Bossa Nova recommendations

[The Cincinnati Kid]

Lately I've been really getting into Bossa Nova.  I know of Sinatra's album with Jobim and Jazz Samba by Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd, but that's about it.  I also like Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, but I guess that is just plain old jazz.  I'm hoping you guys can help me out with what I should be listening to... I know there is a lot out there.  Doesn't have to be strictly Bossa Nova either, just anything that's similar.  Thanks! 

[SBonilla]

Lately I've been really getting into Bossa Nova.  I know of Sinatra's album with Jobim and Jazz Samba by Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd, but that's about it.  I also like Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, but I guess that is just plain old jazz.  I'm hoping you guys can help me out with what I should be listening to... I know there is a lot out there.  Doesn't have to be strictly Bossa Nova either, just anything that's similar.  Thanks! 

Anything that came out on the Elenco label. This was the label that put out the first Bossa Nova records.
Elis Regina / Joao Gilberto
Ed Lincoln / Walter Wanderly
Dorival Caymmi / Dori Caymmi
Nascimento, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Maria Bethania, Elsa Soares
 Edu Lobo, Sergio Mendes, Wanda de Sa, Quarteto Em Cy...
So many great Brazilian artists...dive in anywhere.

Also Marisa Monte and much of the work of Carlinhos Brown...these people are contemporary singers and compsers.

[boco]

Not exclusively bossa nova, but it's worth reading this thread of you haven't:  http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,17941.0.html

Also a little discussion on this thread about the Sinatra-Jobim collaborations you mentioned: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,17691.msg462060.html#msg462060

[Summertime Blooz]

You should look up any of the  60s  or early 70s work of Brazilian composer/arranger/producer/singer Marcos Valle. That guy is really a genius on a par with Jobim and Bacharach. I don't get why he's not better known.

Viagem:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptplkP7xkLI

[The Cincinnati Kid]

Thanks for all of the recommendations so far!  I should also mention that I much prefer instrumentals.

[guitarfool2002]

Check out some Luiz Bonfa compositions as well, he worked with Jobim in the 50's and 60's and had one of the most familiar Brazilian jazz tunes to crack the mainstream US with his theme from the film "Black Orpheus" around '59. It's a chart jazz musicians still love to play and improv over the changes. And the film sometimes gets credited as being the media that exposed Bossa to wider audiences and kicked off the "craze" that went throughout the 60's and made Astrud Gilberto a star singing Jobim's songs. The song was actually called Manhã De Carnaval, but it's known as The Theme From Black Orpheus or just Black Orpheus, and it *also* got adapted into a song called "A Day In The Life Of A Fool" that Sinatra among many others recorded in English. But they're all Bonfa's tune.

This is a terrific version by alto sax man Paul Desmond, who was best known from the Dave Brubeck Quartet and his composition Take Five. But for me, Desmond had the best and smoothest alto sax tone I've ever heard. This is from a Paul Desmond solo album, the song "Black Orpheus" with his signature tone, check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dATuiQ4GPP0

Note: If you get into Bonfa, keep in mind a lot of what you might find are in more of a Samba style than a Bossa, and there are differences that may be cool to explore and compare/contrast as well. It's like a whole new world opening up getting into some of these musicians' works.

[guitarfool2002]

And for a TOTALLY unique/different twist on Bossa Nova, leaning it more toward what we'd know as the American lounge/retro/hi-fi/swanky sounds of the swingin' 60's scene...Check this album out. This kind soul on YouTube uploaded the whole thing in good quality, from 1962 this is Quincy Jones' "Big Band Bossa Nova". Some major heavy-hitters from the jazz world are featured players on this, and it's Quincy's effort to put the Bossa music into a big band format, with some pretty stellar arrangements as you'd expect from Quincy. Lalo Schifrin who would go on to write the Mission Impossible theme as well as other familiar TV and film music that won him all kinds of awards is the pianist on this album.

And you'll hear the opening track "Soul Bossa Nova" which modern listeners immediately recognize as the theme from "Austin Powers" but which was used by numerous media outlets as theme music or bumper music in broadcasts for decades.

So you're getting an interpretation and reworking of Bossa Nova with a big band twist played by top-notch musicians of that era, definitely worth checking out.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INIaa1eee18

[Sheriff John Stone]

The great Julie London performed some bossa nova songs.

This is one of my favorites: https://youtu.be/WWxObuuy9oA

[guitarfool2002]

And I had to put this one in: When I first heard this on the radio, I think it was on WFNX one Sunday afternoon driving near my place outside Boston whenever this first came out, I literally had to pull the car over to listen! No joke. I'm a big fan of the Sinatra/Jobim collaborations, specifically that first album, and as soon as the horns and winds kicked in here I thought someone current and very popular at the time was finally paying tribute to those sounds, to that specific vibe, and getting it on what was then "modern rock" radio and putting enough psychedelic/retro/kitsch to keep it fun and not as serious as you might get from a straightforward jazz artist.

Beck, "Tropicalia": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykHnwhorGYg

Then listen to this one back-to-back, it's Sinatra and Jobim singing "I Concentrate On You" and doing a similar thing in covering and updating a Cole Porter "Great American Songbook" standard from 1940 into the modern sounds of Bossa as of 1967. Similar outlooks, similar goals, great listening all around:

Sinatra/Jobim "I Concentrate...":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N3zutk0XSo

[The Cincinnati Kid]

Thanks for the help everyone!  I went ahead and bought Sinatra/Jobim: The Complete Reprise recordings and Jazz Samba that I mentioned my OP.  I'm also enjoying the other stuff that was mentioned as well.

[bossaroo]

this is one of the greatest records of all time.


you can't really go wrong with any of Jobim's albums... he basically invented the genre. most of the A&M releases are instrumental.

[RangeRoverA1]

My favorite Eydie Gorme - who I discovered via "What's My Line?" game - has this record:



She's better known as duo with Steve Lawrence (husband, good singer & frequent guest in WML as well) but at the same time was billed as single artist. She sang jazz, pop, lounge etc. She's really good.

[JK]

My favorite Eydie Gorme - who I discovered via "What's My Line?" game - has this record:



She's better known as duo with Steve Lawrence (husband, good singer & frequent guest in WML as well) but at the same time was billed as single artist. She sang jazz, pop, lounge etc. She's really good.

Great song. Love that organ solo! Like Elvis's "Bossa Nova Baby", it's a song about the dance...

[SMiLE-addict]

About a dozen years ago a Brazilian guy on another internet forum got me into a band called the Tribalistas. They were a one-shot-deal who were sort-of the Brazilian version of The Traveling Wilburys, where 3 well-known musicians get together and do a side project. Not all bossa nova, per se, but a real good intro to Brazilian music. Here's my favorite tune on their one-and-only album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX0OKs6KGFk

[RangeRoverA1]

Great song. Love that organ solo! Like Elvis's "Bossa Nova Baby", it's a song about the dance...

You play keyboards that's why. Indeed, usually people dance to song. Thanks to listen!

[rn57]

25 years or so back I was very into bossa nova and collected over a hundred or so albums in the genre.

My two favorite albums then are still my two faves.

One is Joao Gilberto's Amoroso which a lot of purists have problems with because its arrangement by the late great Claus Ogerman are very different from the stripped down style of the early records of his which just about created the genre. But I love it. Estate on it is one of my half dozen favorite tracks of any record.

https://youtu.be/b81ywX5cUmQ

The other is Domingo, the first album by both Caetano Veloso and Gal Costa. Both have worked in much different styles since but this is pretty pure bossa nova and its great:

https://youtu.be/nGOy1REx9sY