Dominguinhos – Programa MPB Especial, February 8, 1974 (Repost)

DOMINGUINHOS
“A música brasileira deste século por seus autores e intérpretes”
SESC São Paulo / JCB Produções Artisticas

Recorded for the Programa MPB Especial on February 8, 1974, directed by Fernando Faro

Dominguinhos – sanfona de oito baixos
José Braz dos Santos – zabumba
Domingos P. Neres – triângulo

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 This is a repost from 2010.  Dominguinhos’ health has been failing for some time now.  Send him some good vibes and give a listen to this amazing interview-performance. March, 2013 – F.

Some years ago the SESC organization of São Paulo released a number of boxsets of interviews and music with musicians and composers. This disc is from the second boxset (the discs themselves are not numbered or in any way chronological). Only a fraction of the stuff filmed for this series has found its way onto DVD, such as Nara Leão, Cartola (very recently), or Elis Regina. If you’ve seen those then you know the format — a little bit of playing, a little bit of talking, some more playing, very relaxed. In fact one curious production technique is that you never (or at least I haven’t yet) hear the actual questions being posed to the artists. This used to really annoy me. Now I see it as some of form of editorial self-erasure, an attempt to efface the interviewer’s subjective presence and keep the focus on the artists. In that sense the technique is mildly admirable. But there are still times when I knew what the hell they had been asking about..

But in this case, Dominguinhos, who is as relaxed and good-natured in an interview as you might expect from his music, tells us a little about growing up in Garanhuns, Pernambuco, his father being a small farmer (pequeno agricultor, not “small” like Azulão) who also worked as a tuner of sanfonas de 8 baixos (eight-button accordions) and playing in the feiras where so much business gets conducted in the interior. He tells of meeting as a young boy with the master Luiz Gonazaga, who would become his mentor and protector throughout this life.

forro

We then get something of a musical travelogue of his life, with him playing some of the different types of music he played to get by when living in Rio – samba, música romantica, boleros, show tunes. Songs by Tom Jobim, Johnny Alf, Jack Lawrence. We even get a short snipped of chansón with “La vie em Rose” immortalized by Edith Piaf. It’s not as if Domiguinhos is alone in knowing this repertoire as it was more or less required of working musicians, but as he demonstrates in this casual setting it is not hard to imagine that his emotive capacity to connect with whatever material he plays is at least part of how he grew to be such a sought-after session player, apart from his association with Gonzagão. This TV program was filmed as Dominguinhos was ‘hot stuff’ with the post-tropicalia scene, having both recorded on my ex-girlfriend’s album “India” (1973) and also touring in her live presentation of it. I may be partial because I am still in love with Gal Costa after all these years in spite of her breaking my heart, but I really think the India tour performance should see a legit DVD release (there is a bootleg pimping itself out over at YouTube…), because I would rather go blind from stroking myself than from squinting my eyes at a blurry image *while* stroking myself, damnit. Anyway, if the only thing Dominguinhos ever did in his entire career was to play on that album, he would still deserve top props from me. But he was also working on Gilberto Gil’s ‘Refavela’ album which would yield one of the most beautiful songs either man would write, “Lamento Sertanejo (Forró de Dominguinhos.” But he opens the show with his most famous and instantly-recognizable song “Eu só quero um Xodó,” which is a staple in the forró song book now, both pé de serra and electric… I had always thought it was co-written with Gilberto Gil because of its appearance on the latter’s “Cidade de Salvador” album (underrated and rather hard to track down, unfortunately), and because the melody seems so obviously GIL to me.. But it’s not, its Dominguinhos and Anastácia. There is however, the Gil/Dominginhos collaboration “Abri a porta” later on, and the fantastic song written with Chico Buarque “Tantas Palavras.” There is even a song he co-authored with his nine year-old daughter Liv titled “Vários caminhos.” And it’s amazing.

forro

I think this box has something like 13 discs in it and a book which transcribes all the interviews and has some commentary by the likes of Tarik de Souza and Sergio Cabral who worked on the SESC project. They are all pretty consistently good but this one is really special and definitely my personal favorite. It’s recorded with the sparseness and simplicity that really brings out the best in Dominguinhos without the frills of (over)production, and to hear him play some of these tunes *entirely* by himself (by which I mean, with the zabumba and triangle players sitting them out in the corner) is a privilege, like having him come by to your house and play for you on your veranda on a crisp autumn evening. Some of the other volumes in the SESC boxes seem to be made from second or third generation back-up tapes or transferred off the video reels, whereas this one has incredibly detailed and warm sound. And, of course, he has some anecdotes peppered between the songs that prove how any good sanfoneiro is also a good storyteller. He ends the show appropriately enough with an homage to his mentor, Luiz Gonzaga, and shows us why is truly the only one worthy of being Gonzaga’s successor and ‘filho postiço’.

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Hermeto Pascoal – Zabumbê-bum-á (1979)

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Hermeto Pascoal
Zabumbê-bum-á
Original release 1979 Warner Brothers
Reissue 2011 – Coleção Cultura / Warner Brasil

A1         Sâo Jorge     2:36
A2         Rede     6:27
A3         Pimenteira     6:27
A4         Suite Paulistana     5:27
B1         Santo Antonio     4:07
B2         Alexandre, Marcelo E Pablo    5:16
B3         Suite Norte, Sul, Leste, Oeste     3:55
B4         Susto     3:03
B5         Mestre Mará     4:28

    Composed By, Arranged By, Producer – Hermeto Pascoal (tracks: A1 to B1, B3 to B5)
Engineer, Mixed By – Vitor Farias
Producer, Arranged By, Mixed By – Hermeto Pascoal

– Hermeto Pascoal / arrangements, piano, clavinet, acoustic guitar, flutes, keyboards, saxophones, vocals and percussion
– Cacau / flute and saxophones
– Jovino Santos Neto / keyboards, clavinet and percussion
– Antônio Celso / guitars and mandolim
– Itiberê Zwarg / bass
– Nenê / drums, percussion and keyboards (6)
– Pernambuco / percussion
– Zabelê – vocals, percussion and acoustic guitar (6)
– Mauro Senise / flute and saxophone
– Hermeto Parents (Seu Pascoal & Dona Divina) / vocals (1 and 5)

Release information

LP: Warner Bros. Records WB 91 018 (Germany), WEA International Inc .BR 36104 (Argentina)
CD Reissue: 2011 “Coleção Cultural” / Livraria Cultura / Warner

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It is often said that Hermeto Pascoal’s music is uncharacterizable.  This is essentially true.  Although you will find his records in the “jazz” section of most record stores lucky enough to stock his albums, he doesn’t always fit comfortably there.  A musical polymath, he can seemingly play any instrument, including many of his own invention.  He may have sat in with Miles Davis (during his most polemical period), inspired Cannonball Adderley and fellow-traveler Airto Morreira, but his music is alternately tightly composed and “free”, drifting easily from fusion-esque readings of regional musical traditions from his native Northeast Brasil, to cacophonous bursts of electronics, found sounds, unorthodox instrumentation or heterodox uses of traditional instruments.  This album, Zubumbê-bum-a, followed his very important and better-known Slaves Mass album from 1977.  It’s possible that this record is more “out” than its predecessor, pushing on his avante-gard tendencies while delving deeper into cannibalistic experiments with Nordestino music and including a fair amount of spoken word and poetry.  The opening track is an idiosyncratic homage to São Jorge, whose place in Brazilian cosmology cannot be overstated – syncretized with Ogun in the myriad Afrobrazilian religion traditions, patron saint of the city of Rio, he is the protector of warriors, he who vanquishes our adversaries whether ethereal or corporal, the slayer of dragons, but the track is uplifting and breeze-worthy.     “Não tem preço não..”  there are vocals from Hermeto and Dona Divina, some of them wordless, some of them Hermeto rambling in his unique way in what might be a private oração to São Jorge –  “a carreira da nossa é isso… cavalho ligeira” … his voice is mixed under the music for the most part, giving his actual words kind of a subliminal, secondary importance.  And I’ll admit this – I have an interview with him that he gave to the famous MPB Especial program, and I can’t follow what the hell he’s talking about half the time in his free-associative jive talking.  Adjectives I’ve often heard in relation to Hermeto, both in Brazil and abroad – “crazy”, “mad genius.”  I’ve seen him perform live, only once, and it tended to confirm this reputation.  The man is a transnational treasure to humanity. But probably a bonafide nut.
With this pleasant trot on Saint George’s steed behind us, the album really takes off with the beguiling “Rede”.  Beginning slowly with spoken word evoking a lazy afternoon swinging (or rather being swung) on a hammock,  and an angular chord progression dominated by Fender Rhodes and flute, developing hypnotically into a crescendo of drums and saxophones dancing circles around the same plodding, angular chord structure.   The song moves almost seamlessly into the next, “Pimenteira.”  This is pretty much full-on jazz fusion in the good sense of that phrase/idea, until breaking down about five minutes into the track into a flute and zabumba jam worthy of the Banda de Pifanos de Caruarú, which lasts for less than a minute before leading back into the main theme.  This is as good a place as any to stop and mention an analogy or comparison I’ve seen about Hermeto: I’ve read comparisons of him to Frank Zappa, which initially made me wince.  This is not necessarily a dis to Frank but simply because I don’t like easy comparisons made out of convenience.  But it sort of stuck in my craw ever since, and tracks like this make me lend it some credence.  This piece wouldn’t sound out of place on one of Zappa’s instrumental albums from his “Studio Tan” era, and in general Hermeto’s sense of fun and levity,  albeit with different cultural reference points, in collusion with an infatuation with musique concrete and avant-guardism make this a more productive comparison than I would have anticipated.  “Suite Paulistana” is performed entirely by Hermeto via layered overdubs in the studio, a fact I would not have guessed had I not looked at the album jacket.  It’s a frenetic, free-music approximation of the chaos and incessant movement of Brazil’s industrial nerve-center, Sâo Paulo, that sounds for all the world like a group of musicians improvising collectively.  How on earth Hermeto managed to record this with overdubs is nothing short of breathtaking, leading to the suspicion that the chaos is actually closely controlled and composed.  More Anglophone comparisons here that wouldn’t be totally off base might be Henry Cow, a group who similarly straddled lines of jazz improvisation, progressive rock, and the avant-garde, but famously lacked any sense of humor. “Santo Antônio” begins with what is essentially an interview fragment with a “Divína Eulalia de Oliveira”, credited with “story and improvising” on the jacket, describing a traditional religious procession probably in the interior of Ceará where Hermeto is from, where a group of people go door to door asking for donations or begging alms on behalf of the saint, asking for kitchen staples, farinha, feijão, arroz, ovos, macaxeira — “Oi dona da casa! Esmola pra Santo Antônio … qualquer coisa pra ajudar..”.  The feast of Saint Anthony is commemorated on June 13, making it part of the month-long series of Festas Juninas that exists with a singularity in Northeast Brazil in ways that it simply does not in the rest of the country.    This track has so much of what is magical about Hermeto.  Its demonstrably ethnographic, musically cinematic, and cut from an entirely different cloth from the pedantic and ultimately xenophobic traditionalism of the Movimento Armorial, for example, who by the mid 70s were the self-appointed guardians of all things “cultura popular” in the northeast.  Hermeto’s eclecticism, his mixture of affection and irreverence, must have been anathema to those people.
This little write-up is quickly becoming ungainly and unwieldy so in the interest of wrapping it up, I’ll gloss over the next three tracks by saying they are bit more tame, by which I mean *almost* accessible in a conventional sense of jazz fusion but still always coming back to the album’s regionalism with fragments of baião mixed in to the stew.  Some nice clavinet on Susto, which ends up with bombastic blasts of atonality at the end which are wonderful.  Another of Hermeto’s skills – diving into atonal waters without alienating the “casual” listener is a pretty unique quality.  Not that Hermeto has that many casual listeners.  In a somewhat circular way the album closes with a experimental “Mestre Mará”, which gives a nod to the music form of maracatu nação (or maracatu baque virado, as distinct from the unrelated form of maracatu ‘rural’ or baque solto), using one of its common syncopated rhythms along with agogô. But this is quiet and pensive, whereas maracatu nação is performed with large groups of drummers whose pulse you can feel in your gut from three city blocks away.  Instead, this quiet and mysterious tone poem seems to deliver us up to a mesa branca in the curtained-off room of a mestre, with the voices of the possessed joining in, suddenly wracked by fits of coughing from the defumação of incense and herbs.  It’s not frivolous that Hermeto is sometimes called “o bruxo.”

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paragraph from the back album cover:

“A música pelo músico, sem experiências nem vanguardas, apenas música sentida nota por nota, formando arranjos nos quais os instrumento, num só tempo, convivem e são individualmente explorados, escute.”

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Luiz Gonzaga – Quadrilhas e marchinhas juninas (1965)


QUADRILHAS E MARCHINHAS JUNINAS
Luiz Gonzaga
1965 RCA
This vinyl rip from a 1973 RCA Dynaflex repress
(107.0152)

1 Pot-pourri Instrumental:
Fim de festa (Zito Borborema)
Polca fogueteira (Luiz Gonzaga)
Lascando o cano (Luiz Gonzaga – Zé Dantas)
Pagode russo (Luiz Gonzaga)
Fogueira de São João (Luiz Gonzaga – Carmelina Albuquerque)

2 Olha pro céu (Instrumental)
(José Fernandes, Luiz Gonzaga)
3 São João na roça (Instrumental)
(Luiz Gonzaga, Zé Dantas)
4 Fogo sem fuzil
(José Marcolino, Luiz Gonzaga)
5 Quero chá
(José Marcolino, Luiz Gonzaga)
6 Matuto de opinião
(Gonzaguinha, Luiz Gonzaga)
7 Boi bumbá
(Gonzaguinha, Luiz Gonzaga)
8 O maior tocador
(Luiz Guimarães)
9 Piriri
(Ary Rangel, João Silva)

Vinyl -> Pro-Ject RM-5SE turntable (with Sumiko Blue Point 2 cartridge, Speedbox power supply); Creek Audio OBH-15; M-Audio Audiophile 192 Soundcard ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 192khz; Click Repair light settings; individual clicks and pops taken out with Adobe Audition 3.0 – resampled (and dithered for 16-bit) using iZotope RX Advanced. Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag&Rename.

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Well I had hoped to get this post done yesterday but it just didn’t happen. Yesterday was the official day of São Pedro but since today is the very last day of June, I am barely saved from being a day late and a dollar short. There are still festas juninas going on the northeast, and if you are at one you obviously don’t need this LP, but for everyone else you can entertain yourself with Luiz Gonzaga. Gonzagão must have made a dozen São João-themed LPs in his lifetime (including a “volume two” to compliment this particular record a decade later, which I’ve never seen). The first side of the LP is entirely instrumental, including a medley that rips through tunes both familiar and arcane from his catalog. Gonzaga’s playing never fails to stun but if instrumental forró is not your thing, you might find yourself checking your watch as you wait for the second half. Side Two features six short and sweet vocal tracks. Although none of these probably make it on a ‘best of’ collection (I’m not sure about the CD boxset, which one of these days I will invest in), but I had heard at least a couple of them somewhere before picking up this album. Boi Bumbá and Piriri are Gonzaga at his finest, the latter being a fantastic São João song with a chorus that will stick in your head for hours.

The former track, Boi Bumbá, has a great extended verse/bridge section where the singers divide up cow and deliberate on which parts go to whom. This is actually a vocal duet, trading off with another singer, whose identity is unknown to me. I could try to find this out by reading a biography on Gonzaga, but I am basically lazy and do not know how to read. So I will appeal to any blog followers here for information – does anybody know? It is a double mystery in that the song also has a writing credit (along with preceding track `Matuto de opinão’) given to a Luiz Gonzaga Junior. My first reaction to seeing this was — this CAN’T be Gonzaguinha, the adopted son of Gonzagão who had his own brilliant recording career in the 70s. Well, checking on his birth date, I discovered that he actually would have been twenty years old by 1965, so technically it is possible. But Gonzaguinha’s own work would totally eschew the kind of rustic regionalisms that form the backbone of his father’s repertoire in favor of jagged social commentary and political engagement, having over 50 of his compositions censored by the military government. Even though his recording career had yet to begin in 65, as far as I know he was involved with the student movement of the time and I just can’t imagine him having anything to do with these two tracks. So, it must be a coincidence, right? Or maybe not. Anyone with clues please leave them in the comments here.

I felt so badly about the mediocre O Cavaquinho no Forró album earlier this week having been the only ‘celebration’ for São João or the festas juninas on the blog this year, that I thought I would make it up to you by getting this post up just under the wire. Please accept my peace offering.

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Pra onde vai a barrigueira?
Vai pra Miguel Pereira
E a vassoura do rabo?
Vai pro Zé Nabo
De que é o osso da pá?
De Joãozinho da Fornemá
E a carne que tem na nuca?
É de seu Manuca
De quem é o quarto trazeiro?
De seu Joaquim marceneiro
E o osso alicate?
De Maria Badulate
Pra quem dou a tripa fina?
Dê para a Sabina
Pra quem mando este bofe?
Pro Doutor Orlofe
E a capado filé?
Mande para o Zezé
Pra quem vou mandar o pé?
Para o Mário Tiburé
Pra quem dou o filé miõn?
Para o doutor Calmon
E o osso da suã?
Dê para o doutor Borjan
Não é belo nem doutor
Mas é bom trabalhador
Mas é véio macho, sim sinhor
É véio macho, sim sinhor
É bom pra trabaiá
Rói suã até suar
Ê boi, ê boi
Ê boi do mangangá..

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Jackson do Pandeiro – O Cabra da Peste (1966) (REPOST)

Hi there folks. Today, by request, I resurrect an old dead post from June of 2010, enjoy!

jackson
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Jackson do Pandeiro
“O Cabra da Peste”

Original release: 1966, “Jackson do Pandeiro – O Cabra da Peste”, Continental, PPL 12265)

Censored release: 1969

reissue: 1978, “Jackson do Pandeiro – O Cabra da Peste – Edição Limitada”, Popular/GE/Continental, 146411047)

This pressing, Warner/Continental CD, 2001 (092741523-2)

01. Capoeira mata um (Alvaro Castilho – De Castro) Balanço
02. Tá roendo (Figueirôa – Maruim) Samba
03. A ordem é samba (Jackson do Pandeiro – Severino Ramos) Samba
04. Pinicapau (Codó) Baião
05. Forró quentinho (Almira Castilho) Forró
06. Bodocongó (HUmberto Teixeira – Cicero Nunes) Baião
07. Secretária do diabo (Osvaldo Oliveira – Reinaldo Costa) Forró
08. Vou sambalançar (Antonio Barros – Jackson do Pandeiro) Samba
09. Alegria do vaqueiro (Zé Katraca) Baião
10. Forró do Biá (Luiz Moreno – Jeronimo) Forró
11. Papai vai de trem (Ivo Martins – Jackson do Pandeiro) Baião

DELETED TRACK between tracks 10 and 11 above, Polícia Feminina (Severino Ramos – José Pereira) Forró

What a confusing release history this album has had, which utter lack of any information whatsoever on the CD reissue fails to clear up. This is what I was I have been able to piece together for you: “O Cabra da Peste” was released in 1966 (sometimes listed as 1963, which I originally fell for but was thankfully corrected about), censored and re-released without the song “Polícia Feminina” in 1969, then reissued again in limited edition in 1978, from which I suspect this album cover at the top was taken. I am not sure what is meant by the text under the photo, “rerecording with a new cover,” unless they consider the removal of one track to be a rerecording. Or perhaps by 78 they decided to put “Polícia Feminina” (a fairly innocuous and silly song about having your heart locked up in prison, etc) back on the album…. Whatever the case may be, the CD issue is still missing the track. The recording is in mono, so we can at least be glad they didn’t use a version “electronically rechannelled for stereo”…

Jackson do Pandeiro recorded a ton of hit songs that are very important for Brazilian popular music. None of those are on here. (You might, however, want to visit the previous post of O Rei do Ritmo on this site..). I read one review of this album, in Portuguese, that criticized the song selection as being the weakest of any album from Jackson’s career.. Well, if that’s true, I am still pretty impressed by this record and it only shows just how much of a genius this guy to give these tunes so much life. It’s a solid set of forró, samba, and samba de coco. And although there might not be anything that immediately has you singing along like many of his better-known releases, there are some real stand-out cuts here. “Capoeira mata um” totally kicks off right. “A ordém é samba” written by Jackson and and Severino Ramos, and “Bodocongó″ by Humberto Teixeira e Cícero Nunes are catchy tunes and hot performances, showing just how easily Jackson could interpret a variety of styles and have it still come out like, well, Jackson do Pandeiro. One difference between material from this era and his earlier 1950s successes can be found in the suingue (or, swing) of the rhythm section — the influence of bossa nova is felt in the way the drummer lays down some jazzed-out chops on even the forró numbers. While this might not be the place to start for people new to Jackson do Pandeiro, this a fine album on its own. It makes me happy.

Jackson do Pandeiro – A Cabra da Peste (1963) FLAC LOSSLESS

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Banda de Pífanus de Caruaru – Programa Ensaio 1999

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Banda de Pífanos de Caruaru
Progama Ensaio (1999)
SESC São Paulo Collection
“A Música Brasileira Deste Século por sue Autores e Intérpretes”

1. Bendito
2. A Briga do Cachorro com a Onça
3. Levando o Santo
4. A Bandinha Vai Tocar
5. Pega Pra Capar
6. Despedida de Novena
7. Cantiga de Lampião
8. Saudades de Caruaru
9. Esquenta Mulher

Sebastião Biano – Pífanos
João Biano – Zabumba
Gilberto Biano – Tarol
Amaro Biano – Surdo
José Biano – Prato

Recorded for Programa Esnaio on October 14, 1999, directed by Fernando Faro.

In this installment of the TV program Ensaio (audio-portion only here), the Banda de Pífanos de Caruaru play some of the career highlights of their repertoire and tell some interesting stories about the origins of the band, playing for the bandit / cangaçeiro Lampião in the early 20th century, playing the nine nights of a religious ‘novena’, and a kick-ass recipe for sarapatel. The band is still going today in 2011 although I’ve never caught them live. This is a good companion disc to the studio album on Marcus Perreira shared here last week.

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Jackson do Pandeiro – Os Grandes Sucessos de Jackson do Pandeiro (1975) 24-96khz vinyl


Jackson do Pandeiro
“Os Grandes Successos de Jackson do Pandeiro”
Released 1975 on Tropicana / CBS Records (01320)
[which was also Columbia – Epic – Sony in Brazil…]

1. Morena Bela
(Juarez Santiago / Onildo Almeida)
2. Tum Tum Tum
(Ari Monteiro / Cristóvão de Alencar)
3. Casaca de Couro
(Rui de Morais / Silva)
4. Lamento Cego
(Jackson do Pandeiro / Nivaldo da Silva Lima)
5. Forró De Surubim
(Antônio Barros Silva / José Batista)
6. Mané Gardino
(Ari Monteiro / Elias Soares)
7. Cantiga Do Sapo
(Buco do Pandeiro / Jackson do Pandeiro)
8. Tem Mulher, Tô Lá
(J. Luna / Zé Catraca)
9. Penerou Gavião
(Jackson do Pandeiro / Odilon Vargas)
10. Sina De Cigarra
(Delmiro Ramos / Jackson do Pandeiro)
11. Chu Chu Beleza
(João Silva / Raimundo Evangelista)
12. Forró Em Campina
(Jackson do Pandeiro)

Tracks 1, 10, 11, and 12 are in stereo
Track 2 through 9 are in mono

This is a rather generic compilation of Jackson’s material released on the CBS subsidiary Tropicana in the mid-70s, without any indication of the provinence of any of the material included on it. It has all the tell-tales of a contractural obligation album, which in the case of Jackson is much less of a straight-forward thing than the phrase suggests. I know much less about his life than I would like (and am still waiting to find myself a copy of his biograpy, O Rei do Ritmo), but one bit of wisdom I’ve collected over the years is that Jackson had a nasty habit of entering into business deals with a record label while still under contract to another.

Thus, around the mid-70s we see Jackson leave CBS/Sony and begin recording for smaller or independent labels like Chantecler/Alvorada or Continental – however, CBS continued to release anthology after anthology of his material, leading me to the impression that he still owed them some albums…

My guess is that, with this particular release called “Os Grandes Sucessos” (The Greatest Hits..) which in fact lacks pretty much all of his biggest hits, they were trying to promote some of his newer material included here by capitalizing on some of his earlier, albiet lesser-remembered hits (many of them released as 78 RPM`s on another US-owned label, which were collected and shared HERE although the links were taken down so quickly I have been too spooked to put up new links). Jackson’s discography is so confusing, and the plethora of labels he recorded for so baffling in number, that I wouldn’t be surprised if the executives Tropicana (and their conglomarate corporate overlords) were counting on this chaos in order not to have to pay out on royalties — there are composer credits here, but absolutely nothing on the publishing rights. A little fishy. And though any single-LP collection of Jackson do Pandeiro is going to lack some favorites, there are obvious glaring omissions here of ANY of the recordings that were synonomous with him as a `household name.` So what we get is a mixture of his lesser-known hits and some songs that I don’t think were ever hits at all — namely, material from recent CBS releases like the LP`s “Sina de Cigarra” and “Tem Mulher, Tô Lá.” All of Jackson’s discography on vinyl is frustratingly rare — and even more frustrating, badly represented on compact disc for someone who represents such a huge part of Brazil’s musical patrimony – that I want to make it clear I am not making a critique of those early 70s albums from Jackson. Because in fact I still have yet to hear them! In that sense, I would have been happier if this had been strictly a collection culled from those early 70s discs, rather than a haphazard, somewhat random stroll through his career.

All that being said, this is still Jackson do Pandeiro and ipso facto a truly enjoyable listen. It includes some of my favorites from him like “Tum-tum-tum,” “Cantigo do sapo” (the best song ever about improvising frogs), and “Lamento cego.” And the newer material is also high-caliber stuff.

Some technical notes of interest for those who care… The chaotic nature of this weird collection presents some challenges for somebody wanting to do a decent digitalization of it. The album mixes songs recorded and mixed in MONO (the majority here) with song in stereo, all of them mastered at different maximum volumes, and seemingly all thrown together without much attention to detail. My solution involved a change from my usual workflow for vinyl digitalization. The first part, the actual vinyl transfer, is identical to the usual; it’s in the editing and post-processing that things get weird:

Vinyl original pressing -> Pro-Ject RM-5SE turntable (with Sumiko Blue Point 2 cartridge, Speedbox power supply) > Creek Audio OBH-15 -> M-Audio Audiophile 2496 Soundcard -> Adobe Audition 3.0 at 24-bits 96khz -> Click Repair light settings, additional clicks and pops removed in Audition ->

-> For tracks 2 THROUGH 9, a second pass in Click Repair solely to use its Stereo->Mono fold-down feature
-> Checking for aditional blemishes in Audition again, and comparing to “false stereo” source for differences

-> Normalizing the amplitude of each track, individually, to 0 decibels.

I’ve been skipping the step of normalizing on a lot of my recent vinyl rips, because I believe one of the great things about vinyl/analog is how much you can turn up the volume on a system before you start to hear distortions, and normalizing everything to 0db kind of defeats this pleasure to my ears. However, the tracks on this compilation are so all-over-the place in terms of their overall levels, I think I’ve actually made an improvement over the original vinyl mastering (or should I say, lack therein).

dithered and resampled using iZotope RX Advanced -> ID Tags done in foobar2000 v.1.0.1 and Tag & Rename.

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