Gato Barbieri – Bolivia (1973) with Lonnie Liston Smith

gato

Gato Barbieri
“Bolivia”
1973 on Flying Dutchman Records (FD-10158)
This pressing 2001, BMG France

Merceditas
Eclypse / Michellina
Bolivia
Niños
Vidala Triste

Produced by Bob Thiele

Bass – J.-F. Jenny-Clark , Stanley Clarke
Drums – Airto Moreira, Pretty Purdie (Merceditas only)
Guitar – John Abercrombie
Percussion – Airto Moreira , Gene Golden , James M’tume* , Moulay “Ali” Hafid
Piano, Electric Piano – Lonnie Liston Smith
Tenor Saxophone, Flute, Vocals – Gato Barbieri

The corporeal memory of pleasures briefly known and longing barely quenched. Her skin still ageless, her scent rich in my lungs, we drifted off together in exhaustion. She left me there sleeping, a note on the kitchen table. She left me there dreaming the Bolivarian dream of an America united across the hemispheres. She left me a folheto she bought from a street hawker who recited it for us from beginning to end and offered to continue with more. She may have bought it just to silence him and send him on his way, a bribe to leave us to our own private somnambulist poetry. A crowded street in the old city, as he walked away from us I barely noticed that all sound faded into a steady hum of a single note in the dark regions of my awareness, hearing only her voice; of all color fading into a uniform grey, seeing only her pale skin in the half-light. All senses withdrawn into one still point of awareness. She left me lost in the Bolivarian dream as she went back to the arms of the beast that bore me, the colossus of the north yawning and stretching its million arms to every corner of this dying earth. Our homes were exchanged in a backroom trade between our saints arm-wrestling the invisible hand that feeds us. They lost. The body memory of longing never quenched and peace in the future conjunctive. Even the strongest of unions could barely hold out against the fading of that dream.

—————–

This is another beautiful record from Gato Barbieri, making music quite unlike anything else going on at the time and with an ensemble that’s hard to beat. Lonnie Liston Smith receives co-billing on the front cover, and its no coincidence as his Cosmic Echoes band was putting out their first album on Flying Dutchman the same year. The opening track “Merceditas”, having no less than Pretty Purdy, Airto, and M’tume playing together, would seem to be a climax before foreplay, and in any other hands that might be the case. Barbieri pulls this off, though, as the strength of the rest of material is more than enough to carry the album. The title track is particularly rich, beautiful and terrifying. It is difficult for me to write about this record because the liner notes from Nat Hentoff, a much better writer than I’ll ever be, humble the movement of my pen. I will, however, freely quote from him:


“The life-affirming, surging spirit of these performances – with their supple range of colors, rhythms, soaring melodies – is the essence of that basic, visceral beauty that gives hope to lovers and revolutionaries and to all those who believe in real life before death. His music is an embodiment of perennial possibility that is made of blood and flesh rather than vaporous dreams. Gato, in sum, is among the the least abstract of musicians because he is so explosively, specifically alive.”

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Monna Bell y Aldemaro Romero – La Onda Nueva en Mexico


Monna Bell y Aldemaro Romero
“La Onda Nueva en Mexico”
Released 1970 on Discos Musart
Reissued on VampiSoul, 2007 (Vampi CD 087)

01 – Que Bonita Es Mi Tierra (Ruben Fuentes)
02 – La Bamba (Arr. Tony Lucio)
03 – Cucurrucuccu Paloma (Tomas Mendez)
04 – El Balaju (Andres Huesca)
05 – Cielito Lindo (Arr. Tony Lucio)
06 – La Bikina (Ruben Fuentes)
07 – Guadalajara (Pepe Aguilar)
08 – Xochimilco (Ma.Teresa Lara)
09 – El Jarabe Loco (Arr. Garcia Peña)
10 – La Malagueña (Elpidio Ramirez, Pedro Galindo)
11 – La Negra (Ruben Fuentes, Silvestre Vargas)
12 – Tres Consejos (Fuentes, Cervantes)

A Venezuelan arranger, pianist, and conductor welding his country’s joropo with Bossa Nova, roping a Chilean singer as a collaborator in his schemes, and recording an album in Mexico City with a repertoire of jazzed-out Mexican compositions, shake well and add a sepia-toned album cover depicting the entire ensemble as Mexican revolutionaries. What’s not to like about this? Apparently the Mexican government of 1970 didn’t like it much as they basically squashed the album’s chances of reaching much of an audience by ‘strongly encouraging’ radio DJs not to play it. Eventually it saw a reissue with a less “controversial” front cover but by then the moment had passed.

Aldermaro Romero, a contemporary of the much weirder oddball conductor Esquivel, had come into international claim with his “Dinner in Caracas” album in the 50s. There he was credited as the catalyst for the Onda Nueva sound, a blend of traditional Latin American rhythms and melodic figures with pop music, bossa nova, jazz, and lush orchestrations. Monna Bell (born Nora Escobar) had made her name as a singer in Spain with a bunch of records, before relocating to Mexico sometime around when this album was recorded, where she would live until her death just a few years ago. The taste for Bossa Nova in Mexico City had led a lot of Brazilian musicians to take refuge there (as talked about a bit in this Carlos Lyra post) by the end of the 1960s. Monna Bell had been turned on to the new beats, as proven in this 1964 film clip from the film “Buenas Noches, Ano Novo”, in which she sings ‘Desafinado’ flanked by dancing white women who successfully hypnotize two flabbergasted black men with their circular hip swinging and willow-tree-swaying-in-the-breeze arm movements.

This videoclip has nothing at all to do with this album, but wasn’t it fun?

The original album liner notes in Spanish provide a somewhat lofty and all-over-the-place context for the emergence of these new musics through the vehicle of “transculturation” (an idea and term coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz in the 30s and virtually ignored by Anglophone academics until recently). La Onda Nueva en Mexico embodies these lofty ideals quite perfectly, blending the diverse elements with enough subtlety that its uniqueness is almost masked by its naturalness. Some of the musicians playing on it include: Victor Ruiz (bass), Alvaro López, Salvador and Félix Agueros (drums, percussion), Julio Vera (congas), Los 4 Soles y Gasparin (vocals), Enrique Sida and Jaime “La Vaca” Shagún (trombones), Tomás “La Negra” Rodriguez, Armando “El Kennedy” Noriega and Rodolfo “Popo” Sánchez (saxophones), Ramón Flores and Chilo Morán (trumpets), Pablo Jaimes, Jorge Ortega, Enrique Neri, and Aldemaro Romero (electric and acoustic piano). Gualberto Castro sings with Monna on “El Balajú”. Since only 3000 copies of this gem were originally pressed, good luck finding an original on vinyl (although there was a repress later in the 70s, with the aforementioned different cover). So, kudos to VampiSoul for making this one available to the world again, and enjoy La Onda Nueva en Mexico.

 in 320kbs em pee tree
 in FLAC LOSSLESS AUDIO

João Donato – The New Sound of Brazil (1965)

PIANO OF JOÃO DONATO – THE NEW SOUND OF BRAZIL
João Donato (1965)
1965
RCA (USA)
LSP 3473
BMG/RCA reissue 2001

1 Amazon [Amazonas]
(João Donato)

2 Forgotten places [Coisas distantes]
(João Donato, João Gilberto)

3 Little boat [O barquinho]
(Roberto Menescal, Ronaldo Bôscoli)

4 Manhã de carnaval
(Antônio Maria, Luiz Bonfá)

5 Esperança perdida
(Billy Blanco, Tom Jobim)

6 And roses and roses
(Ray Gilbert, Dorival Caymmi)

7 Jungle flower [Flor do mato]
(João Donato)

8 Sugarcane Breeze [Vento no canavial]
(João Donato)

9 How insensitive [Insensatez]
(Tom Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes)

10 Samba de Orfeu
(Antônio Maria, Luiz Bonfá)

11 Glass beads [No coreto]
(João Donato, João Gilberto)

12 It didn’t end [Não se acabou]
(João Donato)

Three years after the legendary Bossa Nova concert presentation at Carnegie Hall, the anglophone world could be said to have already been doing a backstroke in the imaginary beaches of rich countries’ exotic preconceptions of Brazil at the time. Of a country soaked in relaxing breezes and caresses of bronzed beauties, of young people strumming guitars on beaches. Of the bossa nova dream flattened into a two-dimensional comic strip and sold to the young and hip in the great white north. The aural marketplace was flooded with the sounds of Tom Jobim played on every imaginable instrument, with jazz musicians making bossa-inspired albums faster than people could buy them. And some of the movement’s original leading lights touring the US, and some of them staying there.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, then, that I would not be similarly enchanted by “The New Sound of Brazil”, João Donato’s debut as a bandleader in the US. It’s that it was recorded away from Brazil, or even that there wasn’t much “new” about the sound. That’s not the problem with it. Donato had already been living there for some years, being in many ways much more appreciated as a piano player in the US than he was in Brazil, and knew his way around the jazz community. Had he been in more control of this album, it could have been amazing.

The shame of this album is that its production was in the hands of one Andy Wiswell who (as the notes point out) had built his career working with the likes of Judy Garland, Perry Como, Harry Belafonte, and Liza Minneli, and was an expert at producing a riveting Broadway soundtrack… One glaring, unforgivable error was to kick Dom Um off the drum-kit and put him on percussion, replacing him with an American session musician. As Donato is quoted as saying in the liner notes, “Andy thought that Dom Um played ‘too Brazilian,’ and that this would jeopardize the commercial value of the album. They argued that it would be better to have an American drummer playing with an accent, because that was how people were accustomed to hearing bossa nova. I thought it was a sketchy explanation, but preferred to agree in order to avoid any hard feelings.”

Mr. Donato, with all due respect — grow a pair, already! I am kidding, it was 1965, and João seems like a laid-back kind of eccentric dude.

The string arrangements by German-born Claus Ogerman are quite good, and he would go on to work on a bunch of other notable bossa nova (and ‘post’ bossa) albums in the next decade. But even here, the production makes the strings so sugary sweet that Aspertame starts to sound like a good idea. After a while it grows on you and in fact after listening with headphones I came to appreciate the mix a little more. But, one last gripe, the instrumental contributions by Carlos Lyra and Luiz Bonfa should also be more pronounced than they are.

The disc is still worthy of any Brazil music fan’s collection. It contains the first recording of Donato’s song “Amazonas”, and several rare collaborations with João Gilberto (who, interestingly enough, did not appear on the sessions).

password: vibes

Jorge Ben – Sacudin Ben Samba (1964) [Salve, Jorge! Boxset]


SACUDIN BEN SAMBA
1964
Philips
P 632.193 L

Reissue 2009, “Salve Jorge!” Boxset

1 Anjo azul

2 Nena Naná

3 Vamos embora “Uau”

4 Capoeira

5 Gimbo

6 Carnaval triste

7 A Princesa e o plebeu

8 Menina do vestido coral

9 Pula baú

10 Jeitão de Preto Velho

11 Espero por você

12 Não desanima não

A very underrated Jorge Ben album, his second LP after the hard-to-follow debut of Samba Esquema Novo didn´t storm the pop music charts like that album, nor did it produce staples in his live repertoire. The track ‘Capoeira’ is probably the best-known of this set and has been rerecorded by quite a few other artists. The second song on this album, ‘Nena Naná’, is a bit of shameless self-plagiarizing of his own ‘Mas Que Nada’, just in case you had forgotten about that huge smash hit that would continue to be played until the end of time. On the whole this album is a lot more of a straight jazz-bossa orientation than his first album, neither a complete retread of the first but also not a conquering of new territory. The band is incredible, though, with some riveting bebop-tinged horn solos and well-lubricated rhythm arrangements. It is an essential piece of Ben’s discography and also has one of the most classic album covers ever.



Jorge Ben – Sacudin Ben Samba (1964) in 320kbs in em pee three

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Gato Barbieri – Fenix (1971)

Gato Barbieri
“Fenix”
Released 1971 on Flying Dutchman (FD 10158)

Having already established himself in the vanguard of free jazz (stints with Don Cherry, an appearance on the landmark ‘Liberation Music Orchestra’ from Charlie Haden / Carla Bley), Barbieri was producing some incredible work as a bandleader by the late 60s. For some reason this album feels like an appropriate “holiday season” album to me, whatever your particular cosmological inclinations might be. The album is really part of a series of a politically-engaged, Pan-American albums whose musical sensibilities were damn unique. Barbieri’s riffing rarely drifts from the fiercer side of a Coltrane / Pharoah orientation. It’s soulful, spiritual jazz, but also angry. With Lenny White on drums, Lonnie Liston Smith on keys, and Naná Vasconcelos on congas and berimbau (Naná was, and still is, the most capable and expressive player of this instrument), you really can’t go wrong with this record. One really interesting cut is the song ‘Falsa Baiana’, written as a samba by Geraldo Pereira and made famous by Roberto Silva (to be reinterpreted later as bossa nova by João Gilberto, and in MPB’s idiom by Gal Costa and others). Gato’s rendition here, one of the calmer tracks on the album, is almost unrecognizable as he circles around the chord changes and doesn’t play the main melody until three minutes into the song. This album is a treasure for the ears and the soul, enjoy!

The BMG France reissue has the original sleeve notes from Michael Cuscuna and some newer commentary in French that I can’t really read.

Gato Barbieri – Fenix (1971) in 320kbs em pee three
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PART ONE //// PART TWO

Eumir Deodato / Neco – Samba Nova Concepção (1964)

Eumir Deodato
Samba Nova Concepção
Released 1964 on Equipe label (EQ-803)
Reissue 2007 on Atração Fonográfico (ATR41035)

The inner panel that contains some info specifically about this album is barely legible in the included scan, due to the way the digipak is constructed. I have therefore taken the liberty of reproducing it here, and translating it from Portuguese to English:

————————

///// An album originally released on vinyl by the Equipe label in 1964, “Samba Nova Concepção” counts among its participants some of the musicians that would be join together for the band “Os Catedráticos do Samba,” that accompanied Eumir Deodato on his subsequent albums like “Impulso” and “Ataque”. Amidst those who formed the group were drummer Wilson das Neves, saxophonist Alberto Gonçalves, bassist Luiz Marinho, and Daudeth de Azevedo, also known as Neco, guitarist responsible for the disc’s arrangements and the direction of the musicians during the recording. Eumir Deodato played piano on all 12 cuts.* (see note at bottom)

In the repertoire of the album we have themes from the record “Coisas” by master Moacir Santos, such as ‘Coisa no.1″ and “Nanã (Coisa no.5), songs from representatives of Bossa Nova like Roberto Menescal, Ronaldo Boscoli, and the brothers Valle (Marcos and Sérgio), alongside one song by Jorge Ben Jor, “Capoeira”, from his second album “Sacundin Ben Samba” released the same year of 1964.

Just like all the other five discs of the Brazilian maestro and pianist released in the Coleção Galeria (on the Atração label) ……. “Samba Nova Concepção” shows the early musical production by one of the Brazilian artists most highly-esteemed outside Brazil, with his roots in bossa nova, in samba, and in jazz.

**Note: as pointed out below in the info lifted from a wonderful online discography of Deodato I’ve come across, this album was not originally released under his name but rather that of Neco — guitarist, arranger, and conductor for the sessions. That the Atração label omits this fact in their liner notes is… interesting.
———————-


SAMBA NOVA CONCEPÇÃO
Neco
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: c. 1964
Clélio Ribeiro (tp); José Araújo (Zé Bodega) (ts); Jorge Ferreira Da Silva (Jorginho) (as,f); Emilio Baptista (as); Alberto Gonçalves (bs); Eumir Deodato (p); Daudeth de Azevedo (Neco) (g,arr,cond); Luiz Marinho (b); Wilson Das Neves (d); Jorge Arena (cga); Humberto Garin (guiro); Rubens Bassini (perc).

a. Samba No Congo (Jorge Ferreira da Silva) – 2:24
b. Adriana (Roberto Menescal/Luiz Fernando Freire) – 2:08
c. Estamos Aí (Durval Ferreira/Mauricio Einhorn) – 1:56
d. Carnaval Triste (Sergio Carvalho/Paulo Bruce) – 2:14
e. Nanã (Moacir Santos/Mario Telles) – 3:20
f. Straits Of McClellan (Don Elliott) – 3:13
g. Capoeira (Jorge Ben) – 2:23
h. Sonho De Maria (Marcos Valle/Paulo Sergio Valle) – 3:22
i. Samba A (Durval Ferreira/Mauricio Einhorn) – 2:53
j. Amor De Nada (Marcos Valle/Paulo Sergio Valle) – 2:22

same, except Euclides J. Conceição, Pedro Luiz de Assis (as); Adherbal Moreira (bs); Tenório Jr. (p).

k. Coisa No.1 (Moacir Santos/Clóvis Mello – 1:52
l. A Morte De Um Deus De Sal (Roberto Menescal/Ronaldo Bôscoli) – 3:08

Note: While the music on this album was originally released under Neco’s name (Equipe (Br) EQ-803), it has subsequently become credited in further issues and compilations to the music’s producer and pianist, Eumir Deodato (with kind thanks to Paulo Sá Pereira, musician and professor of MPB at Ribeirão Preto College – Sao Paulo, who alerted me to this fact).

Issues: a-l on Equipe (Br) EQ-803, Ubatuqui (Sp) UBCD-502 [CD], Ubatuqui (Sp) UBCD-102 [CD], Bomba (Jap) BOM-22083 [CD].
Samplers: a-j also on Irma (It) 508350-2 [CD] titled THE BOSSA NOVA SESSIONS VOL. 1. b also on Irma (It) 508814-2 [CD] titled A DAY IN RIMINI. h & j also on Irma (It) 507901-2 [CD] titled SUMMER SAMBA.
Producer: Eumir Deodato. Executive Producer: Ogide. (LP). Eumir Deodato & Arnaldo DeSouteiro (CD).
Engineer: Umberto Contardi
Notes: Myriam Conceição.

Note: As with all posts here over the last month or two, the ID TAGS included restored diacritical characters (ç, ã, é, and so on ) as well as songwriting credits on each individual track. You may need to configure your media player to see these while listening, but you can also simply right-click (on a Windows OS) and see songwriter credits under “properties”. Also note that if you decompress to WAV and archive (that means you, Simon..), as far as I know you completely lose these ID tags.