“Far Away” – Astrud Gilberto & Chet Baker (1977)

As far as buried treasures go, “Far Away” is a real gem that deserves to be much better known than it is. Even fans of both artists are likely to be unfamiliar with this lovely, even moving performance. It’s the first – and only – time Astrud Gilberto (1940-2023) and Chet Baker (1929-1988) are known to have worked together.

The song appears on the Astrud Gilberto album That Girl From Ipanema (1977) – notice that’s “That” and not “The.” The swap references the song and not the singer, who is actually from Salvador in Bahia and not Ipanema. This is a record that scored a surprisingly wide release throughout the world: in Europe, Canada, Japan, South America and Latin America.

But it was released here in America on the relatively minor label, Image Records, which also issued records by TV talk-show host Mike Douglas and – surprisingly – singer Theresa Brewer, the wife of Impulse/Flying Dutchman producer Bob Thiele. This also means the record probably didn’t make it to too many stores outside of major cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

After 1985, this disc was issued many times on CD, under many different titles, but it didn’t get a CD release in the U.S. until 2004, when the budget label Synergy Entertainment put it out as The Girl From Ipanema – notice “That” is gone, as it is on many of the other CD reissues of the album.

“Far Away” was issued as a single at the time. But it was the flip-side to the disco-fied update to Gilberto’s best-known song, “The Girl from Ipanema,” arranged here by former MFSB member and Salsoul Orchestra founder Vincent Montana, Jr. (1928-2013) in a way that would have sounded perfect in any number of scenes on that era’s ABC-TV hit The Love Boat (1977-86).

Montana provided the same sort of thing to his production of the 1977 album Cuchi, Cuchi, by singer/actress Charo – who actually appeared on no less than 11 (!) episodes of the show. There’s little doubt that Montana was trying to make Gilberto relevant again, but digging through the past to give her currency (which actually worked a lot during this period).

But we’re not talking disco here. “Far Away” is an elegant, almost ethereal, ballad that has a heretofore unknown timelessness about it. The haunting melody was composed by Gilberto herself, while the lyrics were a likely collaboration between Gilberto and lyricist Hal Shaper (1931-2004).

Shaper was best known as the man who put English lyrics to an Italian melody that became known as “Softly, As I Leave You” – famously covered by both Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. He also provided lyrics to a number of themes from such films as The Go Between (1971), Papillon (1973) and the Italian cult classic Colt 38 Special Squad (1976). To my knowledge, this is Shaper and Gilberto’s only collaboration.

“Far Away” is one of three songs on That Girl From Ipanema that was arranged and conducted by Don Sebesky (1937-2023), best known for his work on the CTI records of Wes Montgomery, Freddie Hubbard, George Benson and many others.

Sebesky had previously worked on three of Astrud Gilberto’s Verve records and four albums by Chet Baker, recorded between 1974 and 1982. These sessions for Gilberto came about around the same time Sebesky was working on one of Baker’s few major-label releases, You Can’t Go Home Again (1977).

Sebesky opens the song with an obvious – and superbly well-curated – nod to the Joaquín Rodrigo classic “Concierto de Aranjuez,” a piece he had previously arranged for guitarist Jim Hall on the CTI classic Concierto (1975), which featured soloists Paul Desmond on alto sax as well as Chet Baker on trumpet. (To be fair, though, Sebesky had long had a thing for Spanish-inflected themes).

Notably present in Sebesky’s orchestral palette here are pianist Frank Owens, guitarists Gene Bertoncini and Jay Berliner, an unnamed harpist (probably Margaret Ross) as well as the great Ron Carter on bass, who beautifully provides the poetic waves that undergird this ostensibly doomed relationship.

It’s by no means the typical duet for a man and a woman to sing together.

Rather than celebrating the awakening of love or the joy of mutual desire, here a couple mourns the meaninglessness of it all “when love has died.” Several lines tell beautifully, but sadly, of a vacant (or vacated) domestic bliss: the way Gilberto plainly sings “And even though your hands could touch me if they tried” while Baker sings of the untouchable “way the ocean hugs the edges of the sky.”

What makes this performance so remarkable is the singers themselves. Neither was a trained vocalist (Baker was largely self-taught on trumpet as well¹), yet each established their own distinctive style, their own way of phrasing and both had a total lack of concern for any sort of pre-conceived notion of perfection.

Sure, both were known to go flat here and there, something that might have doomed other singers, but endeared both to many listeners otherwise. There was no overemoting or performative hyperbole here, making it all feel real, sincere and, well, frankly, moving – despite the really awful person Chet Baker was presented as in James Gavin’s intoxicating and beautifully-written biography Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker².

Whereas Gilberto’s performance here comes across as wistful, yet realistic – accepting the situation for what it is (“What more is there to say?”) – Baker’s plaintive delivery suggests a romantic idealism (“As close as we could be”) mixed with a certain level of delusional denialism (also “As close as we could be”). That this describes part of Baker’s personality (at least the G-rated version of it) goes to the depths of sincerity of his particular delivery.

If the trumpet intro on “Far Away” rekindles those early recriminations of Baker as a Miles Davis clone, the trumpeter’s brief solo and outro are pure late-period Chet Baker: sparse but mournful, relaxed yet dirge-like. This is the hopeless romantic and broken soul so many listeners heard in and loved about Chet Baker.

“Far Away” makes one wish there was more to Astrud Gilberto’s one-time collaboration with Chet Baker. There may well have been additional songs scheduled as duets – such as “We’ll Make Today Last Night Again” and “Wanting You,” the other two songs Sebesky arranged for the Gilberto record – but Baker may not have had it in him.

He was notorious for showing up – or roused and escorted to show up – to do the bare minimum, take the cash and go. In all likelihood, Baker’s part was done in one or two takes. He didn’t care about the work, he cared about the money. But what’s most remarkable about this is that he could pull off – with little obvious effort – such a beautiful, sincere-sounding performance as “Far Away.” This wasn’t the first or last time it would happen, but it’s worth noting when it does.

This bizarre magic is what entranced his fans, even during his declining years – which is, arguably, the bulk of his three-and-a-half decade career. But, let’s not forget, the real artistry of this song belongs solely to Astrud Gilberto, who – like far too many women of her generation – never got a fraction of the credit she so richly deserved.

Thank you, Astrud, for a beautifully meaningful song.

Endnotes:

1. While Chet Baker had a great following throughout Europe, he was a hero and an icon to Brazilian listeners, who worshipped his West Coast records of the early fifties. Those records – boasting Baker’s soft, slow and melodic trumpet playing and his cool, breezy singing style – went a long to inspiring the whole Bossa Nova movement of the early sixties (something he knew absolutely nothing about). Many of Bossa Nova’s originators, including Astrud Gilberto’s ex-husband, João Gilberto, were hugely influenced by Baker. It is not known, at least by me, what Ms. Gilberto thought about Baker or his influence. ↩︎
2. Perhaps not surprisingly, Gavin neither mentions “Far Away” in the book nor includes That Girl From Ipanema in the book’s discography. Either he knew nothing about the recording or there was nothing particularly notable about the recording of the song – which is itself somewhat surprising. ↩︎