KWXY Presents ● The Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim
Antonio Carlos Jobim / Publicity Photo - A&M Records / IVOX MEDIA collection
Antonio Carlos Jobim was a Brazilian composer, pianist, guitarist, songwriter, arranger, and singer. He was considered one of the great exponents of Brazilian music, as Jobim internationalized bossa nova and, with the help of several important American artists, merged it with jazz in the 1960s to create a new sound, with great success.
Jobim is often referred to as the "father of bossa nova". He was a primary force behind the creation of the bossa nova style, and his songs have been performed by many singers and instrumentalists internationally since the early 1960s.
In 1965, the album Getz/Gilberto was the first jazz record to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It also won Best Jazz Instrumental Album – Individual or Group and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical. The album's single '"Garota de Ipanema (The Girl from Ipanema)'", composed by Jobim, has become one of the most recorded songs of all time, and the album won the Record of the Year.
The source of inspiration for the song "The Girl from Ipanema" was when songwriters Antônio Carlos Jobim and lyricist Vinicius de Moraes saw a 17-year-old girl, (Helô Pinheiro) walking to the beach in Ipanema, from her neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro.
Daily, she would stroll past the Veloso bar-café, not just to the beach ("each day when she walks to the sea"), but in the everyday course of her life. She would sometimes enter the bar to buy cigarettes for her mother and leave to the sound of wolf whistles. In the winter of 1962, the composers saw the girl pass by the bar, and wrote the song.
“The Girl from Ipanema" has been recorded hundreds of times by other artists including Astrud Gilberto, Amy Winehouse, Lou Rawls, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr., Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass, and Frank Sinatra. Jobim’s 1967 album with Frank Sinatra, “Francis Albert Sinatra & Antônio Carlos Jobim”, was nominated for Album of the Year in 1968.
Jobim is widely regarded as one of the most important songwriters of the 20th century. Many of his songs are jazz standards, as he composed a number of songs that have now been included in jazz and pop standard repertoires. American jazz singers Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra prominently featured Jobim's songs as have many prominent artists from around the world since the 1960s.
KWXY Presents ● “The Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim” today at 5pm hosted by Louie Comella, on KWXY Music Radio 92.3FM ● 1340AM ● streaming at kwxy.com and ivoxradio.com