Today's Bop Street Find: Gilberto & Jobim By João Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim

I've been on a major bossa nova kick lately, and have been working my way through the latin jazz selections at the home base of local record-enabler Dave Voorhees, Bop Street Records.

My last find, the fabulous samba LP Quarteto Bossamba by Walter Wanderley (which is thankfully his lightest-on-the-cheesy-organ record), is one of the finest thinking person's cocktail-hour records you're likely to encounter. This time, however, I wanted to take it even easier, and trade in samba's bouncy melodies and rim-clicks for the nylon string rhythms and brushed percussion of bossa nova bliss. Gilberto & Jobim is just that. Surfacing the same year as prototypical genre-offering Getz/Gilberto (on which Gilberto's wife Astrud, having never previously sung on record, became an international star for supplying vocals on "The Girl From Ipanema"), this is a session that brought soft-voiced Brazilian guitarist João Gilberto together again with famed composer/bandleader Antonio Carlos Jobim (who also happened to write "The Girl From Ipanema").

More rambling after the jump...

It doesn't get much better than this: the shakers keeping time; the subtle strings and piano; the guitar present as much to instill rhythm as melody; Gilberto conveying "a mood of masculine intimacy, a dance-inspiring vitality" as the bio on the sleeve so aptly describes. There are even a few moments on side two where the tape sounds like it wabbled a bit while picking up the sound, like it got carried away floating on its inner tube. Pure beachfront, teal-watered serenity. Bossa nova like this evokes the same sense of euphoria that modern day Balearic electronic strives to, with an analogue nostalgia for simpler times. For me, there's something about tropical sounds like this that make a cold, rainy January morning float by a bit easier. Until next time.

"Samba De Uma Nota Só" is the opening track from Gilberto & Jobim