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. Continue reading
João Bosco – João Bosco
Original release 1973
2003 reissue RCA / BMG France 74321 965032
In 1972, João Bosco only had a split 7-inch single under his name as a recording artist, but the fact that the other side of that 7″ was from Tom Jobim should tell you the high regard he was held in even at this stage. That same year, Elis Regina would record her first Bosco/Blanc-authored song, Bala Por Pala, and songs from the prolific writing duo would feature prominently on her records for the rest of the decade. That song also appears here, on João Bosco’s debut album, in a version that is more exciting and, well, smoothly frenetic in a way that is distinctly Bosco’s. Continue reading
1 – 3 Horas Da Manhã (Ivan Lins, Waldemar Correia) 2:42 2 Visgo De Jaca (Sergio Cabral, Rildo Hora) 2:35 3 Ou Bola Ou Bulica (Aldir Blanc, Joao Bosco) 2:12 4 Beira-Mar (Ivan Lins) 2:19 5 Olha Maria (Amparo) (A.C. Jobim) 4:45 6 Chorinho No. 1 (Durval Ferreira) 1:44 7 Jogo Da Vida (Sidney Miller, Danilo Caymmi) 3:15 8 Sanguessuga (Fernando Brant, Toninho Horta) 3:47 9 Janelas (Ivan Lins, Ronaldo Monteiro) 1:38 10 Contra O Vento (Ana Borba, Danilo Caymmi) 2:45 11 Beijo Partido (Toninho Horta) 2:28 12 Chamada (Helio Delmiro, Paulo Cesar Pinheiro) 2:10
Arrangements, piano, Fender Rhodes, Arp Synthesizer, Vocals – Luiz Eça
Bass, Percussion, Flute [In C And G], Vocals – Bebeto
Percussion, Drums, Vocals – Hélcio Milito
With Hélio Delmiro (guitar)
Also featuring João Bosco (guitar and vocal on Track 3); Toninho Horta (guitar on tracks 8 & 11); Danilo Caymmi (guitar, tracks 7 & 10); and Rildo Hora (harmonica, track 2).
Recorded and mixed by Nestor Vitiritti, RCA Studios, Rio de Janeiro
Artwork By – Ney Tavora
Artwork and Photographic Effects– Sérgio De Garcia
Coordinator, Directed By – Raymundo Bittencourt
Design – Carlos Guarany
Photography – Ivan Klingen
This is a very solid record, and Tamba Trio was doing a fine job of updating their sound to stay contemporary with developments in MPB. So instead of Jobim & Vincius compositions, we have Aldir Blanc and Joao Bosco (who also guests on the record), Fernando Brandt and Toninho Horta (another guest), Danilo Caymmi, Ivan Lins (yet another guest), Paulo Cesar Pinheiro — only top shelf stuff here, it’s like reaching for the blue Johnny Walker bottle instead of the black or the red. Another nice touch is the neo-chorinho composition by Durval Ferreira here.
But this is obviously no longer a trio configuration of the group, and the album doesn’t have the exuberance or urgency of their early records. It does have the mature confidence of guys who have been playing together for over a decade and invited a bunch of their talented famous friends over to create new textures on their new album. Bassist and flautist Bebeto sings on this record, and his voice is what I imagine Chico Buarque might sound like if he were suffering from dengue fever, with that microtonally desafinado (out of tune) quality so characteristic of bossa nova which – if you aren’t quite in the mood for it – can make a person feel a little seasick.
Antonio Adolfo & A Brazuca
Antonio Adolfo & A Brazuca (No. 1)
1969 Odeon MOFB-3618 (Original issue)
2014 Reissue EMI: UICY 76458 Odeon: TOCP-66055
Brasil 1000 Best Collection
Japan reissue, released 23 Jul 2014
1 Juliana 3:18
2 Futilirama 2:47
3 Moça 2:51
4 Dois Tempos 2:43
5 Vôo Da Apolo 4:28
6 Porque Hoje É Domingo 3:09
7 Maria Aparecida 2:06
8 Psiu 1:56
9 A Cidade E Eu 3:16
10 Pelas Ruas Do Meu Bairro 4:05
11 Teletema 2:44 Bonus Tracks: Odeon 7BD-1203 EP (1970)
12 Gloria, Glorinha 3:07
13 O Baile Do Clube 2:07
14 Ao Redor 2:11
15 M.G.8-80-88 2:19
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Record Company – USM Japan
——————–
Producer – Milton Miranda
Assistant Co-producer – Tibério Gaspar
Conductor – Laércio De Freitas
Cover – Victor Fernando
Musical director – Lyrio Panicali
Technical Director and engineer – Z. J. Merky
Orchestrated By – Antonio Adolfo
Photography By – Carlos Ribeiro, Franklin Corrêa, Victor Fernando
Recording engineers – Jorge, Nivaldo
Technician – Reny R. Lippi
“This is great summer smoothness.” – blog reader Verge
Listening to this breezy offering of carefree carioca tunes, I get the impression that – had he been inclined to move to the United States and and start recording anglophone versions of Brazilian hits – Antônio Adolfo could have beat Sérgio Mendes at his own game. But Adolfo was a busy guy in the 1960s, playing in various jazz-bossa and bossa-jazz combos and even backing up Elis Regina and Milton Nascimento for a short while. The first of two records with his short-lived group Brazuca, this one is immediately accessible and charming, if a bit less adventurous than their second album. The back cover features blurbs from celebs, a bit like book endorsements, from the likes of Carlos Imperial and Roberto Carlos, who likens them to an old tradition with a new sound. Adolfo and his writing partner Tibério Gaspar were frequent contenders in the televised song competitions of the day – they won 2nd place with “Julianna”, featured above. The whole album is very much of its time, its mini-skirt and Vespa vibe has a certain innocence to it where you would hardly know there is a dictatorship going on in the country where this was recorded. Lyricist Gasper, who passed away to little fanfare last February, says as much in “Hoje é domingo,” where the listener is encouraged to leave their troubles behind and enjoy the nearly-universal day of peace and quiet. Insisting on carrying on with a smile is its own kind of resistance, I guess. Adolfo and Gasper were responsible for quite a few songs in Brazil when that became huge hits for other artists. “Teletema”, which closes this album (it is followed by bonus tracks on the CD) is one of those. It was featured in a telenovela in a cloying version by “Regininha” later in the year, but I prefer the original
They also wrote the funky BR-3 for Toni Tornado, but probably their best-known hit was ” Sá Marina” as recorded by Wilson Simonal. You can go google that one up yourself but I feel obliged to share this cool clip of Stevie Wonder singing an anglicized version of it on Brazilian TV, renamed “Pretty World,” when Simonal’s version was still fresh in the collective memory. It starts out a little shaky but quickly picks up. I like his cute “obrigado” when he finishes. For those interested, you can find the whole hour-long TV special on YouTube as well. YouTube has kind of made blogs like mine a bit obsolete, hasn’t it? I mean you can find anything there, what do you need me for? Anyway, I still soldier on.
If the album is guilty of anything, it may be excessive cuteness. Dois Tempos is a kind of musical pun, a composition combining two time signatures with lyrics sketching a portrait of a person who seems to inhabit both a vanished past and contemporary space tinged with uncertainty, a sepia-toned photograph come to life, a sort of decadently picturesque anachronism. It’s a bit precious, and while some listeners may be charmed by that very quality, it’s one the group largely shed on the second album. Even the obligatory song dealing with space flight (because its 1969), Vôo da Apolo, starts like its going to blast off into some sort of exciting space bossa-funk number, but then kind of settles into something more pedestrian. On the second album, Adolfo and company would push the envelope a little further with songs like Transamazônica, named after the pharaonic project of constructing a massive highway connecting parts of the Amazon region with the rest of the country. The lyrics there are nothing special really, but musically the group is bolder and taking more chances. But don’t let me sour anybody on this very fine album, because it’s solid. It just happens to be one of those cases where I was introduced to what I consider their superior effort first, so I can’t help making the comparisons between the two. And idiosyncratic, impressionistic descriptions of long-player albums is what has made this blog tick for nine year so don’t expect me to change things too much now! Anyway, enjoy this groovy debut from Antônio Adolfo e A Brazuca.
Joyce – Vocals, guitar, arrangements Fernando Leporace – Bass, vocals Tutti Moreno – Drums, percussion Mauro Senise – Flute, saxophones Lize Bravo – Vocals Claudio Guimaraes – Guitar Gilson Peranzzetta – Arrangements Helio Delmiro – Guitar Paulo Guimaraes, Jorginho, Danilo Caymmi – Flute Helvius Vilela – Piano
Producer Jose Milton
Arrangements – Maurício Maestro
The somewhat ufanista groover “Banana” which can also double as a shopping list. This song (and Clareana as well) dates back to earlier sessions she had done with Maurício Maestro that also featured Naná Vasconcelos
It is Easter Monday and that is as good a reason as any for F.Vibes to revive a little. I suppose if you were to compare Joyce (né Joyce Moreno) to anyone in the Anglo-American musical universe, it might be Joni Mitchell. Both are phenomenal songwriters and instrumentalists in a male-dominated field where women are often confined to the roles of vocalist and/or window dressing. Both of them are also quite beautiful women who declined to use their sensuality to sell records. How that may or may not relate to their career paths, which often perched between cult status and superstar, is something I will leave others to ponder. While there is no doubt that Joyce has done quite well for herself, she probably has more name recognition outside her home country, particularly in Europe and Japan where she is something of an ambassador for Brazilian musical sophistication and the style called “hard bossa” that she plays. In Brazil she may be best known for the big hit off this album, Clareana. It was written for her children and ebullient with the nearly manic joys of motherhood, a song that impresses by its loveliness at first but may become a sticking point on later listens. By which I mean your audio player of choice may seem like it’s been dunked in sticky honey or molasses for that 2 minutes and 50 seconds while you wait for the album to move on to more nutritious fare. The album also features a song that would become one of Elis Regina’s last hits in her truncated life, “Essa Mulher”, which (it almost goes without saying ) is performed here by Joyce with less of the wild-eyed intensity that Elis gave to it. Feminina is a milestone in Joyce’s career and has top-notch performances from everyone involved (especially her future husband, Tutti Moreno), and exquisite arrangements from Maurício Maestro. But it also stays in pretty safe territory, exhibiting little of the experimentalism of some of her earlier work. I suppose this is what some critics would then call a more “mature sound,” whatever that means. It is certainly top-shelf MPB in an era when many of the big names of that genre were in a bit of a slump, and has gobs of the excitement and energy of youth that had been bled from some of her contemporaries
I’ve been slacking with posting here on this blog lately, and since this album has been on the “to do list” for years, I’m not quite satisfied with my little summary above. Not that I ever consider these posts to be the final word about anything, but I figure I will feature this interesting take on Feminina found on another blog, which I am including here with full attribution, and without correcting their typos or errors in the Portuguese. Here it goes:
In 1980, Brazil still held some semblance of a military government. Public life was, in some ways free, although one could be sure that the eyes and ears of Big Brother were always near. Strong notions of machismo prevented women from assuming positions of societal power or influence. And the carioca singer, Joyce Silveira Palhano de Jesus released Feminina. The album’s creation was no act of innocence. Joyce’s music had been censored amid Brazil’s tense political situation through out the 1970’s; forcing her to record offshore in Italy and New York. Feminina initially met a similar reception, through its confrontation with political and social authoritarianism, even though the album stabbed at the eye of repression in Brazil without uttering a syllable of contempt. In fact there’s no rancor to be found in her words at all. Rather, Joyce used a far more cunning confrontational device: celebration.
Feminina, with its infusion of samba and jazz into a palate of jubilant traditional folk, celebrates being a woman; as well as being Brazilian. It’s an ode to the souls and the intellect hidden away by failed governments and their over zealous censorship. The quick, merry acoustic guitar of the opening title song warms us to Joyce’s cause. There is the sweetest plea in her voice as she asks “O mao/Me explica/Me ensina/Me diz/O que e feminine (Oh mother/Explain to me/Teach me/Tell me/What is a woman).” All the while flutes and a Latin rhythm section climb and fall like gulls above the ocean. “Banana” and “Aldeia de ogum” continue in this vain with thrilling cascades of Joyce’s vocals and frenetic strum patterns. The album’s centerpiece, however, is the thoroughly enchanting, “Clareana.” Written as a lullaby for her two daughters, (Clara and Ana) the song wisps and soars with Joyce’s idiosyncratic gentleness. It’s easy to imagine Joyce sitting at the side of her daughter’s bed, lightly stroking her hairs telling her, “No sol de manha/Novelo de la/No ventre de mae/Bate o coracao de Clara, Ana (The morning sun/A ball of yarn/In the mother’s womb/It beats like the heart of Clara, Ana).”
Upon the release of Feminina, Joyce was already an accomplished musician, playing in bands since the mid 1970’s and having performed with such stars as Gal Costa and Vinicius de Moaes. To say that she adopted elements of jazz, bossa, samba, and blues into her bare acoustic melodies would be a gross miscue. Instead, she bore these styles into something new. For this reason Feminina, as well as many of her other albums retain a fresh identity; undergoing a perpetual evolution and never aspiring to record anything static and crystalline. In 1985, the moribund military government of Brazil was voted out of power. Democracy returned and Brazilian’s could be left again to collectively determine the course of their country. As a rich culture heritage re-emerged to the world so did the carioca singer, Joyce.
Okay then. Have a listen and see what you think for yourself.
Joyce