If you haven’t seen the movie, do yourself a favor and bask in its technicolor wonder and brilliant soundtrack. “A Felicidade” (The Happiness) is one of Jobim’s most iconic tunes that memorably anchors the film Black Orpheus. Between 19 Jobim composed countless classics. That’s how much his musical presence defined the era. The Rio de Janeiro music scene that birthed the Bossa Nova was lousy with talented composers like Carlos Lyra, Roberto Menescal, Baden Powell, João Donato, and more, but it would not be hyperbole to imagine a “Greatest Hits of Bossa Nova” composed entirely of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s best songs. Antonio Carlos Jobim’s Breakthrough Bossa Nova Songs (“A Felicidade,” “Chega de Saudade,” “One Note Samba,” “Insensatez (How Insensitive),” “The Girl from Ipanema”) Picking merely 20 songs to summarize his career is an impossible task, but the following recordings (all Jobim compositions) are some of the best versions of his songs.
Beyond his signature tune, “The Girl from Ipanema,” Jobim penned a majority of the best-known Brazilian songs to crossover into international pop and jazz.Īs a composer, arranger, pianist, and vocalist, Antonio Carlos Jobim can be heard on not only his own recordings, but also close collaborators and duet partners like Frank Sinatra, Elis Regina, and Sergio Mendes. The Bossa Nova brought Jobim to the US in 1962 where he stayed off and on for the rest of his life, recording albums for Verve, Warner Brothers, Reprise, A&M/CTI, MCA, and Columbia as well as a handful of duet and ensemble albums released only in Brazil. Listen to the best Antonio Carlos Jobim songs on Apple Music and Spotify.
It was around this time that João Gilberto showed up in Rio with a revolutionary new style that would soon be dubbed Bossa Nova, with Jobim’s compositions fueling Gilberto’s career in those early years. In 1956, he teamed up with poet and diplomat Vinicius de Moraes to write the music for the play Orfeu da Conceição, which later became hit arthouse film Black Orpheus in 1959. While Jobim will forever be associated with the Bossa Nova style he helped create alongside Vinicius de Moraes and João Gilberto, his legacy cannot be contained in one genre.īorn into a middle-class family in Rio de Janeiro, the young Jobim played piano in bars and nightclubs before graduating into the bustling Rio recording industry in the mid-’50s.
The sheer number of cover versions in circulation since the 60s keeps Jobim relevant globally among jazz and pop musicians. Antonio Carlos Jobim, better known as “Tom Jobim” in his homeland, is arguably one of the most important songwriters of the 20th century, rivaling Gershwin, Porter, McCartney & Lennon, and Wonder for sheer consistency and diversity of output.
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