Paulinho da Viola – Paulinho da Viola (1968)

Classic samba by the master of classic samba, Paulinho da Viola. Having recorded and album called ‘Samba de Madrugada’ with his friend and partner Elden Medeiros a few years previous, this is actually Paulinho’s first disc released under his own name. The liner notes contain a big chunk of autobiographical writing from Paulinho, talking about the first Carnaval blocos he formed in his neighborhood of Botafogo and the trajectory through which he eventually came into contact with the Portela samba school and began working around people like Candeia, Casquinha, Monarco and others. Eventually he began hanging around the bar ‘Zicartola’ with the likes of Cartola, Elton Medeiros, Nelson Sargento, Nelson Cavaquino, Elizete Cardoso.

This album struck me as odd the first time I heard it, because many of the arrangements are the same type of swinging jazz-samba that Milton Miranda and Maestro Gaya were producing for everybody else in the late 1960s. For someone introduced as I was to Paulinho via his 1970s work during the great ‘samba revival’, you might miss the more roots-oriented vibe of those records. The orchestrations here don’t get in the way at all, in fact they are quite well-down and even complimentary, but they are also not particularly necessary. However the repertoire, which contains classic sambas by all his friends — Cartola, Candeia, Elton, Casquinha — can’t be beat! This is an important first entry (sort of) in the discography of a master.

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