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| Astrud Gilberto / September 17, 1969 | ||
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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. —John Ballon (email) April 21, 2002
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