1. Bridges (Travessia) (Milton Nascimento/Fernando Brant/Gene Lees)
  2. Vera Cruz (Milton Nascimento/Márcio Borges)
  3. Tres Pontas (Milton Nascimento/Ronaldo Bastos)
  4. Outubro (October) (Milton Nascimento/Fernando Brant)
  5. Courage (Milton Nascimento/Márcio Borges/Paul Williams)
  6. Rio Vermelho (Milton Nascimento/Ronaldo Bastos/Danilo Caymmi)
  7. Gira Girou (Round ‘N’ Round) (Milton Nascimento/Márcio Borges)
  8. Morro Velho (Milton Nascimento)
  9. Catavento (Milton Nascimento)
  10. Canção Do Sal (Saltworkers Song) (Salt Song) (Milton Nascimento)

Milton Nascimento – vocal
Herbie Hancock – piano
Eumir Deodato – organ
Jose Marino – bass  
João Palma – drums
Airto Moreira percussion
Burt Collins, Marvin Stamm – flugelhorn
Wayne Andre, Paul Faulise, John Messner, Tony Studd, Bill Watrous, Chauncey Welsch – trombone  
Ray Alonge, Joe DeAngelis, Paul Ingraham – French horn
George Marge – clarinet
Danny Bank, Harvey Estrin, Hubert Laws, Romeo Penque, Jerome Richardson, Bill Slapin,
              Joe Soldo – flute
David Nadien, Anahid Ajemian, Frederick Buldrini, Alexander Cores, Harry Cykman, Lewis Eley,
              Harry Glickman, Emanuel Green, Raoul Poliakin, Max Pollikoff, Matthew Raimondi, Joyce
              Robbins, Tosha Samaroff, Avram Weiss, Jack Zayde, Joseph Zwilich – violin
Alfred Brown, Harold Coletta, Theodore Israel, David Mankovitz, Emanuel Vardi – viola  
Charles McCracken, George Ricci, Lucien Schmit, Alan Shulman – cello
Anamaria Valle – vocal (04)

Produced by Creed Taylor

Arranged and conducted by Eumir Deodato

Originally issued as A&M SP 3019

Recorded on December 19, 1968 (01, 03, 04, 08), and February 26 (02, 06, 07, 10) and 27 (05, 09), 1969, at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

01 published by Cam Cine TV Music, Inc. (ASCAP)
02, 05, 07 and 09 published by Almo Music Corporation (ASCAP)
03 and 06 published by Tres Pontas Edicoes Musicais Ltda. (ASCAP)
04 published by Nascimento Edicoes Musicais Ltda./Tres Pontas Edicoes Musicais Ltda. (ASCAP)
08 published by EMI April Music, Inc. (ASCAP)
10 published by Fermata International Melodies, Inc./Warner Chappell Edicoes Musicaes Ltda. (ASCAP)

(P) 1969

Singer, songwriter and guitarist Milton Nascimento (b. 1942) is one of the most important composers to come out of the post-bossa nova Música Popular Brasileira (MPB) movement and one of Brazil’s most distinctive vocalists. Discovered by no less an authority than Eumir Deodato, Nasimento managed to place three of his songs among the twelve finalists in the prestigious Festival Internacional da Canção in 1967. Nascimento’s “Travessia,” arranged by Deodato, took second-place honors and sparked the singer-songwriter’s 1967 recording debut Milton Nascimento on the Ritmos label. The album paired Nascimento with an orchestra under the direction of Tamba 4’s Luiz Eça, with Deodato arranging “Travessia” and “Morro Velho.” It was Deodato who convinced Creed Taylor to take the young singer/songwriter on. Nascimento was initially invited by Deodato to America to sing on Walter Wanderley’s When It Was Done. Even though Nascimento ended up contributing only a brief vocal to one song, Creed Taylor liked what he heard and set about recording Milton Nascimento’s American debut the following week.

Courage, issued in September 1969, presents the guitarist and vocalist in a program comprised entirely of his own becoming originals. Dedoato provides the exquisite and sensitively-conceived orchestrations, while occasionally backing Nascimento on organ. The rhythm section includes pianist Herbie Hancock, in the first of a number of recordings with the singer-songwriter, Wanderley-bassist José Marino, drummer João Palma and some of the warmest yet still most persuasive percussion Airto Moreira ever dispatched. Nascimento revisits, even reinvents, seven of the tracks heard on the Ritmos album, led, of course, by the definitive recording of “Travessia,” known here as “Bridges.” Nascimento sings English lyrics to the song provided by the songwriter and jazz scholar Gene Lees (1928-2010), who also lent his poetic gifts to such Jobim songs as “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars” and “Off-Key.”1

The beguiling “Catavento”2 offers Hubert Laws a lovely feature on flute while Deodato provides “Canção do Sal” (a.k.a. “Salt Song”) with a tremendous trombone counterpoint. In fact, Deodato’s orchestrations are often superb in their own right (“Bridges,” “Vera Cruz,” “Courage,” “Gira Girou” and “Morro Velho” especially), reminding listeners of what made his early Brazilian records so entrancing.

Milton Nascimento would record two more albums for A&M – Milton (1976) and Journey to Dawn (1979) – but, remarkably, the singer-songwriter never made another album with Creed Taylor. For his part, Taylor seemed sufficiently impressed by their collaboration to include a number of Courage covers on later productions, including Paul Desmond’s From the Hot Afternoon (1969, “Outubro,” “Gira Girou,” “Catavento” plus three other Nascimento compositions), Stanley Turrentine’s Salt Song (1971, “Canção do Sal”) and covers of “Vera Cruz” on such Taylor productions as Astrud Gilberto’s Gilberto with Turrentine (1971), Stanley Turrentine’s The Sugar Man (1975) and Larry Coryell’s Live from Bahia (1992).

While Courage remains Milton Nascimento’s best and best-known record, it is perhaps rivaled in his catalog only by Native Dancer, the Brazilian singer-songwriter’s highly-regarded 1975 collaboration with saxophonist Wayne Shorter.

About the cover: “Looking” (1968 – New York City). Like all great photographers, Pete Turner had an especially keen eye for great faces. The visage of Brazilian singer and songwriter Milton Nascimento is surely one of those. Mysterious and melancholy, though implacably inscrutable, Nascimento projects a rare emotional intelligence that can’t help but fascinate. Pete Turner was one of the first photographers who really captured this. Indeed, Nascimento was among his favorite subjects (Coltrane was another): “Milton walked into the studio and I was just knocked out by this very handsome guy, and it was a pleasure to photograph him.” Capturing Nascimento with his head cradled by the fingers of his hands forming a sort of heart, Turner crafts a most memorable cover – the first artist portrait on an A&M/CTI album (discounting the mod shots of Richard Barbary and Tamiko Jones). “This is one of those images,” enthused Turner, who considered this one of his favorite pictures, “that has found a life of its own.”[i] 3 It announced Milton Nascimento’s singular arrival, while maintaining an image as timeless and definitive as the music presented here.

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Endnotes:

  1. “Bridges” is probably one of Nascimento’s most widely covered compositions, eliciting tender readings on record by Cannonball Adderley, Tamba 4’s only recently-issued California Soul, Luiz Eça, on his post-Tamba 4 album Brazil 70, and even Tony Bennett. ↩︎
  2. “Catavento” was later covered by Dave Grusin on his 1977 album One of a Kind. In 1969, Grusin also arranged the Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 cover of Nascimento’s “Vera Cruz,” called “Empty Faces.” ↩︎
  3. Turner, Pete The Color of Jazz (Rizzolli: New York), 2006, p. 40. ↩︎