92. Frank Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim - Frank Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim (1967)




















Track Listing

1. Girl From Ipanema
2. Dindi
3. Change Partners
4. Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars
5. Meditations
6. If You Never Come To Me
7. How Insensitive
8. Concentrate On You
9. Baubles Bangles And Beads
10. Once I Loved

Review

I think whoever was responsible for choosing Brazilian music for the 1001 Albums book was a bit missing the point of Brazilian music and Bossa Nova. This album is nothing if not a throwback, it is surrounded on the list by Velvet Underground and The Doors, its presence here is an anachronism. Brazil was producing modern music, and we will soon have Os Mutantes here as an example of that.

This album is not even a good Frank Sinatra album. I like Sinatra as much as the next man but he is not really shining with charisma or feeling here, he is just flat. Also this is Jobim's ultimate sell out album. He strums his guitar and sings in a couple of songs which he has performed better in 500 other albums. There is no fire and no excitment here, and the same guy who chose this album for the list is probably the one who chose Astrud Gilberto's.

Of course there are redeeming features here, this is not unpleasent. It is not bad background music and it is not offensive. That is however not enough to consider any album good, much less great. Buy it at Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Once I Loved
2. Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars
3. How Insensitive
4. Dindi

Final Grade

4/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Various tributes have been paid to Jobim and his body of work. For example, American jazz singers Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra prominently featured Jobim's songs on their albums Ella Abraça Jobim (1981) and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim (1967), respectively. Other relatively recent works such as Wave: The Antonio Carlos Jobim Songbook (1996) included performances by the likes of Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Toots Thielemans.