 1397, Mono pressing)

Herbie Mann
Do The Bossa Nova
1962 Atlantic 1397
Mono pressing

Before bossa nova became the semiotic index for the synthetic happiness of mass consumer culture and alienation (and long before it was featured in the supermarkets and the Commander’s dinner parties in the current adaptation of A Handmaid’s Tale), bossa nova was  associated with the cool and cosmopolitan, with goatee-sporting hep cats like Herbie Mann.  For this record, he went to Rio and actually recorded with a bunch of the leading lights of the movement, which sets this apart from a lot of the contemporary North American jazz-bossa crossovers of the time.  The personnel includes Baden Powell, Paulo Moura, Tom Jobim, and Sérgio Mendes. A fun version of Clifford Brown’s ‘Blues Walk’ gives it a Brazilian twist.

Herbie Mann – Do The Bossa Nova (1962) (Atlantic 1397, Mono pressing)