1. Asa Branca (Luiz Gonzaga/Humberto Teixeira)
  2. L’amore Dice Ciao (from Femina Ridens) (Armando Trovaioli/Giancarlo Guardagassi)
  3. Penha (Walter Wanderley)
  4. One of The Nicer Things (Jimmy Webb)
  5. Proton, Electron, Neutron (Marcos Valle/Paulo Sérgio Valle)
  6. 5:30 Plane (Jimmy Webb)
  7. Soulful Strut (Am I the Same Girl) (Eugene Record/Sonny Sanders)
  8. Moondreams (O Sonho) (Egberto Gismonto/Jay Livingston/Ray Evans)
  9. Jackie, All (Eumir Deodato)
  10. Mirror of Love (Eumir Deodato/Judy Spencer)

Walter Wanderley – organ, electric harpsichord (except 04, 09)
Jose Marino, Richard Davis, George Duvivier – bass
João Palma – drums
Lulu Ferreira, Airto Moreira – percussion
Bernie Glow – trumpet, flugelhorn
Marvin Stamm – flugelhorn
Danny Bank, Hubert Laws, Romeo Penque, Jerome Richardson, Joe Soldo – flute
Harold Coletta, Richard Dickler, Theodore Israel, Archie Levin, David Mankovitz, Warren Tekula, Emanuel Vardi, Harry Zaratzian – viola
Flora Purim, Linda November, Stella Stevens, Susan Manchester – vocal (02, 06, 07, 10)

Produced by Creed Taylor

Arranged by Walter Wanderley and Eumir Deodato

Originally issued as A&M SP 3022
              also issued as SUEÑOS DE LUNA (A&M HDAS 371-42 [Spain])

Recorded on March 11 (02), 12 (03, 05, 07) and 13 (01, 04, 06, 08-10), 1969, at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

02 published by Screen Gems-EMI Music, Inc. (BMI)
04 and 06 published by Universal Polygram International Publishing, Inc. (ASCAP)
05 published by Ipanema Music Corporation (ASCAP)
07 published by Unichappell Music, Inc./Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. (BMI)
08 published by Jay Livingston Music, Inc./St, Angelo Music/Group 88 Music (ASCAP)
09 published by Almo Music Corporation (ASCAP)
10 published by Songs of Universal, Inc.  (BMI)

(P) 1969

Moondreams, Walter Wanderley’s sequel to When It Was Done, is a terrific addition to the Brazilian organist’s discography. Wanderley’s last album for the label is a typically well-balanced set of first-rate Brazilian songs and bossa-fied pop themes.

The first song recorded for the album was Armando Trovaioli’s tricky “L’Amore Dice Ciao,” from the kinky 1969 Italian thriller Femina Ridens. In the original, Trovaioli, who started out as a jazz pianist and used jazz inflections in many of his film scores, sets organ counterpoints that sound as though the order was filled by Walter Wanderley himself. For his version, Wanderley again allows the vocalists to hum the melody while he counters instead on electric harpsichord, making Trovajoli’s version sound more Wanderleyesque than Wanderley.

Hereafter, the program revisits much of the same group of composers that made When It Was Done a success, including Luiz Gonzaga, Jimmy Webb and Eumir Deodato. This time Webb gets two features: the lovely “One of the Nicer Things,” from a 1968 single released by Webb himself, and “5:30 Plane,”1 from a 1968 single by Webb’s little-known studio assemblage Picardy.

Deodato contributes the melodic “Mirror of Love,” and a song that should have become much better known, “Jackie, All.” According to producer, journalist and CTI expert Arnaldo DeSouteiro, the lyrical “Jackie, All” was written for singer Jackie Cain (1928-2014),2 of the husband-wife duo Jackie and Roy, who Creed Taylor recorded at ABC-Paramount, Verve and, later on, CTI. Wanderley delivers a most enchanting performance here, eliciting all the cool sophisticated charm of the lady herself. “Jackie, All” was issued as the B-side to the album’s single, a cover of Young-Holt Unlimited’s million-selling hit “Soulful Strut,” but that song’s over-saturation – it was literally the sound of ’69 – probably kept DJs from flipping the record to hear a more hit-worthy performance (the tunes with vocals, “5:30 Plane” and “Mirror of Love,” would have also made better single choices). The album’s producer was so entranced by “Jackie, All,” that he insisted George Benson record it for Tell It Like It Is, where it is among that uneven album’s highlights and, again, the B-side to one of that album’s singles, “My Woman’s Good to Me.”

Wanderley, as ever, reflects on songs by such fellow Brazilians as Marcos Valle, whose “Proton, Electron, Neutron,” was first heard on the composer’s 1968 album Viola Enluarada, and Egberto Gismonti, whose “O Sonho,” a.k.a. “Moondreams,” was part of his 1969 solo debut on Elenco Records. But surely one of the album’s great highlights is the compelling “Pehna,” an uncredited song that was likely improvised in the studio. “Penha” sounds remarkably composed, though, much like a riff tune perfected over many performances or even a source cue from a film score. Along with “Asa Branca,”3 “One of the Nicer Things” and “Jackie, All,” “Penha” all make this a much better than average bossa-nova album.

Wanderley’s performance throughout marks this album, too, as one of his better efforts, but it attracted absolutely no attention at the time. Like a long-running play that had run its course, Moondreams now sounds like something of a swan song for the bossa nova. With rock in the ascendant and the emergence of “soft rock” and singer/songwriter radio formats, the once popular Brazilian fad had clearly passed. Even Creed Taylor, who helmed many of the genre’s best-known recordings, bid bossa nova adieu with this album. Taylor would continue to work with Brazilian artists, but in formats that tended to veer closer to the jazz of his other works.

Moondream’s lack of success may have also contributed to A&M declining to release Tamba 4’s final A$M/CTI album, scheduled as A&M SP 3021 (since issued on LP as California Soul). For his part, Walter Wanderley went on to help found the group The Carnival, featuring several former members of Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, while the following year issuing The Return of the Original on Canyon Records, featuring his original trio with bassist Jose Marino and drummer Claudio Slon.

Wanderley remained in America, though it is said he never learned to speak English, residing for the rest of his life in San Francisco. During this time, he toured Mexico and played many hotels, but he largely fell into relative obscurity. After releasing several albums on the GNP Crescendo label in the early eighties, Walter Wanderley died of cancer on September 4, 1986, his music and his recorded legacy all but forgotten.

He was only 54 years old. Happily, though, Wanderley’s music was rediscovered and appreciated anew during the Lounge Music craze of the late nineties and, today, many fans consider Wanderley’s A&M/CTI albums among his very best.

About the cover: “The Phoenix” (1964 – Libya): Walter Wanderley’s second and final A&M/CTI album returns to Sam Antupit’s original design for the first time since Summertime (SP 3015). The dynamic image on view here is a double exposure (the flames and the moon are shot separately) from a series Pete Turner shot while on assignment for Standard Oil in Libya (the cover to Hubert Laws’ 1972 CTI album Morning Star comes from the same shoot). In Turner’s original, the moon is on the photo’s left side and a bird-like flame is on the right. Creed Taylor wanted the moon on the right side of the image so it would appear on the front of the gatefold. To accommodate, Turner used an altogether different image – losing the bird-like flame and making the moon appear as if it’s about to be engulfed by the flames.

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Endnotes:

  1. Early drafts of the album cover suggest that “5:30 Plane” was originally scheduled to be the album’s title. ↩︎
  2. Arnaldo DeSouteiro, liner notes to A Trip to Brazil Vol. 3: Back to Bossa (Boutique 069 710-2, 2002). ↩︎
  3. “Asa Branca” was written in 1947 and has become a Brazilian standard, covered by many, including Elis Regina, Baden Powell, Caetano Veloso, The Winter Consort, Herbie Mann, Sergio Mendes, Sivuca, Gilberto Gil and Elaine Elias. David Byrne featured a cover of the song by Gonzaguinha (composer Gonzaga’s son) on his compilation Brazil Classics 3 (1991) and has since contributed lyrics and vocals to a version by Forro in the Dark, featured on their album Bonfires of São João (2006). ↩︎