Antonio Carlos Jobim and the One-Two Album Punch

[Michael Hagerty]

We've discussed how the dissolution of A&M/CTi resulted in two Jobim albums within a couple of months of each other----TIDE and STONE FLOWER.

While leafing (digitally) through the Billboard magazine archives at WorldRadioHistory.com yesterday, I found that it happened before---his last Warners album, A CERTAIN MR. JOBIM, was released just weeks before WAVE.

And having no U.S. releases between WAVE and TIDE, it happened twice in a row---three years apart.

Trivia, nothing more, but I figured this would be the place.

 

[Rudy]

The one distinguishing factor is that Tide and Stone Flower were from the same recording sessions, and the tracks split between the two albums. Whereas the Warner albums were framed like MOR and were stylistically different. Interesting timing on both, though, I agree!

I wonder if it had anything to do with Jobim's availability in the states, flying up from Brazil for the recording sessions which produced these. (I'm not a Jobim scholar who follows his every move. )

 

[Michael Hagerty]

I read somewhere that he actually spent a long stretch of time in L.A. in the early-mid 60s…essentially living there.

 

[Michael Hagerty]

I actually was stitching together bits and pieces of several interviews I've read and heard, but apparently accurately.

After the November, 1962 Carnegie Hall concert, Jobim decided to stay in America, just not in New York. He bought a second home in Los Angeles and was living there when he composed anything after the Carnegie Hall gig...apparently including some of his biggest hits.

He returned to Brazil in the early 70s (maybe after 1973's JOBIM on MCA), but told the L.A. Times' Leonard Feather in a 1986 interview prior to his concert at the Greek Theater that he really missed L.A.

 

[Michael Hagerty]

...and the return to Brazil may have actually been after URUBU (1976). I just tripped over one more thing---Jobim met Elis Regina for the first time in L.A. in 1974 and their duet LP was recorded very shortly after---in L.A.

 

[Michael Hagerty]

And it's funny---admittedly I was a kid at the time these songs were new and getting played on the radio, but I always thought Bossa Nova---and especially the bigger Jobim songs of the 60s---somehow didn't sound foreign, but fit right in with Los Angeles.

Now I know I was seeing the same things Jobim did when he wrote them!

 

[Rudy]

And it's funny---admittedly I was a kid at the time these songs were new and getting played on the radio, but I always thought Bossa Nova---and especially the bigger Jobim songs of the 60s---somehow didn't sound foreign, but fit right in with Los Angeles.

We had Bossa Nova and other Latin American music in the house, so I grew up with it also and it never sounded foreign to me back then either. But I also never listened to Top 40 radio until later in high school (and even then, not much). In our area, funk and R&B were a lot bigger, so I grew up with those sounds also.