FRANCIS ALBERT SINATRA AND ANTONIO CARLOS JOBIM
In 1967, Frank Sinatra was probably the most celebrated entertainer in America: boss of his own record label, a fixture on the charts, film star, powerfully mobbed-up, publicly embraced by the Kennedys. But if Sinatra the businessman was thriving, Sinatra the artist was having his problems. Now in his mid-forties, he had watched the well of standard songs that had been his bread and butter begin to dry up, as The Beatles and Bob Dylan set new parameters for what constituted "popular" music.
Most of his albums of the 60's sound like a man trying too hard: trying to compensate for the beginnings of his voice's inevitable decline, bearing down too hard on the same swing-era material that he'd recorded two or three times already, or attempting to come to terms with modern songwriting (his cover of "Mrs. Robinson" is only the most celebrated of his missteps in that area). There are great individual Sinatra performances sprinkled throughout his albums from this era, but only once did he put together a completely classic album to match his best work from the 50's, and he did that by stepping completely outside anything he'd done in the past.
Composer Antonio Carlos Jobim was a pioneer exporter of Brazilian music in the late 50's and early 60's, and the sensual, jazzy style he helped develop was called Bossa Nova. In 1966, saxophonist Stan Getz had a freak hit with a cover of Jobim's "The Girl From Ipanema," and Sinatra was fascinated by the sound; in particular, he fell in love with the singing of Joao Gilberto (whose wife Astrud, a decided non-professional, had provided the seductive vocal on the single edit of "Ipanema"; her husband was actually the principal vocalist on the album). Joao Gilberto seemed the antithesis of the American tendency for singers to belt tunes out over a big band or electric rock combo; instead, Gilberto's style was a near-whisper of intimacy, with every word given an almost palpable texture. With that new sound in his ears, Sinatra called Jobim, and asked the composer to come to the States and accompany him on a new album.
Stories differ about Jobim's reaction: supposedly he was disappointed to find that he would not be singing much on the album, and was unhappy that Sinatra wanted him to perform on guitar, rather than his signature electric piano. On the other hand, he'd be working with a familiar collaborator, arranger/conducter Claus Ogerman, as well as, obviously, with one of the great voices of the century. Jobim and Ogerman worked up arrangements for seven of Jobim's original compositions, and three American pop standards. They went into the studio with Sinatra and a small orchestra, Jobim on acoustic guitar, and in just a few days cut the entire album live, with virtually no overdubs.
Musically, there's nothing else like it in the Sinatra catalog. The "Ring-A-Ding-Ding" Frank that degenerated into parody over the remaining decades of his life makes no appearance here. Sinatra is placed close to the microphone, the musicians balanced perfectly behind him, and his unmatched breath control and phrasing are put in the service of a quieter, more subtle sound than even his best Capitol recordings had achieved, as intimate as a late-night conversation. He captures the longing of "Ipanema" without ever losing sight of the sheer pleasure the narrator takes in the sight of this beautiful woman, even as she ignores him; "Dindi" is regarded by some listeners as a final plea of love to Mia Farrow (who he would divorce within months); "Once I Loved" brims with both the joy and desperation of the return of a love thought lost. And some of the album's high points come on the Bossa Nova-ized standards, with the nightclub sophistication of "Change Partners," and a performance of "I Concentrate On You" that makes every other version of the song sound coarse.
The standout tracks, though, are Jobim's "How Insensitive", as Sinatra makes vivid that terrible moment when we realize that we can't love someone else the way they love us; and his "Corcovado," with its famous scene-setting opening: "Quiet night of quiet stars / Quiet chords from my guitar / Floating on the silence that surrounds us." It's as evocative a picture of a couple's intimacy, and romance, as any singer has ever given us. And Sinatra was certainly right about one thing: the electric piano that characterizes so many of Jobim's own recordings would have felt cheesy by comparison with the elegant seduction of his gently-chorded classical guitar.
Given the album's commercial and critical success (it was Grammy-nominated for Album of the Year), a second attempt at the collaboration was inevitable. And Sinatra and Jobim did record another album's worth of material a year later. With Eumir Deodato taking over for Ogerman, the sound is a bit bigger, a bit brasher, and Jobim's increased vocal presence actually something of a detriment; the result is spottier than their first pairing. Though a couple of the performances (notably "Wave" and "Triste") rank with Sinatra's greatest, the complete album was never released, the individual tracks being parceled out over the course of a few albums (there actually was an 8-track tape release that was recalled AFTER it had already shipped to stores and been sold to some lucky customers, few of whom agreed to return it; legend has it that Sinatra hated the picture on the cover), and only collected after Sinatra's death.
I realize that there are probably CHUD posters for whom just the title "Girl From Ipanema" is synonymous with "elevator music," and who are going to have trouble getting past that; frankly, that was my attitude years ago, too, and I intend no criticism of anyone for whom that's just too big a hurdle. But if you can overcome that, you'll find an album that is a sunset walk by the sea, an intimate evening with the right beverage and the right partner, where bittersweet regret is salved by the sway of a gentle Brazilian breeze.
