Astrud Gilberto (1940-2023)
Each one she passes goes...
A quick post here to commemorate the life and work of Astrud Gilberto, who passed yesterday at the age of eighty-three. “The Girl from Ipanema” is now a ubiquitous part of global culture, and it doesn’t reach those lofty heights without Gilberto’s occasionally frail yet forever nuanced voice weaving the story through the original recording. She draws you close in both an emotional and literal way; watch how often you see folks leaning towards the speakers next time you hear the song somewhere. It’s a tremendous performance between a room full of geniuses that creates intimacy even removed through recording and decades passed.
But this tune isn’t the one that got me. I’m a sucker for anything Creed Taylor touched as a producer, so my favorite records are dotted by weird jazz experiments that are all but forgotten. (Coming soon to the Labyrinth: Mister Magic and Hold On!) It was his work with Astrud Gilberto that I find most astonishing. I discovered them through well-worn vinyl, suddenly obsessed with that format like any teenage audiophile finds themselves. A copy of The Shadow of Your Smile one idle afternoon, its muted mid-60s palette and an enigmatic photo of its primary artist. So many singers were just so cool in that way that made you want to buy their records. Astrud seemed to have other things on her mind.
I knew this song. I knew this song a half-dozen times over, in Portuguese and in English, within Black Orpheus and without. But I knew the tricky bombast of it from Sinatra and from Bonfa’s own early-90s redux with echoing horns and such. This song tracked subtlety as well as the last lines of La Traviata and with a similar musical style. (You can’t scream “OH! UNBEARABLE GRIEF!” at a modern audience and then bring up the house lights.) “Manha De Carnaval” was a showpiece.
But here it was something else. These were the sounds of inner turmoil, of those little heartbreaks that feel like splintering glass inside you. Detractors of her records tend to describe Astrud Gilberto’s voice as “weak”, but there’s nothing weak about this performance. Where many of her contemporaries were taking this song at slammed racquetball corners she was rounding them gracefully, finding the pockets where her voice could settle for a moment. I enjoy many different interpretations of this song, but this one is certainly my favorite. There is no better compliment to a song than the fact that it makes you want to lay on the floor underneath the speakers, the album cover perched lightly in your hands, letting you dream away on what the melody says to the words. When I was a kid this was two minutes that seemed to come from another world entirely. It was easy to dream to it.
Ditto the next track on the album, a version of “Fly Me to the Moon” that feels almost weightless. These aren’t the rocket-booster theatrics of most Apollo-era covers of this song. Astrud is long past blast-off. We are in the capsule with her seeing the possibility of a weightless life. In other words: I hope you take a moment to listen to one of the great voices today, and I hope it makes your day a little bit better.