Several months ago, I came across a superb album of early bossa nova music. It's called João Gilberto: Private Session at Chico Pereira’s House in 1958. The music was captured a year before Gilberto recorded and released Chega de Saudade in 1959, the Brazilian album that launched the gentle, rhythmic and melodic bossa nova. The album's back-story is as wonderful as the music.
In 1958 Gilberto—like Antonio Carlos Jobim, Sylvia Telles, Carlos Lyra, Johnny Alf and Roberto Menescal—had been playing and singing a new form of music in Rio de Janeiro at clubs and hotel lounges. Influenced by West Coast jazz and Brazilian folk, the new music shifted away from the samba and its raucous parade beat embraced a new bedroom intimacy. Ambitious, Gilberto was eager to become better known, and Menescal wanted to help. He took Gilberto to the home of Chico Pereira, the Odeon Records album-cover photographer.
According to Ruy Castro's book, Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World, Gilberto at Pereira's home was urged to take out his guitar and play, which he did. Pereira was immediately overwhelmed by Gilberto's voice and chord voicings. He stopped him to put a blank Sony tape reel on his Grundig recorder and set up a microphone. For the next 70 minutes, Gilberto played, sang and talked.
When Gilberto finished, Pereira insisted he must record a studio album. He urged him to seek out Jobim, who at the time was working as a conductor at Odeon. The two men knew each other but not well. When Gilberto mustered the courage to call on Jobim at home, he played him the rehearsal tape. The result was Chega de Saudade, on which Gilberto recorded three songs by Jobim and Vinicius De Moraes, three songs by Carlos Lyra and Ronaldo Boscoli, two originals and the rest by several other composers. It was produced by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Aloísio de Oliveira.
I'm not quite sure how this album of Gilberto's rehearsal tape surfaced about 10 years ago or how it managed to wind up digitized. But Gilberto's soft Chet Baker-y voice, his tender driving guitar rhythms and bewitching chord voicings provide a fascinating preview of the bossa nova sound that would transform popular music in Brazil, the U.S., Europe and Japan. The music is as beautiful and hypnotic today as it was when Pereira sat in the room astonished.
JazzWax track: I can't seem to find João Gilberto: Private Session at Chico Pereira’s House in 1958 anywhere online for sale. If you know where it's available on CD or a download, please let me know and I'll pass the word.
For a collection of João Gilberto's early Odeon studio recordings, try The Warm World of João Gilberto (Fresh Sound) here.
JazzWax clip: Here's the entire 1958 Chico Pereira session at YouTube...
