Jobim

Eleven years after his death, the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim is as universal as that of Gershwin, Berlin and Porter. Yet, until the issue of the new boxed set The Prime of Antonio Carlos Jobim, the three albums in it were out of general circulation except for a brief reappearance shortly after he died. They are The Wonderful World of Antonio Carlos Jobim; Love, Strings and Jobim; and, most important, A Certain Mr. Jobim, all from the 1960s, all originally on the Warner Bros. label but reissued on dbk.

The Wonderful World has good arrangements by Nelson Riddle, and in the instrumental “Surfboard” a great one. Jobim’s voice is more relaxed than in A Certain Mr. Jobim, but his collaboration with the arranger Claus Ogerman in A Certan Mr. Jobim strikes the Brazilian spark that Riddle achieves less successfully. The empathy between Jobim and Ogerman, so dramatically displayed in Jobim’s first American album a few years earlier, is typified in a haunting performance of “Bonita” that puts the Riddle “Bonita” in the shade. But in each case, we hear the composer of “Desafinado,” “She’s a Carioca,” “Dindi,” “Outra Vez” and “Agua de Beber” singing, playing piano and guitar and giving his songs definitive interpretations.

Love, Strings and Jobim was, and is, packaged to look like a Jobim album. It is, rather, a collection of songs and performances by other Brazilian musicains presented by Jobim, with only two of his songs included and not peformed by him. It offers glimpses of Eumir Deodato, Oscar Castro-Neves and Baden Powell, among others, all part of the infusion of bossa nova into the mainstream of music and worth having for that reason. Terri Hinte’s liner notes, full of knowledge, keep such matters in perspective and provide insights into Jobim and his music. Her understanding of Brazil and Brazilians is a bonus in a package that will fill empty spaces in many otherwise complete Jobim collections. The set does not provide a comprehensive look at Jobim, but it is a reasonable point of entry to his world.