JOAO GILBERTO - Chega de Saudade

To call this one of the most influential albums of the second half of the last century would be no exaggeration. Joao Gilberto’s 1959 debut may have been preceded on wax by Elizete Cardoso’s landmark Cançao Do Amor Demais by a year, but the influence of Gilberto’s bossa nova had already been stirring things up in since the erratic oddball began developing his sound in the previous years. While Cardoso’s album was undeniably beautiful, her occasionally melodramatic vocals and orchestral backing only hinted at what Gilberto perfected with Chega de Saudade, ditching all unnecessary inflection, ornamentation, and accompaniment, and establishing the blueprint for the next 50 years of a global phenomenon, rivaled only by reggae as the most influential non-American musical idiom of the past century. Most of these tracks are pure classics of the genre, from the ingenious minor-to-major melody of the title track to “Desafinado” and “A Felicidade”. El Records fills in the additional space with tracks from Gilberto’s first disciples like Bola Sete, Alaide Costa, Walter Wanderley, and, of course, Elizete Cardoso. Absolutely essential.