Bossa Nova USA - Dave Brubeck

Theme From June

Bossa Nova USA
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
Columbia Records CL 1998
1962

From the back cover: BOSSA NOVA U.S.A. is primarily a jazz album, which occasionally acknowledges with gratitude the cool wave from Brazil. Washed up on Yankee shores in late 1962, bossa nova almost succeeded in flooding the music marts before it began to "settle in." Absorbed into jazz, bossa nova, in some form, is here to stay, just as the tango once made its way into jazz to pop up in early New Orleans renditions of "St. Louis Blues." We had waited too long for bossa nova, or some kindred rhythm, to capture the imagination of the public. The search for a different beat was apparent in my own work and that of other jazz composers and performers. The bossa nova spirit has been bubbling under the surface in jazz for the past ten to fifteen years, occasionally bursting through with Latin accents, African rhythms and even Oriental and Indian-influenced jazz.

In 1951 I wrote an article in Down Beat Magazine: "I would not be surprised to hear a jazz musician, who had been exposed to Chinese music, use devices from the Oriental system while improvising a chorus. It is fitting that the country which has been called 'the melting pot of the world' should have s its most characteristic art form a music with as mixed a parentage as jazz... New and complex rhythms patterns, more akin to the African parent, is the natural direction for jazz to develop... Contemporary jazz is concentrating a great deal of its effort toward rhythmic improvisation, borrowing heavily from South American music and primitive rhythms... Jazz hears all, plays all of the sound language which makes up America. What Comes out can no longer be branded by regional, racial nor eventually even national titles.

After a decade of watching the globe shrink, I would alter this statement only by emphasizing the world-wide concept. Of all the exotic elements that have come into jazz recently it is bossa nova that strikes the fancy of musicians and public alike. It happened, I believe, because bossa nova contained within it much of our own heritage, but spoken with a difference – a new "bossa."

From Billboard - December 29, 1962: Brubeck's bossa nova plunge was inevitable and he makes it a solid one with this fine outing. Side as a great percussion backing and the Brubeck-Desmond sound is much in evidence. Watch this; it could gather pop as wall as jazz loot. Flip is "This Can't Be Love".

Bossa Nova U.S.A.
Vento Fresco
Trolley Song
Theme For June
Coracao Sensível
Irmao Amigo
There'll Be No Tomorrow
Cantiga Nora Swing
Lamento
This Can't Be Love