Even though The Girl from Ipanema (link to mp3), the first track on this album, has been played to death in countless piano bars and late night lounges long ago it still has got a certain charm. The seventeen year old Helô Pinheiro inspired Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes in 1962 to write this song. Sitting in a cafe they saw her every day going to the beach of Ipanema, a district of Rio de Janeiro. The rhythm of this bossa nova tune really gives the listener the image of a woman strolling by gracefully and swaying slightly in the hips. The sad measured melody expresses the aloofness of the young beauty. Pinheiro apparently never got a penny from this smash hit and the heirs of Jobim and de Moraes even tried to bar her from opening a store named The Girl from Ipanema in 2001 (NYT).

For a long time I did not realize the magic of this music. I found it boring easy listening stuff. Somehow too soft to be memorable. Nowadays I find the softness and mellowness extremely appealing. Everything is smooth and relaxed here. The gentle and peaceful voices of João and Astrud Gilberto which are almost genderless but sensual at the same time. The pleasant harmonic Brazilian accent without the rough edges of the Portuguese. The lyrical impressionist tenor saxophone lines of Stan Getz. João Gilberto's fingerpicked guitar giving the samba dance element. The occasional piano which Jobim plays with an intense tenderness as if he would caress a new-born baby. And finally the reserved but effective rhythm section made of Tommy Williams bass and Milton Banana's drums.

This is cool chill-out or chill-in music making me dream of being served a caipirinha by a carioca (someone from Rio) in a bar in a warm night on the Copacabana, looking over to the giant illuminated Christ statue on top of the Corcovado.

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part VII was this post.

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