The 500 - #447 - Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto - Getz/Gilberto

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

My plan (amended). 

• One record per week (ish) & at least two complete listens.
• A blog post for each, highlighting the important details and, when possible, a background story that relates to the record.
• No rating scale - just an effort to expand my appreciation of diverse forms of music.
• Listen to Josh and his guest on The 500 podcast to gather additional information and insights.

Album # 447

Album Title: Getz/Gilberto
Artist: Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto
Released: March, 1964
My age at release: Not born yet
How familiar was I with it before this week: Very Familiar
Song I am putting on my Spotify Mix: 
The Girl from Ipanema

Great Lyric:
"Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes, I smile, but she
Doesn't see. She just doesn't see"

When I reached out on social media for assistance picking a song for my 500 Spotify Playlist I included the caveat ... "other than The Girl from Ipanema." To me, it was overplayed and that my list needed a deeper cut from the record.

My friend James, an ardent fan of jazz, immediately responded by saying, "It's overplayed for a reason. It's an incredible track." I agreed, and the track has been added to the playlist.

This is a record I heard many times while working as a bartender at Garlic's Restaurant. I was excited to learn more about the history of it through The 500 podcast. On this episode, Josh's guest was Jade Catta-Preta, a Brazillian-American comic and actor. Throughout the interview, she provided an engaging perspective on a Jazz/Bossa Nova masterpiece that was a staple in her home as a child. Additionally, I learned how to correctly pronounce Brazillian guitarist Joao Gilberto's name as well as many of the song titles I had been verbally butchering.

My first year of high school was in Kingsville, Ontario. Early on, I met Andrew and we bonded around our mutual love of comedy, Saturday Night Live and Steve Martin in particular.

Andrew older brothers had an impressive record collection and I spent hours in their den listening to records. This will certainly come up in future posts because this was my first exposure to albums by David Bowie, The Who and The Beatles that were not "Greatest Hits" packages.

The brothers also had a National Lampoon record called That's Not Funny, That's Sick. It was entirely inappropriate, full of vulgar, irreverent sketches and rife with profane language. In other words, everything a 13-year-old finds hysterical. 

The album featured John Belushi, Bill Murray, Christopher Guest and Richard Belzer well before they became television and movie stars. 

One track, Love Birds/Flashanova featured a parody of a Getz/Gilberto song. The music was strangely familiar and, even though it was a comedic version, it introduced me to the Bossa Nova sound and I was hooked. As a saxophone player, I was astonished by the gorgeous, almost wispy timbre of Stan Getz' playing.

A few years later, I tracked down this Getz/Gilberto record at the local library. At 16, I really felt quite mature when I piped it through headphones in the soundbooth. As an adult, I imagined, this would be the music I would play in my penthouse apartment while entertaining guests. We would be talk about the stock market, sip martinis and wear formal attire. Meanwhile, the record would provide the ideal soundtrack to our fascinating lives. The premier episode of season six of Mad Men came awfully close to my inaccurate teenage vision.

The magic has never gone away and I have played it at parties. I was just wrong about the other details. After listening to it again while writing this post, I'll gladly admit that James was right - The Girl from Ipanema is overplayed...and for good reason.