Elis Regina – Elis Especial (1968)

ELIS REGINA
“Elis Especial”
1968 Philips

From the first measure of “Samba do Perdão”, this album has an excitement that it manages to maintain throughout the entire record. The Tom Jobim tribute, for whatever reason, did not impress me much the first time I heard it — perhaps it’s the way she rocks the “suingue” of ‘Vou Te Contar’ the second time around, which is now precisely the thing I love about it. I am a sucker for pretty much anything with a guitar played through an old Fender amp with the tremolo turned up somewhere between 8 and 10, and so the next track “De Onde Vens” just melts me. It’s also one of the earliest tracks of Elis Regina to feature and electric guitar at all, if I’m not mistaken. I could keep going like this, blow by blow and song by song, but you would do best to just give it a spin. The album features a choice repetoire of songs penned by the likes of Baden Powell, Dori Caymmi and Nelson Motta, Chico Buarque, Roberto Menescal and Ronaldo Bôscoli, Edu Lobo, Capinan, and Gilberto Gil (a pre-Tropicalia composition). The closing piece, a medley of songs in tribute to the Mangueira samba school, highlights one of Elis’s many skills, the ability to make you forget that her performances span virtually the entire recorded history of Brazilian music in her choice of material. It’s a shame that the session musicians are not credited, as they are really smoking throughout the entire album. Elis describes the recording session in the liner notes, saying that it felt like they were at home practicing, dimming the lights and getting loose. By the last few minutes of the Mangueira medley,when the rhythm section is doing dexterous somersaults in two different meters, I want to go shake Armando Pittigliani’s hand for leaving them all enough room to stretch out.

01 – Samba do Perdão (Baden Powell / Paulo César Pinheiro)
02 – “Tributo a Tom Jobim” Vou Te Contar (Tom Jobim) Fotografia (Tom Jobim) Outra Vez (Tom Jobim) Vou Te Contar (Tom Jobim)
03 – De Onde Vens (Dori Caymmi / Nelson Motta)
04 – Bom Tempo (Chico Buarque)
05 – Da Cor do Pecado (Bororó)
06 – Corrida de Jangada (Edu Lobo / Capinan)
07 – Carta ao Mar (Roberto Menescal / Ronaldo Bôscoli)
08 – Vira-mundo (Gilberto Gil / Capinan)
09 – Upa Neguinho (Edu Lobo / Gianfrancesco Guarnieri)
10 – “Tributo à Mangueira” Mangueira (Assis Valente / Zequinha Reis) Fala Mangueira (Mirabeau / Milton de Oliveira) Exaltação à Mangueira (Enéas Brites da Silva / Aloísio Augusto da Costa) Levanta Mangueira (Luis Antônio) Despedida de Mangueira (Aldo Cabral / Benedito Lacerda) Pra Machucar Meu Coração (Ary Barroso)Produced by Armando Pittigliani
Arrangements ay Erlon Chaves

The wonderfully memorable photo (in the note Elis writes that it was the best photo she ever had taken of her..) is by Hélio Santos for the magazine “Manchete.”

    

password: vibes