Tom Jobim, or, in full, Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim, was born in Rio de Janeiro, on January, 25th, 1927, and passed away December, 8th, 1994.
Widely acknowledged as Brazil’s greatest musical export, and one of the great composers of popular music of the twentieth century, his legacy is a corpus of beautiful and very distinctive music.
I first became dimly aware of him in my mid-teens, as I got into jazz. He seemed to be a ubiquitous name on the credits for the bossa and samba feel ‘standards’ many jazzers performed. It wasn’t long before I started seeking him out, as well as exploring his work on albums by Getz/Gilberto, etc.
This initial dalliance was further boosted by the friendship of Brennan Young, who I met at Goldsmiths, who loved Jobim and knew his oeuvre better than I did. And so my love for both Brazilian music generally, and Jobim in particular, grew.
I’ve been dabbling in writing and recording music of my own since my teens. And alongside that, as so many of us budding musos do, I’d seek to learn by studying the greats. And Jobim was a favourite, such that in my early twenties I pursued a project, under the working title Too Much Time, of recording an ‘album’ of jazz and bossa material, amongst which Jobim would account for about half to two-thirds of the material!
Now, sooo many years later, I still love Jobim’s music, and I still dabble with playing his stuff, albeit far less frequently nowadays. My most recent flirtation with having a crack at the maestro’s material has been to work out a guitar version of Remember, from the album Tide. I posted about that a little while back.
It struck me, whilst listening to Terra Brasilis recently, and, even more recently, Inedito, that I’d like to complete my collection of his major recordings, and survey them all with reviews. This is something I enjoy doing anyway, as it means revisiting all the music of someone I love and admire, and focussing my mind on transcribing my thoughts and feelings about their music.
So, starting some time soon, I’ll be posting reviews of the following Jobim studio albums:
The Composer of Desafinado Plays, ‘63
The Wonderful World of… , ‘65
[Love, Strings, & Jobim, ‘66]*
A Certain Mr Jobim, ‘67
Wave, ‘67
Tide, ‘70
Stone Flower, ‘70
Jobim, ‘72
Urubu, ‘76
Terra Brasilis, ‘80
Passarim, ‘87
Antonio Brasileiro, ‘95
Inedito, ‘95
Minha Alma Canta, ‘97
At the time of posting this I have all of the above except two of the most recent, or rather latest, ‘95s Antonio Brasileiro (I believe Sting guests on this one, dueting How Insensitive with Tom!), and ‘97s Minha Alma Canta.
Another album – pictured above – that has piqued my interest, is a much more recent release, charting his most youthful work, as composer and arranger to other Brazilian artists.
*Quite why this album continues to be attributed to Jobim is beyond me. His face is on the cover. His name is on the title. But it’s not a Jobim album! According to the wiki entry on it, it’s title in Brazil is or was Tom Jobim Apresenta, or Jobim Presents.