Date: 1971
Release: Virgin #40641
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“For Francoise Hardy, at the Seine’s edge…”

–Bob Dylan, Another Side Of Bob Dylan

Unlike escargots, beautiful French women are not an acquired taste, especially when they can sing. A melancholy and sensual chanteuse, Francoise Hardy made a name for herself crafting lush love songs of great sophistication. Often characterized as aloof, the quietly self-possessed Hardy never allowed herself to be marketed on her abundant sex appeal. Disregarding her looks, she built a following strictly on the strength of her singing and songwriting talents. Although released in 1971, La Question endures as her most spare and seductive album. “Viens” opens the record with a dramatic flair designed to grab the listener’s attention. The title track follows, establishing the album’s elegant dreamlike mood. On such songs as “Chanson D’O,” “Mer,” and “Doigts,” Francoise’s breathy voice lulls you deeper into a deliciously languid state.

The mysterious Tuca (aka Valeniza Zagni da Silva) accompanies Hardy on acoustic guitar, co-arranging and co-writing most of the songs. Although largely unknown, Tuca was a talented musician who released two obscure albums in her native Brazil, Tuca and Dracula, I Love You, both of which remain impossible to find. Tuca’s chararacteristically delicate and uncluttered arrangements help define La Question, with her subtle touches of bass and strings beautifully accentuating Francoise’s sultry vocals. In several places, Hardy substitutes melodic humming in place of singing, wordlessly articulating the emotional essence of the song. “Bati Mon Nid” features a particularly catchy chorus of “la-la-la-la-la’s,” and the record ends with another refrain of “la-la-la” on “Reve.” A timelessly romantic album overflowing with after-hours ambience, this is the perfect disc to put on when snuggling close to the one you love.

Date: May 15, 1970
Release: BLUE NOTE #36195
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Considered by some to be trumpeter Donald Byrd‘s last worthwhile jazz recording, Electric Byrd is a high-flying relic from 1970. This album can be understood as Byrd’s formidable response to the musical challenges set down by trumpet-rival Miles Davis with his epic Bitches Brew recordings from a year earlier. Clearly Miles is the ghost presence here, with distinct echoes of his sound permeating the vibe of this exploratory set.

Byrd demonstrates on his three originals that he, too, was a force to be reckoned with. The supremely atmospheric “Estavanico” opens the album, inventively fusing together elements of funk, psychedelica, Brazilian music, and hard-bop to create a truly transcendent groove. Clocking in at around 11 glorious minutes in length, “Estavanico” is an absolute masterpiece and must be heard by all fans of the Bitches Brew.

The second track, “Essence,” begins with some African-sounding stringed instrument plucking out an intricate tribal rhythm. Wally Richardson‘s wah-pedaled guitar growls underneath with heavy restraint. Funky sounds flow forth from the rhythm section, comprised of pianist Duke Pearson, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Mickey Roker. Roker’s inventive and energetic playing is a classic example of why a band is only as good as its drummer. Saxophonist Frank Foster, a veteran of the Count Basie Band, explores the wondrous possibilities of the echo-effect, playing a mean sounding tenor that reverberates between your ears long after he’s stopped. Brazilian percussion master, Airto Moreira, takes the music up another notch with his exotic rhythms.

Airto also contributes a memorable original, “Xibaba,” a Brazilian spiced, acid-laced groove that opens with Byrd’s distorted trumpet echoing out Middle-Eastern sounding riffs that could be blasted from the minarets beckoning the faithful to pray. After a somewhat ponderous opening, “Xibaba” heats-up with complex arrangements, cosmic sound effects, and swirling rhythms. “The Dude” closes the record with one of the heaviest grooves ever set down by any jazz artist — an absolute classic that deserves space on any funky mix you might want to make for your friends. And with a name like “The Dude,” how could it be anything other than bad-assed? Move over Lebowski. An album often lumped in with Donald Byrd‘s more artistically barren work of the 1970s, Electric Byrd is a misunderstood masterpiece that should be investigated.

Date: September 17, 1969 (recording)
Release: Verve #2668
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Heavily accented, hesitantly breathy and child-like, Astrud Gilberto‘s vocals never fail to seduce me. As I play her records (particularly this one), I obsessively pore over the album photos, falling for the sweet faced girl with the adorable voice. An accidental star with no professional training, Astrud was catapulted to fame after singing on the bossa nova crossover hit, “The Girl From Ipanema.” The story is that her then husband, Brazilian singer-songwriter Joao Gilberto, was in the studio with saxophonist Stan Getz, when producer Creed Taylor suggested they record “Ipanema” in English in order to give the song a better chance at cracking the charts. By sheer luck, Astrud was the only Brazilian in the room with a sufficient grasp of the language to give it a shot.

Her singular and unaffected voice — tinged with a slight sadness and a little off-key — held such widespread appeal that the song became a unexpectedly massive hit in America during the summer of 1964. Astrud’s spontaneously recorded vocals almost single-handedly sparked the bossa nova craze, allowing her to launch a career that would span several decades and yield a nice handful of influential Sixties pop records.

Beginning in 1965, Astrud recorded a series of superb albums for Verve, culminating with her final album for the label, September 17, 1969. A bold departure from the jazzy bossa nova sound of her previous recordings, the album lovingly covered the very best that the late-’60s had to offer: The Bee Gees (a sped-up version of “Holiday”), The Beatles (a wide-eyed “Here There And Everywhere”), The Doors (an incredibly kitschy “Light My Fire”), and Harry Nilsson (a better-than-the original “Don’t Leave Me Baby”). With her quavery tone and sultry innocence, Astrud somehow manages to infuse these psychedelic pop songs with her gently tropical, Brazilian feeling while at the same time embracing their more mainstream, Anglo-American sound.

Her cover of the early Chicago classic, “Beginnings” rocks hard, but over a sizzling Latin groove that stretches out over eight exhilarating minutes. In contrast to these magnificent bossa-salsa-psychedelic-rock-pop covers are several string-laden, almost syrupy, Brazilian-spiced ballads like “Think Of Rain” and “A Million MIles Away Behind The Door” (which was from some forgotten Paramount Production called “Paint Your Wagon”). While not quite as infectious as the covers, the album’s softer songs are still endearing in their undisguised schmaltz.

Despite its many strengths, September 17, 1969 turned out to be Astrud’s last album for Verve. Over-saturated by a glut of lousy bossa nova albums recorded by has-beens and hacks, the American public had lost interest in Brazilian artists by the late ’60s, turning their backs on such major talents as Antonio Carlos Jobim, and unfairly ignoring Astrud’s incredibly great offering. While her star still shone in her native Brazil through most of the 70s, Astrud gradually vanished from the music scene until 1984, when a boss nova revival swept the UK and put “The Girl From Ipanema” back in the charts once more.

Date: February 13, 1962
Release: VERVE 341 521 413-2
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Driving music designed for sun-drenched drives in sleek convertables along winding coasts with the one you love by your side. Jazz Samba is the album responsible for importing the Brazilian Bossa Nova craze to America in 1962. What makes this musical genre so infectious is the delicate tension between its intricate rhythms and its deceptively light-handed melodic approach. It’s the music of tropical drinks and lazy afternoons, and of all the Bossa Nova albums to be recorded in the ’60s, this is the definitive one.

Each song is anchored by the expert guitar strumming of the classically-trained Charlie Byrd (who had studied under the great Andres Segovia). On such songs as “Samba Triste” or “Bahia,” he solos effervescently, in perfect union with the round, opulent saxophone sound of Stan Getz.

The cool West Coast sound of Mr. Getz was an inspired choice for this musical genre: his trademark grunts and pops and melodious high-note phrasings highlight his superb sense of dynamics, making this music-which sounded clumsy and peripatetic in other players’ hands-relaxed and graceful. Listen to him on “Desafinado,” and especially on “Samba de Uma Nota So” and you’ll want to pull over and grab that kiss from the passenger you’ve been thinking about for a few dozen miles.

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Date: March 16 – May 22, 1970 (recording)
Release: CTI/Sony Legacy #61616
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Antonio Carlos Jobim is to Brazilian music what Duke Ellington is to American jazz—an innovative, prolific, and sublime pianist / songwriter whose art has come to symbolize a certain time and place. Influenced as much by the cool sounds of ’50s West Coast jazz as by the melodies of Claude Debussy and the rhythms of the Brazilian samba, Jobim wrote the songs that, when performed by the likes of Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto, drove the global bossa nova craze of the’60s.

A subtle pianist and guitarist with a soft gravelly voice and a penchant for writing seductive melodies, Jobim always lived in the shadows of those who covered his songs and turned them into hits. While it was Jobim’s “Desafinado” that first put bossa nova on the map in 1962 (when Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd scored a surprise hit covering the song), the man behind the music lived in relative obscurity until he was “rediscovered” shortly before his death in the mid-’90s.

By 1970, the year Jobim recorded Stone Flower, the music industry had already succeeded in destroying the public’s appetite for bossa nova by oversaturating the market with schlocky albums recorded by fading musicians intent on reviving their careers with a little Brazilian spice. These mass-produced, superficially bossa nova albums were typically formulaic and contrived, generating a garbage glut which all but guaranteed that Jobim’s sophisticated Stone Flower would wilt outside the limelight. Recorded by Rudy Van Gelder and produced by Creed Taylor, this understated Jobim masterpiece brought back all of the hushful elegance and simmering beauty that had originally defined the bossa nova sound.

Far from a conventional bossa nova album, Stone Flower was ambitious and original, infused with all of Jobim’s creativity and tender soulfulness. The opening track, “Tereza My Love,” establishes the lush mood of the album, with a gently strummed acoustic guitar playing out a bossa nova rhythm as Jobim adds meditative touches of piano. The delicate yet complex string, wind, and horn arrangements of Deodato float sensuously over the smouldering rhythms of bassist Ron Carter, drummer Joao Palma, and percussionists Airto Moreira and Everaldo Ferreira. “Children’s Games” and “Brazil” draw out the feeling, as Jobim’s electric and acoustic piano melodies glide with minimalist grace.

The music is moody and cinematic, conjuring up vivid equatorial landscapes of green and blue, sand swept paradises of the mind, imaginary vistas to absorb as the album plays. More of a unified suite than a collection of individual songs, Stone Flower provided Jobim with no radio hits because it had none to yield (although Carlos Santana would later cover “Stone Flower” on his Top Ten album, Caravanserai).

The album is a cohesive whole, unfolding song by song, gradually filling the listener with its dreamy vibe. And because mood is everything, there are surprisingly few solos taken, despite the presence of such major jazz talents as Joe Farrell on soprano sax and Hubert Laws on flute. These musicians play with uncharacteristic restraint, stepping out occasionally to punctuate the music with just the right color and shading.

Simply put, Stone Flower is a lush, deceptively simple, late-night Jobim classic. It is the perfect soundtrack for escaping into your own mental oasis.