João Donato (1934-2023)

July 18, 2023

João Donato (1934-2023)

João Donato, one of Brazil's original bossa nova pianists and composers who stood out among a sea of extraordinarily talented peers by gracefully integrating jazz and Latin chord voicings and rhythms into his playing style, died on July 17. He was 88. [Photo of João Donato, courtesy of Deezer]

Donato's formidable contemporaries included Brazilian musician-composers Johnny Alf, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Carlos Lyra, Roberto Menescal, João Gilberto, Eumir Deodato and others who in the late 1950s softened the samba with a relaxed West Coast jazz feel. Born and initially raised in Rio Branco, in western Brazil near Peru—about 2,000 flying miles from Rio de Janeiro on the country's east coast—Donato played accordion at age 5 and began writing songs at age 7. At 11, he arrived in Rio de Janeiro by boat with his family after his father, a major in the military police, relocated.

Eager to become a pilot, like his father, who had taken him on flying trips over the Amazon, Donato took the test at 18 and failed. He was colorblind, so music became a default occupation. Befriending Jobim in the early 1950s, Donato began recording as a sideman. He also formed a vocal harmony group, Os Namorados, with members from Lucio Alves’s Os Namorados da Lua.

By the late 1950s, many of the young musician-composers and singers who socialized began developing the softer bossa nova while playing in hotel lounges and small clubs near Rio's Copacabana Beach. Initially, their music wasn't popular, largely because people couldn't figure out how to dance to it. But after the popularity of Elizete Cardoso's Canção do Amor Demais (1958) and then Gilberto's Chega de Saudade (1959), the bossa nova became the music of the sophisticated youth culture emerging in Rio and São Paulo.

But Donato wasn't content being locked into a sound or category or tagging along with others. Animated by West Coast jazz, he left Brazil in 1959 for Los Angeles to play at a resort in Lake Tahoe, Nev. The club had sent him a one-way ticket. As he told Russ Slater at the Sounds and Colours blog in 2021:

I stayed for 12 years. I got involved and got married. I had a daughter. I started leading my life in the United States. I felt like an American for some time. I was driving my car in L.A. and I said, “Oh yes, this is my country.” I have a very good appreciation for the American people because they are the jazz ones. They’re the guys who turned me on to the Stan Kenton Orchestra. When I first heard Stan Kenton on a 78 record, I said, “What is this? My goodness!” I couldn’t sleep that night. I love that Kenton sound. And then I fell in love with the USA because of Stan Kenton and then the other guys,

Donato went on to play trombone and piano with Eddie Palmieri and Mongo Santamaría, recorded in the U.S. but did the bulk of his recording in Brazil and always with a cast of legends. Among his most recognizable hits were Minha Saudade, written with Gilberto, A Rã (The Frog) and Caranguejo (The Crab), but he wrote dozens of songs that a bossa nova fan would know instantly.

Influenced by a wide assortment of music styles and genres, Donato was one of the most eclectic and innovative artists to emerge from the Brazilian musical renaissance at the start of the 1960s. His finest album remains A Bad Donato (1970), which features a stew of styles all brought together with his keen sense of drama and pop. But the word "finest" with Donato is almost ridiculous. All of his albums offer enormous excitement, elegance and flair. Whenever Donato touched the keyboard, beauty, rhythm and passion flowed.

Here are 10 of my favorites:

Here's Donato's first album as a leader—A Bossa Muito Moderna de Donato e Seu Trio (1963). Dig the fusion of bossa and Latin...

Here's his second album, The New Sound of Brazil (1965), arranged by Claus Ogerman...

Here's one of my favorite Donato albums, Bud Shank and His Brazilian Friends (1965), with Bud (as), Donato (p), Rosinha de Valença (g), Sebastião Neto (b) and Chico Batera (d)...