Joao Gilberto's self-titled.

'Eu Quero um Samba' is at least #4 in my 'songs for sunny days top 10'

thanks for the book recommend. always looking for good books on brazilian music.

Too bad there's no English language edition of 'O Mistério do Samba'. It's like social history of samba early years, about how it was despised by the upper classes and later adopted as Brazilian sound identity

it's a lovely record.

yeah, this is one of the great albums ever.

YSI anybody? i lost my copy some time ago

anybody?

got u fam

nice! thank you

There doesn't appear to be a proper João Gilberto thread so this will have to do.

RIP. He was 88.

RIP
Dusty Groove’s description of the thread subject called it a “god album” which has always stuck with me

RIP! a total giant.

When he started refusing to work at clubs where he felt the customers talked too much, he entered a period of poverty, growing his hair long and wearing wrinkled clothes. Then a friend, the singer Luís Telles, brought him to the coast town of Porto Alegre and put him up at a respectable hotel; performing at a local nightclub, Mr. Gilberto gained a following....After about seven months Mr. Gilberto moved to Diamantina, a city in the mountainous state of Minas Gerais, where his older sister Dadainha lived. This was where he found his sweet spot of artistic isolation, cloistering himself in his sister’s house — specifically, in her bathroom.

It was there, Mr. Castro wrote, that Mr. Gilberto’s sound took shape. The acoustics were reverberant enough for him to practice a whispery, nasal style of singing, audible over the guitar. As much as he liked self-assured performers, his own sound seemed to shrink from the light; it was an inversion of the popular bolero-like style that had dominated Brazilian popular music since the 1930s.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/06/arts/music/joao-gilberto-dead-bossa-nova.html

had no idea his s/t album from 1973 - which I've had and loved for ages - was, for some reason, produced by Wendy Carlos

but yeah, he was godlike. up there with Louie Armstrong, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Tony Iommi etc in terms of "single-handedly creates genre" type figures

Worthy long read:

https://longreads.com/2019/07/09/remembering-joao-gilberto/

He used his new vocal and rhythm techniques to compose “Bim-Bom,” and so it is considered by some to be the first bossa nova song.

Nice piece. And I also had no idea Wendy Carlos produced the s/t (my CD only has songwriter credits), that is kind of amazing! Has anyone written about that?

Wendy Carlos, in the early aughts, describes her experience as audio engineer on Joao Gilberto’s legendary self-titled 1973 “white album” pic.twitter.com/t4YPgjDUec

— Glenn Kenny (@Glenn__Kenny) July 12, 2019

God I love this album. I spent a lot of time working on his thumb against three fingers picking style and it just opens so much rhythmic possibilities. Rip big man.

That technique is hard to do well, kudos to you if you can manage it without having grown up in Brazil.

i mean i can keep the beat with my thumb/bass string and then do the syncopated part with my three fingers so thats something! he obv had way more range and fluidity with his left hand, plus the effortlessness of his playing (whereas mine is v much effortful rn)

had no idea he was using his thumb, that explains a lot!

You’ve got to be kidding

actually not kidding. my big dive into bossa nova and Brazilian music predated youtube and a lot of other materials being widely available, don't think I ever saw footage of him playing back then, and the stuff I read about him didn't go into technique specifics.

Don’t you play guitar yourself? Aren’t you aware of fingerstyle playing? Think I started a thread about that, maybe you even posted on it.

yes and yes but I've never tried it myself, was aware of other musicians doing it but never associated it with bossa nova

honestly I don't think my hands are big enough to manage it

Wait what? You understand we're talking about his right hand technique, right? I.e. that he played fingerstyle, i.e. not with a pick? You didn't know he was doing that?

Psst, Shakey, over here

Perhaps this will refresh your memory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNuMoVqKEuE

Lol i thought we were talking about his LEFT handctechnique

Sorry i am dum and scanning this thread too quickly

You thought it was some Robert Johnson stuff? D’oh!

Haha yes

something i haven't seen mentioned anywhere is gilberto's mentorship of the rock band novos baianos, and the resulting LP "acabou chorare" (the title of which is probably a deliberate evocation of "chega de saudade"). his influence on their sound is pretty remarkable, and it's also just kind of a hilarious scenario:

Their new home had become something of a hippie commune, perenially surrounded by a cloud of smoke, friends and musicians would come and go throughout the day. It was no surprise then that when a smart bespectacled man knocked on their door they thought the worst – the police were after them. Upon discovering that the man was in fact Joao Gilberto, one of Brazil’s biggest stars and the progenitor of bossa nova, the worry then turned to joy. It was midnight when he arrived. He wouldn’t leave ’til eight in the morning. They played guitar through the night, and then the next night, he returned.

(from https://soundsandcolours.com/articles/brazil/how-joao-gilberto-turned-os-novos-baianos-from-hendrix-worship-to-recording-the-greatest-brazilian-album-of-all-time-189/)

! Thats crazy, i had no idea

Nor I

JG’s input coincided with a Novos Baianos getting a LOT better IMO. Their previous records had been fine but “Acabou Chorare” is world class.

Listening now to the newly streaming The Boss of the Bossa Nova (Reel to Reel Version). Good stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahQh9nZBV9E