Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World (9 page)

Os Modernistas were five young men by the names of João Luís, Chico, Fred, Janio (of course, this was before he became the important journalist
Janio de Freitas), and the accordionist, arranger, and leader, João Donato. Stan Kenton’s records comprised the appetizer, main course, and dessert of their daily diet, but in order to create the vocal revolutions they dreamed of, they were at the mercy of the talent and whims of Donato. With the same exactness with which he had betrayed the members of the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club with those of the Haymes-Lúcio (and vice versa) the previous year, the light-headed Donato made his companions’ blood boil by missing rehearsals, arriving late for performances on Rádio Guanabara (where the group was on probation), or simply disappearing off the face of the earth.

It wasn’t as if Donato, who was now sixteen years old and already wearing long trousers, was one of the busiest musicians in Rio. He neglected to fulfill his obligations to the group because he would get waylaid on the street, chatting with friends about vocal ensembles. Caught between wanting to kick him out of the group or strangle him, his companions ended up forgiving him, mostly because any other course of action would have meant the end of Os Modernistas. And besides, Donato was a sensational accordion player—almost as good, perhaps, as the accordionist he most admired, the American Ernie Felice, whose records he listened to at the Murray. It was a shame that Rádio Guanabara had no patience for promising geniuses with little respect for time. They cancelled the group’s probationary period and the ensemble broke up.

But youth will not be deterred, and those same boys (as well as crooner Miltinho, and guitarist Nanai, both ex-members of the Anjos do Inferno; and minus Janio, who went to try out a career as a reporter with the newspaper Diário Carioca) reunited three years later again centering around Donato, for another brave task: rebuilding Lúcio Alves’ Namorados da Lua—without Lúcio. The latter furnished them with his repertoire, the arrangements and part of the name of the group (Namorados) reserving the right to keep the moon for possible future use. Pressured by Paulo Serrano, Os Namorados recorded at Sinter that year a new version of “Eu quero um samba” (I Want A Samba), which was even more amazing than Lúcio’s original version released in 1945.

This is a record that has to be heard to be believed. In Donato’s new arrangement, the bass notes of his accordion fractured the rhythm with musical syncopation like machine-gun fire and produced a beat that anticipated, almost note for note, that of João Gilberto’s guitar, five years before Gilberto’s recording of “Chega de saudade” (No More Blues). It was so modern that, at the time, no one understood it—and Os Namorados stayed where they were.

Dozens of vocal ensembles were formed and banded in Rio at the end of the forties, but there was one that seemed indestructible: Os Cariocas. From the time that they turned professional in 1946, with their composition of members already established—Ismael Netto, his brother Severino Filho, Badeco,
Quartera, and Valdir—Os Cariocas were regarded, at least at the Murray, as the General Motors of vocal ensembles. (Just for the record, the Hi-Los, whom it was later said they copied, were formed in 1953.) Os Cariocas were the most complete in all aspects. While other groups disintegrated due to lack of leadership, Ismael would make them rehearse until a mere hello uttered by any one of them resonated perfectly—and no one complained.

They were also on Rádio Nacional, which in itself gave them five times the advantage over the competition because the Nacional was
the
network of the era. The program in which they starred,
Um milhão de melodies
(A Million Melodies), was produced by Haroldo Barbosa, which guaranteed at least two or three versions of American songs per week and gave the impression that one was listening to the Pied Pipers in Portuguese. This was ironic because it’s possible that Os Cariocas were even better than the Pied Pipers—but who would have believed such an absurd concept then?

Not coincidentally, Os Cariocas’s first hit “Adeus, América” (Goodbye, America) by Barbosa and Geraldo Jacques, in 1948, was a cynical and mocking invocation of musical nationalism—”
Eu digo adeus ao boogie-woogie, ao woogie-boogie / E ao swing também / Chega de hots, fox-trots e pinotes / Que isto não me convém
” (I say goodbye to boogie-woogie, to woogie-boogie / And to swing as well / No more hots, fox-trots, and jitterbugs / Because this sort of thing doesn’t agree with me)—all rolled into an energetic boogie-woogie cum samba, at which it was impossible not to laugh. The cultured folk understood. However, given that no one passed through Rádio Nacional with impunity, the other great hit by Os Cariocas, in 1950, had the kind of rhythm that, for some, served little purpose but for choreographing the killing of a cockroach in a corner of the living room: the
baião
, particularly the most popular
baião
, “Juazeiro,” by Luís Gonzaga and Humberto Teixeira. This time, cultured folk did not understand. For those who could not accept hearing a group called Os Cariocas singing exotic blends of music from the north, there was an obvious explanation: Ismael and Severino, the group’s leaders, were really not Cariocas, (that is, Rio de Janeiro-born) but from Pará, in northern Brazil.

The boys of the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club turned their noses up at Rádio Nacional, accusing it of being too “Jararaca and Ratinho” (hillbilly) for their tastes, but that was because they didn’t listen to it firsthand. In 1950, the Nacional was one of the few absolutely professional organizations in a country that prided itself on its amateur status and, despite being owned by the state, it was so profitable that it could allow itself all kinds of creative freedom. Its music department, on the twenty-first floor of the
A Noite
newspaper
building, in Praça Mauá (facing a bay filled with ships that left carrying coffee for export, and arrived carrying imported yo-yos), had a truly First World appearance. It held no less than seven studios and an auditorium, which was famous for having a sprung stage. The permanent—and contracted!—cast was a veritable Who’s Who of Brazilian music, with almost 160 instrumentalists, 90 vocalists, and 15 conductors, among whom were Radamés Gnatalli, Léo Peracchi and Lyrio Panicalli. This crowd had to be hired on a contractual basis because, except for the news shows and soap operas, Rádio Nacional broadcast music both day and night, almost all of it live.

Not all music on Rádio Nacional was Brazilian. In terms of the amount of air time, international music surpassed the sambas,
choros
, and
baiões
by almost 3 to 1—and that included counting the Portuguese versions of American hits in with the Brazilian music category. Haroldo Barbosa in his position as head of the discotheque produced more than six hundred versions of American songs between 1937 and 1948, becoming a “partner” of Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Vincent Youmans, and other far less illustrious composers. Ultimately, xenophobia might have dominated other parts of national life, but not there. With its cadre of musicians and singers specializing in fox-trots, mambos, rumbas, tangos, waltzes, and boleros (the station even had a fake cowboy, Bob Nelson, to provide Western-style yodeling), it’s likely that Rádio Nacional was the largest rhythmical democracy in the world.

It must also have been the most arrogant, but it had good reason to be proud. Its most prestigious music program was the aforementioned
Um milhão de melodies
, and no one thought the title was an exaggeration. In the thirteen years that it aired on a weekly basis, from 1943 to 1956, sponsored by Coca-Cola—in fact, the program was created to launch Coca-Cola in Brazil—it’s obvious it couldn’t possibly have played those million melodies. But scratch a couple of zeros, and you’ll have almost the exact number of songs of all different types of music for which Radamés Gnatalli wrote original arrangements which he then performed with his orchestra, made up of the cream of musical talent at Nacional.
Um milhão de melodies
was a super-production involving so many people that they needed two maestros: one, Gnatalli, on stage, directing the musicians, and another, Peracchi, providing technical support, “conducting” the operators of eight microphones through the musical score. Everything was large-scale at Nacional, except the salaries. Compared to those of Tupi, its competitor, they could even be considered low. Despite this, artists fell over themselves in their bid to join Nacional. Its shortwave radio station guaranteed them a nationwide audience which, for them, meant widespread fame, work, and money.

Its neighbor on Avenida Venezuela, Rádio Tupi, was not that far behind in terms of popularity; and one of the reasons was that in 1946 it had been restructured from top to bottom by the man who practically built Nacional: Gilberto de Andrade. Andrade, hired by press mogul Assis Chateaubriand, not only stole big names from Nacional and brought them to Tupi, but also wreaked havoc on the Rio airwaves, stealing people and audiences away from the smaller stations. He pulled Tupi out of its romantic phase and made it tick like a clock. At this, its artistic directors began to take themselves seriously and to insist upon the fulfillment of obligations by its musicians, as if they truly understood the situation. Several hired ensembles were sent to the penalty line in 1950, and among them were Os Garotos da Lua.

Jonas Silva, a native of Pernambuco, was the crooner of the group. In 1946, at the age of eighteen, he boarded a flatbed truck in Recife, with his fellow countrymen Milton and Miguel, and headed for the radio stations and casinos of the South. They stopped in Salvador, Bahia, and were joined by two Bahia natives, Alvinho and Acyr. The five of them discovered that they could harmonize and caught the ship
Itatinga
, which got caught in bad weather near Vitória and almost sank on the journey due to an excess of passengers (it was the first ship to leave from Salvador since the War) and finally disembarked in Rio as Os Garotos da Lua. (Two years later, Miguel left the group and another Bahian, Toninho Botelho, who was already living in Rio, took his place). Terrible news awaited Os Garotos da Lua in Praça Mauá: the federal government was shutting down the casinos and as a result, all the vocal ensembles who had worked the casinos were returning to radio. They weren’t likely to get work any time soon.

The group went through hell and high water for more than a year before getting a break. Jonas and Acyr went to work as counter clerks at the Lojas Murray and, within a short time, Jonas became the official buyer of imported records for the store. The others made a living doing odd jobs and, in their spare time, rehearsed for all they were worth, waiting for an opportunity to come along. When their chance finally came at Rádio Tupi in 1947, they grabbed it and held on for dear life. They were extremely gifted musically, and, because Jonas and Acyr were record salesmen, they had advance access to the latest innovations by American groups. Their favorites were the Pied Pipers and the Mel-Tones, and they wasted no time in adapting their styles to their own.

Jonas’s singing was tuneful and full of verve, but his voice was rather nasal and had no vibrato; his range was so small it could have been measured with a ruler. This was during an era when the standard for vocal ensemble soloists was hard to beat, set by none other than Lúcio Alves. For the majority of Garotos da Lua tunes, Jonas’s restricted projection lent itself to wonderful renditions, such as the versions they recorded of “Caravan” and “In the
Mood.” Furthermore, he wasn’t the only vocalist who sang that way. The American singer and accordionist Joe Mooney, whom everyone at the Murray admired, was another person who “sang softly,” as they called it. And there was an entire vocal ensemble, the Page Cavanaugh Trio, whose voices were also audible only at a short distance. So what, then, was the problem?

Antônio Maria, the artistic director at Tupi, thought there
was
a problem. Because of Jonas, the entire group was forced to whisper, he said. And when they sang carnival songs, the group “didn’t quite make it.” According to him, when the auditorium was crowded and the orchestra was playing full blast, the vocal volume of Os Garotos da Lua almost disappeared. They had to choose: either the group replaced its singer, or Tupi would replace the group.

Toninho Botelho, the recently arrived tambourine player of Os Garotos da Lua, led a conspiracy to dismiss Jonas from the group and save the group’s job. While Jonas, oblivious to the plot, mediated jazz debates at the Murray, Toninho gathered the other three at the Café Atlântida, on the ground floor of the Hotel Serrador, and reminded them of how long they had previously been out of work. Botelho had a strong card to play in his argument: if Tupi wanted to fire them because their crooner forced them to “sing softly,” they would find it difficult to get work at another radio station with the same crooner. Milton, Alvinho, and Acyr agreed with Botelho on all counts, but it wasn’t an easy decision to make. Jonas had come from the northeast with them, he was one of the two founders of the group, they had lived together for years, and damn it, they were like brothers. Jonas was also well loved in their circle of vocal ensembles and was, without comparison, the most popular person at the Murray. To get rid of him would be like inciting a coup d’état. And besides, who would take his place? All the good crooners in the square were already employed.