Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World (7 page)

A limited end, because for a few years, the club continued to exist in spirit. Some jam sessions still took place at Dick’s new house in the name of the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club. At other times, these gatherings took place at Jorginho Guinle’s luxurious apartment in Flamengo and, as they included ex-members of the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club, they allowed those who attended, like poet Vinícius de Moraes, to say that they had belonged to the club.

The jams that most preserved the old spirit of the club—because so many former members attended—were those that Paulo Moura held at his house in Tijuca in 1954. They brought together, as well as the occasional appearance by Donato and Alf, youngsters under twenty such as pianist Luizinho Eça, guitarist Durval Ferreira, harmonica player Maurício Einhorn, and a youngster of thirteen named Bebeto who, unable to decide between playing the alto saxophone, the flute, or the double bass, ended up opting to play all three in the soon-to-be-formed Tamba Trio. All of them, future bossa nova ace musicians. The sounds they created were not the same as those played at the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club and were not the same as those that were to become bossa nova, but Joca, Didi, and Teresa would not lose out by waiting.

The singer’s singer: Lúcio Alves, the guru of vocal ensembles

Manchete Press

A
few months after its creation in 1949, the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club looked around and realized that it was not alone in the Rio fan club market. Nor would it ever be, with the fuss being created by Luís Serrano’s program on Rádio Globo, and by Paulo Santos’ Hit Parade on Rádio Guanabara, which was instigating the establishment of more clubs. There weren’t enough members to go around. The Glenn Miller Fan Club was quickly formed, which was boycotted by jazz enthusiasts. Another gang in Tijuca, in Rua Pereira Nunes, quickly counteracted with the formation of the Stan Kenton Progressive Club. Its founder, Silvio Wander, was a salesman at the record store Suebra, in Cinelândia, and received Kenton discs “hot off the press” from the United States. This club definitely annoyed the neighbors.

The club’s name was a reference to Kenton’s self-denominated “progressive jazz” style, over which the opinions of jazz fans and critics worldwide were violently divided. The controversy provoked the kind of reaction instigated by Miles Davis in 1970, when he electrified jazz and created the specter known as “fusion.” Musically, the comparison could not be applied because what Kenton promoted was a strange—but for many, a brilliant—type of swing with a symphonic accent, which those with a contradictory spirit classified as a cross between jazz and “The Firebird” by Stravinsky, with whom Kenton had studied.

Conservatives grumbled that Kenton’s bombastic band did not “swing”—which was unfair, because it “swung” far more than that of Stravinsky, although not as much as that of Count Basie. Besides, Kenton and his fans were not geared to dancing. Stan attracted a different audience of young people, although very similar among themselves, regardless of whether they were Brazilian, Cuban, or American. They were thrilled by his bold harmonics and by the veritable wealth of rhythms he crammed into the extremely short three minutes that comprised each recording. Kenton was like a variation on Midas; everything he played sounded like his own compositions to the ears of his fans.

And he had no preconceptions; he recorded everything, from great hits like “Begin the Beguine” and “The Man I Love,” which all the bands played, to certain types of music that they wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, like tangos, waltzes, and boleros. Kenton was fascinated by Latin, primarily Cuban, rhythms; but he even recorded Brazilian songs, such as “Tico-tico no fubá” (Tico-Tico Bird in the Corn Flour) by Zequinha de Abreu and “Delicado” (Delicate) by Waldir Azevedo, which he learned from his guitarist Laurindo de Almeida, who was born in Miracatu, São Paulo. It didn’t matter what Stan played. Any song that was subjected to the pen of his arranger, the Sicilian Pete Rugolo, emerged with the stamp of the Kenton style.

All of his musicians were respected (but you had to step lively to keep up with the changes in the composition of his orchestra), but the boys had a particularly soft spot for percussionist Shelly Manne, trumpeters Shorty Rogers and Maynard Ferguson, saxophonists Bill Holman and Lee Konitz, trombonists Frank Rosolino and Bill Russo, and especially for Pete Rugolo. They were the stars. But there was also Kenton’s vocal ensemble, the Pastels, revolutionarily harmonized by Kenton and Rugolo. And his vocalists? First, it was Anita O’Day, then June Christy, followed by Chris Connor. One would leave, another would join, and each was better than the one before. The man was a whiz at discovering them. And what other orchestra had a band leader with such personality? Kenton was a thirty-seven-year-old pianist with an explosive temper who would periodically threaten to leave the jazz scene, throw everything away, and change professions from band leader to psychiatrist (!). Never in a million years would such an idea have occurred to Harry James, Betty Grable’s husband.

The creation of the Kenton Progressive in Tijuca did not change the dollar rate at the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club, because the two groups were equally enthusiastic about “Blues in Riff,” “Eager Beaver,” “Southern Scandal,” and other huge hits by Stan. And in turn, even the most rabid Brazilian Kentonians, during a romantic relapse, would sigh upon hearing “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” by Sinatra, and they had great respect for Farney as a pianist although not as much for his talents as a singer. (This was not a problem: even Dick considered himself much more of a pianist than a singer.) They had a more than polite understanding. The two clubs were neighbors and even had members who belonged to both, which was never considered a case of split loyalty. One such member was João Donato, who had a framed photo of Kenton on his nightstand.

But the reaction was very different when a group from Rua Marquês de Olinda, in Botafogo, had the audacity to form the Dick Haymes–Lúcio Alves Fan Club in the middle of 1949. It was complete provocation. How could anyone prefer Dick Haymes, a worthless imitator of Bing Crosby’s vocal style, to Sinatra? And since when could Lúcio Alves be compared to Dick Farney, to the point of deserving his own fan club? Strangely enough, it did not occur to the members of the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club that Farney owed almost his entire reputation as a singer to Crosby, not to Sinatra—and that, if either of the two Brazilians was truly original, it was Lúcio Alves. What linked them was their type of repertoire and the fact that they both had a “pillow voice,” as it was known.

Another reason that Sinatra’s fans didn’t take Dick Haymes seriously was because, in addition to being a Bing Crosby wannabe, Haymes seemed to descend like a vulture on the jobs that Frank left behind. It was that way in
1939, when Sinatra left Harry James’s orchestra to sing with that of Tommy Dorsey—and Haymes took his place. The situation repeated itself in 1942, when Sinatra left Tommy Dorsey to launch a solo career and, once again, Haymes filled his place with Dorsey. And finally, Haymes also left Tommy Dorsey to try a solo career. The only thing left was for Sinatra to divorce his wife, Nancy Barbato, and for Dick to marry her. (This did not in fact happen—but almost. Sinatra left Nancy to marry Ava Gardner, and Haymes promptly left his wife, but in order to marry Rita Hayworth.)

This time, the stakes were high for the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club because the promoters of the Dick Haymes–Lúcio Alves Fan Club were Ney Lopes Cardoso, head of sales at Tonelux stores, and the journalist Sylvio Tullio Cardoso, who wrote a music review column in
Diário da Noite
(and soon after, in
O Globo
) and hosted a jazz program on Rádio Guanabara. In the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club members’ worst nightmares, they were already imagining that a conspiracy—involving a newspaper, a radio station, and an electrical appliance store (which sold records and record players)—had been hatched to crush their idols and replace them with usurpers, seducing innocent youngsters. Of course, this never entered the minds of Ney and Sylvio Tullio, but it appeared there was good reason for the Sinatra-Farney Fan Clubs members’ concern when they discovered there was a traitor in the club’s ranks.

One of its dearest members was also a member of the Dick Haymes–Lúcio Alves Fan Club. There was an uproar in seeking out the serpent in the bosom. Who was the traitor? The Katzenjammer Kid, fifteen-year-old João Donato.

Donato wasn’t just a fan of Lúcio Alves as a singer, which would have been heresy enough, but he also admired his talent as an arranger for vocal ensembles, which were the craze of the era. Donato’s treachery was revealed when he was heard whistling distractedly—on sacred Sinatra-Farney Fan Club property—Lúcio’s fabulous vocal arrangement of “Eu quero um samba” (I Want a Samba), recorded by his vocal group Os Namorados da Lua (Boyfriends from the Moon). It was the last straw. “Calabar! Judas Escariot!,” several people yelled, wanting Donato to be summarily forced to walk the gangplank. Joca, Didi, and Teresa pinned him against the wall for the court martial. When Donato admitted that he had gone to the Haymes-Lúcio “once or twice,” the girls gave him an ultimatum: “You choose. Either stay here and never set foot in that dive again, or get out of here,” ordered Joca.

“OK, I’ll stay with you,” stammered Donato. They forgave him, and he, with his hands tucked into the pockets of his shorts, retreated to a corner to laugh to himself. And of course, he continued to frequent the Haymes-Lúcio in secret.

What did they expect? In addition to it being pointless to expect sworn loyalty from a boy of fifteen who still wore shorts, you only had to know João Donato to realize that he held double, triple, and even multiple allegiances in
terms of fan clubs. Besides, he would do anything to stay away from home and escape his claustrophobic relationship with his father, an Air Force ex-major and an airline pilot. Donato’s father attributed his son’s continual failure in Latin to his accordion playing. Donato got good grades in physical education and choir singing, but those subjects weren’t worth much. That same year, 1949, he had to repeat the fifth grade for the fourth time, until he finally quit his studies. His father wanted to flay him alive.

But at the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club, Donato must have known where he stood to have dared to frequent enemy territory. A few months before, the eternally stylish Dick Farney had tried to put an end to the stupid rivalry between his fans and those of Lúcio Alves, proposing to invite to the club none other than Lúcio himself. (So that they could meet him and see that, as well as being a great singer, he was also a good guy.) The members had to agree to this because they could never refuse Dick. A date was set but, for most of them, the idea of that man, with his dandy little mustache, entering the Rua Dr. Moura Brito basement arm-in-arm with Farney was worse than Dick Haymes being caught in bed with Ava Gardner. (Mind you, it’s amazing that this didn’t actually happen.)

The club was spitefully prepared to receive Lúcio Alves. Any inch of wall that was not already papered with photos or clippings of Sinatra or Farney was covered in order to make Lúcio feel as uncomfortable as possible. Not that that was difficult. The boys greeted him politely but coldly as he walked into No Man’s Land, stepping as if the floor were carpeted with flypaper. They served him flat Crush, asked about his family, and forced Dick to direct the conversation. Dick spoke of his admiration and warmth for Lúcio. Lúcio responded in kind and both explained that, if they sang more or less the same repertoire, it was because they had the same tastes in music. Following the outpouring of false praise, during which they also eulogized the civilized behavior of the fan clubs, Dick went over to the piano and Lúcio picked up his guitar. The boys merely clapped politely when Lúcio sang “De conversa em conversa” (From Conversation to Conversation) but applauded wildly for Farney’s accompaniment on the piano. It wasn’t very subtle.

After having stayed for a little more than an hour, Lúcio took his leave and, for all intents and purposes, the hostility directed toward him was hidden. But he had barely turned his back before the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club members stuck out their tongues at him and insolently waved goodbye with their thumbs touching the tip of their noses. And, with or without the fan clubs, things did not get better in the years to come.

From today’s point of view, Donato’s treachery is easy to explain. For those who really wanted to become a musician or singer in Rio in the 1950s and rise above the juvenile passions of the fan clubs, it was almost impossible
to escape the admiration for Lúcio Alves. Dick Farney’s fans, for example, sometimes confused the singer and pianist with the actor that he also was, carried away by his flannel pants, bow ties, and blond cowlick. That kind of risk simply wasn’t there with Lúcio.