

Getz, in search of a new sound, had had huge success with his 1962 album, “ Jazz Samba,” the only jazz album that had ever hit No.

was waning in popularity, with other genres, such as rock ‘n’ roll, starting to attract more fans. Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesĪt that time, jazz in the U.S. In 1963, American jazz saxophonist Stan Getz invited João Gilberto and Jobim to record a jazz-bossa album with him in New York.Īmerican saxophonist Stan Getz, photographed in the mid-1960s. Compared to samba, bossa nova featured a more relaxed rhythm, with an emphasis on harmonic melodies that João Gilberto and composer Antônio Carlos Jobim had drawn from American jazz. The genre had appeared in Rio de Janeiro in 1958, when João Gilberto invented a new beat on his guitar out of the traditional samba. When bossa went bigĪstrud Gilberto and “The Girl from Ipanema” marked a turning point in bossa nova.

In 1966, in the only major performance she gave in her home country, she was booed.
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Astrud Gilberto didn’t set out to be an ambassador of bossa nova, the laid-back Brazilian musical genre with rhythms recognizable to music lovers around the world.Īccording to Gilberto, who died on June 5, 2023, at the age of 83, she wasn’t expecting to be on the 1964 recording of “ The Girl from Ipanema” – the song for which she is best remembered.Īt the time of the recording, she wasn’t even a professional singer.īut Gilberto’s breathy singing voice – almost a whisper, with no hint of a vibrato – helped catapult the song, the singer and bossa nova to the forefront of international pop music.īut while she went on to achieve global fame, back home in Brazil, Gilberto was never given the respect that I believe her talent deserved.
