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Producer's Note
In the fall of 1966, I sat in the wicker chair by the piano in Antonio's
house in Rio in the picture to the right and listened as he played a half-completed
version of "Wave." Antonio was extremely animated and exhibited the enthusiasm
of a child discovering a brand-new toy. He played, sang and moved with
the motion of the waves from Ipanema Beach. We recorded "Wave" in Rudy
Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, in May, 1967. Incidentally,
I always called Jobim "Antonio." I could never bring myself to use his
nickname "Tom." –
Creed Taylor
Gene Lees Interview
with Creed Taylor
Gene Lees: Where did you first hear that music?
Creed Taylor: From Charlie Byrd. He played it to me over the phone. He
had been on a State Department tour.
Byrd was actually the first – I know that Bud Shank had recorded that
stuff – but Byrd was the first guy to come back with a whole handful of
this stuff. He gave it to his quartet with Keter Betts on bass, and they
learned “Desafinado” and all the other songs. And Stan Getz and I went
down to Washington and recorded [with them]. [It was] in a black church
in Washington, on a 7 1/2-ips Ampex remote with one mike.
GL: It's amazing it [sounds] as good as it does. That was the first album.
What did that ultimately sell?
CT: It was a top-five album, it might have been number two; the Beatles
were number one. Some people confused it with the Getz/Gilberto LP because
that was huge, but Jazz Samba was an enormous pop album.
I remember that so well because
the powers-that-be at MGM were absolutely adamant about my changing the
title after they thought it was selling. They wanted to change it because
Jazz would limit the sales. But it stayed Jazz Samba and it was, oh, it
[sold] a good million in the US [though] I don't know how, you know albums
weren't selling much at that point. But who knows by now since the reissue
on CD…
GL: What was your first impression of the music?
CT: Ahh…. exotic, original, catchy. It sounded Caribbean. I associated
it with the clave beat somehow before I ever thought of it being a samba.
I wasn't thinking about the rhythmic definition, it was the melody and
certainly that (scats “Slightly out of Tune”), that's all you needed.
I said, “What the hell is that all about?”
GL: It's about the flat-five.
CT: Exactly. You know where Jobim got that from?
GL: Where?
CT: Bebop.
GL: Oh, sure. Now, when they came here [from Brazil], had you planned
to do anything further after the Charlie Byrd album or did it just evolve
that fall [1962]?
CT: It just evolved; I didn't know what a Jobim was, or any of the other
guys for that matter, because I hadn't been to Rio. I was exposed to the
songs [during] the process of recording them with Getz and Charlie Byrd's
group, and then it just evolved. One after the other, I met Jobim and
[then Luiz] Bonfá, Maria Toledo, et al. And João I didn't meet until he
got pulled into the studio that time, for “The Girl from Ipanema.”
GL: How did that session [Getz/Gilberto] come about then?
CT: Well the overt party was Jobim, he was functioning as the leader.
He thought all along that sooner or later he was going to get João out
of the hotel room – but it actually took Monica [Getz, Stan's wife] to
go [to the room] and somehow [get] him to come to the studio.
So Jobim was the leader. As
quiet as he was, he was articulate and forthcoming. He was so motivated
by hearing Jazz Samba and by meeting Stan, me, whoever was involved with
that album that he just poured out, “Let's do this, let's do that, let's
go in and record.” You know, he didn't have a manager.
GL: I know, at that time he certainly didn't. Actually, he never really
did and when he did, he screwed things up somewhat. But what was Jobim
like to work with?
CT: He was a joy, period. You know, he was not unlike Wes.
GL: Montgomery, you mean?
CT: Yes. Except that Jobim was so full of childlike enthusiasm he would
talk and play at the same time. That single-line stuff that he did so
well.
He also knew how to handle
Rudy [Van Gelder, the engineer] diplomatically speaking. His charm just
oozed all over the place and there was never a problem with anything;
he would say, “Rudy, may I have the microphone a little closer?” He was
a pussycat [but] I never [saw] any of that indecisive stuff. We discussed
things and I would give my opinion, and he would usually go with it.
GL: Did you have any sense at the time that this was history?
CT: Never thought about it. I never thought about history in the studio;
it was current events.
GL: How many sessions did it take, two, wasn't it?
CT: Yes. And Jazz Samba took all of four hours.
GL: Amazing, compared with the way they make records now.
CT: It shows you what a song can do. If you've got great players and great
songs, you just go in. There's no question about what's going down. [But]
I wish I could say I heard this and thought, This is gonna be carved in
stone and it's gonna just shake up the world of music. [But] I didn't,
I didn't have that kind of feeling. I just thought it was beautiful stuff.
Of course as it developed,
and as the world, radio, whatever, started reacting to it, I had a feeling
that something was afloat. And what happened? They had an awful lot of
coffee but they weren't selling it – but after this, Jobim's music, they
started selling coffee and everything else.
GL: Now, “The Girl from Ipanema” broke loose immediately. I think it was
days when that thing hit.
CT: Yes, it broke in a little town in Ohio that had a jazz radio station.
The guy was playing it, and he called [me] and said he'd never had phone
calls like this, ever. And that was before it got fully shipped – and
the shipping to radio was not anything organized at that point. We just
had a basic mailing list, and the records went out when they went out.
GL: And then came the session with Claus [Ogerman], right? The Composer
Plays, the orchestral session?
CT: Yes.
GL: Why did you pick Claus at that time? Because all I had ever heard,
and Claus was a good friend of mine, was his commercial crap. How did
you know he was that good?
CT: Unless I have something out of sequence, he did something for me with
Kai Winding, [from] Mondo Cane. It was a huge hit; a musical hit; it made
the song “More.”
We started talking about music in general; he had an enormous background
in jazz. I don't know how I got a hold of it, but I also heard some strange
stuff he had done.
I can't think of any arranger
for strings whose music I could hear and mistake for Claus Ogerman's.
Whether it's unisons or octaves or whatever. There is something about
the way he voiced things – voicing, well, unisons even –
GL: Yes, it's amazing.
CT: And I read what you wrote about having heard that “It's My Party”
and some other pop things [he had done].
GL: Lesley Gore and people like that. So having heard this other stuff
you assigned him the Jobim album?
CT: Yes.
GL: Claus said, “I think Jobim looked on me as the German professor.”
They had an outstanding rapport; it's as if Claus could tell what he wanted,
what he was thinking, and vice-versa.
CT: Yes, there certainly was some magic there.
GL: So how do you feel about all of those other Jobim sessions if you
can remember them: Wave, Tide, and Stone Flower in that order? I mean,
this is real history when you look back. How do you feel about it now?
CT: They were such pleasant experiences, they all meld into one experience
for me with Jobim. I didn't keep notes, I didn't take photographs. I thought
that these golden days would go on forever.
I think it was 1964 when I went on my first trip to Rio; it was on a charter
plane, Varig. All of these people were invited to Rio because of one guy,
Jobim; Sammy Cahn, Percy Faith, Kim Hunter, Quincy Jones, Robert Wagner,
Natalie Wood. Everybody was going to find out what the bossa nova was
all about, asking “Is there really a girl from Ipanema?”
After visiting him, he showed
me a little second-story bar where he and Vinicius sat and wrote, “The
Girl from Ipanema.” They sat and had their beers and the same girl would
walk by every day to the beach. “Each day she walked to the sea–”
GL: –“She looked straight ahead not at he” (laughs)
CT: In Jobim's house the first thing he did was sit down at the piano
and play me a half-completed “Wave” with all the gesticulations and enthusiasm.
And I was thinking, My God, here I thought it was just a really enthusiastic
artist showing me something that he was about to do, and it never occurred
to me that he was in a developmental stage on another song that would
become a very famous standard for generations to come.
I went to all-night parties with Jobim, Vinicíus, Marcos Valle, and Bonfá
until the sun came up. And then I went to an afternoon sauna in Costa Brava,
south of Rio, in a mountainous, rocky area. I can't believe it to this day
– at the pool were: Astrud, Deodato, Jobim, Milton Nascimento, Elis Regina,
Valle. Everybody was so social and understated and enthusiastic at the same
time, God.
Some observations: Jobim often preferred Chet Baker, Gershwin, Gerry Mulligan,
and Urbie Green. I mean, he thought Green was like the cat's meow. Green,
Hubert Laws… Urbie was on Stone Flower. I felt that Jobim's use of space
was like Chet's, Miles's, Gil Evans's. You and I have talked about this,
how the Thornhill band was somehow a factor in the way this bossa nova thing
developed. And if you listen to Claus Thornhill's piano, the touch even
is not unlike Jobim's, just incredible.
You have talked about the favelas.
I remember going to one of these parties at somebody's luxurious apartment
in a kind of lagoon that was right at the foothills.
GL: That would probably be behind Ipanema.
CT: Exactly. I went on the terrace and then I looked at the surrounding
mountains, which were the favelas. Talk about quiet nights and quiet stars…
all those flickering lights up there. I mean, I didn't know that they
were slums. “Oh, my God,” [I thought,] “if it looks like this down here,
I wonder what those homes up there look like?” Because I was totally ignorant
of the sociology of Rio.
– Gene Lees
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I sat in this chair in Jobim's house and listened to him
play a half-completed version of "Wave." - Creed Taylor
Antonio Carlos Jobim
Jobim sitting in his backyard
Baden Powell, Lucia Proenca, Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes |
to listen to sound samples.