*PART 1*
MPB (Brazilian Popular Misic) All Inclusive
Hello!
I, Rodrigo Faour, am here once again
on "MPB (Brazilian Popular Misic) All Inclusive".
Today, we're talking about Bossa Nova's album covers.
In order to do so,
firstly, I need to talk about Bossa Nova,
a movement that changed Brazilian music forever.
That happened lat 1950's, early 1960's,
when Joao Gilberto recorded his first 78 rpm disc,
in 1959.
"Chega de Saudade" was truly revolutionary.
He played guitar
and Milton Banana played the drums.
He sang those songs
with easy melodies that Tom Jobim composed.
He used Vinicius de Moraes' poetic lyrics.
So, that movement was stong indeed.
People who listened to that as a teenager
would later become Brazilian music stars,
like Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.
They were all impressed
by Joao Gilberto's singing and guitar playing.
Soon after that, Carlos Lyra came up.
He was also a pioneer.
Since the mid-1950's, he played that kind of music,
but his first album came after Joao's.
Someone that gave Bossa Nova a final push
was producer Aloysio de Oliveira.
Aloysio was a musician and singer from Bando da Lua.
a band that played with Carmen Miranda
in America.
Meaning, Hollywood, USA in the 1940's and 1950's.
When Carmen died, in 1955,
he returned to Brazil to work at Odeon Records
and was there for a while.
In 1960, he left Odeon and went to Pillips Records,
but he didn't stay there for long.
While working at Odeon, he was the hiring manager
and signed Joao Gilberto.
After that,
he realized that
some of the artists he wanted to release,
who had a style that was then modern and sophisticated,
didn't sell many discs
and didn't amuse the big companies.
Then he decided to create
the first big, independent Brazilian label,
called Elenco.
Elenco Records opened its doors in 1963
and that had...
They actually incorporated
all this sophisticated side,
an economic way of making concise music Bossa Nova had,
but they brought it to the disc graphic designs.
They didn't plan it, it happened.
They didn't have much money, so their LP had three colors,
never more than four.
It was usually black, white, and some type of red.
This became as big as Blue Note's jazz records
in the 1950's in the USA.
So, the thing is...
After the concert at Carnegie Hall, in 1962,
which opened Bossa Nova's doors to the world,
Tom Jobim actually recorded his first album there,
"The Composer of Desafinado, Plays".
This same album was released in Brazil by Elenco.
Look how nice!
The first album Elenco ever released was Vinicius'.
Up until then, he was just a poet and a songwriter.
Later, he debuted as a singer with an album of his own.
I have the CD version of the album.
Vinicius and Odette Lara.
She was a famous Brazilian actress.
Besides producing Tom's first album,
Elenco also worked on Nara Leao's first album.
They did Aloysio de Oliveira's wife's record.
She was a Bossa Nova pioneer
and Tom's first interpreter, Sylvia Telles.
They released Edu Lobo's first album.
He had some collab albums
and then released an album with Maria Bethania.
"Edu and Bethania".
"Cirandeiro" and "Pra Dizer Adeus" are in it.
They also had...
They released Lennie Dale's album,
an important choreographer at the time.
Huh...
He was an American who thought he could sing.
So, Elenco also produced his record.
It's a live album.
They worked with Maysa,
the first big star that embraced the Bossa Nova as a genre.
Her too.
Their covers looked like this.
When people went to buy albums,
they could spot theirs from far away.
People would go to stores
looking for Elenco's newest release.
That's how big they were.
Elenco also became famous
for also bringing back to the scene
singers that Bossa Nova people liked
since the 1950's.
We can mention Dick Farney.
Also, Agostinho dos Santos,
Mario Reis, who sounded more modern.
They also promoted collabs, like Vinicius and Odette Lara.
"Vinicius e Caymmi no Zum Zum"
is another example.
There are many, many more.
Billy Blanco's first album as a singer.
Other labels started to mimic Elenco's graphic designs.
The small label Equipe
released Eumir Deodato and Os Catedraticos's album
with similar graphics.
"Impulso!" had the same three colors.
They were copying Elenco's style.
The responsible was Cesar Vilela,
a major graphic designer at the time.
He worked for a marketing agency.
From Aloysio's time at Odeon,
he used the guy.
Cesar followed Aloysio to Phillips and created the concept
Chico Pereira was the photographer.
They all worked together.
He was a big photographer in the Bossa Nova world.
He hosted some meetings at his place for these guys.
So, besides the album "Impulso!",
from Os Catedraticos in partnership with Equipe Records,
other labels were influenced by Elenco's graphics.
Bossa Nova's biggest drummer, who played with Joao Gilberto,
Milton Banana released his album with Odeon.
"Ve" is another album that has the same colors.
Agostinho dos Santos and RGE Records
also released an album with the same style.
Here, though, they used four colors.
Here, years later,
when Tom got together with Vinicius, Miucha and Toquinho,
they put on an anthological concert at Canecao,
produced by Aloysio.
That was years later, because Elenco closed in 1967.
Ten years later, when they had this concert,
they used Elenco as an inspiration to create the album cover.
To close our show about Bossa Nova's album covers,
a fun fact.
Back in the day, way before Elenco,
in 1959,
the great actress Norma Bengell,
one of Brazil's most beautiful woman, a vedette,
she would often...
Labels used beautiful women on the covers of collab albums.
Once, they used Norma Bengell's photo without her authorization.
She went like, "I could sue Odeon."
She proposed a different type of payment:
they would record her album.
She wanted to debut as a singer and so she did it.
This was it: "Ooooooh! Norma".
This is another beautiful work from Cesar Vilela.
He was the one that worked with Elenco.
Going from record store to record store,
I found something interesting.
This 1959's album cover was influenced by an orchestra,
which now is a lounge orchestra.
It's "Jack Gleason presents Oh..."
Actually, they used the same logo
on "Ooooooh! Norma"
that was used on "Jackie Gleason presents Oh...".
It was just like copy and paste.
It doesn't depreciate this cover, though.
It is really a fantastic cover.
Well, that's it.
There are many things to be talked about in our show.
If you liked it, please, subscribe to our channel
and share it with your friends
because Brazilian music is very rich
and we need to talk about it and let it take over.
See you next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment