Antonio Jobim; Composer Created Bossa Nova Sound

L.A. Times Archives

Dec. 9, 1994 12 AM PT

From Times Staff and Wire Reports

Antonio Carlos Jobim, the founding father of Brazil’s bossa nova music who composed the world-famous song “The Girl From Ipanema,” died Thursday in a New York hospital. He was 67.

Jobim died of heart failure at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, where he had been a patient since Monday. His attorney, David Grossberg, said Jobim underwent minor surgery Wednesday.

Jobim, Brazil’s most prominent songwriter and composer, burst onto the international music scene with the bossa nova sound--a combination of jazz and samba--in the early 1960s.

“The Girl From Ipanema,” sung by Astrid Gilberto, charmed listeners with its sensual rhythm and romantic lyrics. Jobim’s distinctive rhythms and catchy melodies made bossa nova--literally, the “new wave”--a musical craze around the world.

Although he lived in Los Angeles briefly in the 1960s and again in the 1970s, Jobim did not make his performing debut here until 1986, when he sang and played piano at the Greek Theatre. He projected the image of composer rather than unpretentious performer, but critics called his concerts “consistently delightful.”

The Times’ late jazz critic Leonard Feather, evaluating Jobim’s prolific output, termed his work “the gentlest, purest, least clamorous and most melodious music” of the 1960s rock era.

“As he reminded us of one hit after another,” Feather wrote of a concert at the Wiltern Theatre, “one could only be astonished by the breadth and depth of his achievements.”

Jobim’s songs included “Desafinado,” “One-Note Samba,” “How Insensitive,” “Wave,” “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars,” and “Dindi.”

A onetime pianist in bars and nightclubs, Jobim performed on Frank Sinatra’s latest “Duets II” record, and had been expected to perform on the future “Duets III.” He also recently recorded with British singer Sting.

Jobim’s unusual harmonies and many popular songs earned him induction into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in New York in 1991.

Antonio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim was born in Tijuca, a neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, in 1927.

He first played music on a piano that his parents had rented for an older sister. After working briefly in an architect’s office, Jobim began his musical career in a Rio recording studio, transcribing songs by composers who were unable to write them down.

In 1954, he wrote his first song, samba-influenced “A Week Ago.” In 1958, he met guitarist Joao Gilberto, with whom he would record some of the most famous bossa nova songs.

In the 1950s, playing the piano in Rio and heavily influenced by songwriter Cole Porter and jazz musicians Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, Jobim and his friends began to infuse jazz with the traditional Brazilian samba sound, music writer Howard Mandel said.

“That became bossa nova,” he said. “It was the music that opened up Brazil as a modern cultural exporter.”

“The Girl From Ipanema,” recorded in 1962, was a smash hit, earning Jobim and U.S. jazz saxophonist Stan Getz four Grammy awards. The movie “Black Orpheus,” for which Jobim wrote most of the soundtrack, also helped fuel the bossa nova phenomenon.

In an uncanny twist of musical fate, Getz, probably Jobim’s best-known collaborator, was born on the same day, in the same year and at the same hour as Jobim. Getz died of liver cancer two years ago.

Jobim also worked closely with Rio poet Vinicius de Moraes, who wrote the lyrics to “The Girl From Ipanema.”

He recorded with Brazilian singers such as the late Elis Regina and Chico Buarque and first recorded with Sinatra in the 1960s.

Jobim last appeared in New York in April to mark the 50th anniversary of Verve Records at Carnegie Hall, where he performed many of his most popular songs.

Jobim was married twice and had four children. He was married first in 1949 to Tereza Otero Ermani, with whom he had two children, Paulo and Elizabeth. In 1978, he married Ana Beatriz Lontra, and they had two children, Jose Francisco and Maria Luiza Elena.

Jobim’s body was to be flown back to Brazil Thursday evening for funeral and burial.

* AN APPRECIATION: The man who wrote “The Girl From Ipanema” has left behind a rich and generous musical legacy. F1