Thursday, July 31, 2014

Classic Summer Songs: "The Girl From Ipanema" by Getz/GIlberto

We featured Golden Earring's great rocker "Radar Love" yesterday in our series.  Today, we prove our versatility with this gem from Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto.  Although she had never sung a note on record, Gilberto's wife Astrud was asked to sing the English lyrics.  You would never know Astrud had never recorded before from her performance.

Antonio Carlos Jobim wrote the incredible music, with Vinicius de Moraes writing the lyrics in Portugese.  Producer Norman Gimbel wrote the English lyrics.

Jobim and Moraes were inspired to write the song when the observed a young Brazilian girl with a bikini who regularly walked past the Veloso bar that they frequented.  Ipanema is now a fashionable district in Rio de Janeiro--it was just another stretch of beach until this song came out.

"The Girl From Ipanema" is the second-most recorded song of all-time, right after "Yesterday" by the Beatles.  In 2004, it was one of 50 songs chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be included in the National Recording Registry.

Getz & Gilberto captured three Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year, for "The Girl From Ipanema", a Classic Summer Song* from the Summer of 1964.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.