1. Girl from Ipanema (Antonia Carlos Jobim/Vinicius de Moraes/Norman Gimbel)
  2. Carinhoso (Pedro Berrios/Carlos Braga/Alfredo De Rocha Vianna, Jr.)
  3. Tema Jazz – edit (Antonio Carlos Jobim)
  4. Sue Ann (A Bed of Flowers for Sue Ann) (Antonio Carlos Jobim)
  5. Remember (Cortegauy) Antonio Carlos Jobim)
  6. Tide (Antonio Carlos Jobim)
  7. Takatanga (Antonio Carlos Jobim)
  8. Caribe (Dax Rides) (Antonio Carlos Jobim)
  9. Rockanalia (Antonio Carlos Jobim)
    Bonus
  10. Tema Jazz – alt take
  11. Tide – alt take
  12. Tema Jazz – alt take
  13. Tema Jazz – master take in full

Antonio Carlos Jobim – piano, electric piano, guitar
Eumir Deodato – piano (01, 03-05, 10, 12, 13), guitar (02, 05, 08, 09)
Ron Carter – bass
João Palma – drums (except 02)
Airto Moreira – percussion (except 05)
Everaldo Ferreira – conga (05, 07, 09)
Burt Collins, Marvin Stamm – trumpet (01, 06, 08)
Urbie Green (except 02, 05, 07), Garnett Brown (01, 07) – trombone 
Ray Alonge, Joe De Angelis – French horn (01)
Jerry Dodgion – alto sax (01), flute
Joe Farrell – soprano sax (08), flute (except 02 and 08), bass flute (02, 08)
Hubert Laws, Romeo Penque, Hermeto Pascoal (03, 10, 12, 13)  – flute

Tracks 01, 04, 06, 08 add:
Frederick Buldrini, Paul Gershman, Emanuel Green, Harry Katzman, David Nadien, Max Polikoff, Matthew Raimondi – violin
Harry Lookofsky – tenor violin, concertmaster
Al Brown, Harold Coletta – viola
Charles McCracken, George Ricci – cello

Produced by Creed Taylor

Arranged and conducted by Deodato

Tracks 01-09: Originally issued as A&M SP 3031

Tracks 10-13: Originally issued on Verve 314 543 500-2

Recorded on March 16 and April 23, 24 and 29, 1970, at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Strings and horns overdubs recorded on May 8, 20 and 22, 1970.

01 published by Corcovado Music Corp./New Thunder Music Co./Songs of Universal, Inc. (BMI)
02 published by Mangione Filhos-cia Ltda. (ASCAP)
03, 06, 07, 09, 10, 11, 12 and 13 published by Corcovado Music Corp. (BMI)
04, 05 and 08 published by Sony/ATV Melody (BMI)

(P) 1970, 2000

As Antoni Carlos Jobim’s Wave was the first A&M/CTI album recorded, it’s perfectly fitting that the composer’s follow-up, Tide, should bookend the series as the label’s last recording and its final release. The album was recorded over several sessions during March, April and May of 1970 – months after Creed Taylor announced his independence from A&M – yielding enough material for Jobim to issue another full album, Stone Flower, on the newly independent CTI label. Chances are, A&M knew nothing about the CTI album until its August 1970 release and rushed to get Tide out by October, putting Jobim in the awkward position of competing against himself. It’s easily argued that Taylor took the stronger material for Stone Flower (the title track alone is one of Jobim’s most striking compositions), but what remains for Tide is hardly the stuff of leftovers or outtakes. Tide is no dud and by no means second-tier Jobim.

Like Wave, the album eschews Jobim’s vocals, allowing the listener to revel in the magic and the majesty of Jobim’s unique and mesmerizing compositional fortitude. The charts are handled with great sensitivity by Eumir Deodato, who had previously worked with Jobim on Love, Strings & Jobim (1966), the Garôta de Ipanema soundtrack (1967) and as arranger of Jobim’s score to the 1970 film The Adventurers (to which Deodato also contributed music).1 Deodato has the innate sensibility to give Jobim the foundation he needs and the space he wants. He’s also more a part of the front line, providing Jobim with piano or guitar accompaniment and letting his charts take (or follow) the leads Jobim sets. Unlike Claus Ogerman, who is more of an impressionist, Deodato is more of an expressionist. Both can be beautiful and both work well for Jobim.

Tide gets its title from a bewitching melody that is a variation or response to the better-known “Wave,” and orchestrated (nearly to a fault) to suggest an entirely different identity. Jobim states the melody on piano while overdubbing rhythm guitar support, masterfully guided along by bassist Ron Carter, whose singing lines also benefitted the earlier tune. The album opens, though, strangely enough, with Jobim’s best-known song, “Girl from Ipanema.” Coming some five years after it was an international hit – having become the second most recorded song of all time – it may strike some listeners as an odd backward glance, particularly since the bossa nova fad had long since fizzled out. But while Jobim played on the hit made famous by Stan Getz and João and Astrud Gilberto, he hadn’t previously played it on one of his own albums. One wonders whose idea it was (Stone Flower also includes the seemingly anachronistic “Brazil”) and what exactly Deodato’s appealing but Vegas-y treatment means to suggest. It remains, however, an intoxicating performance but differs from the 1965 hit in that Jobim strikes the keys as though the new girl is sexier and the waves are a bit more, umm, urgent.

Surprisingly, Jobim settles into his groove on the only tune which isn’t his, “Carinhoso,” a choro by composer, arranger and saxophonist Pixinguinha (Alfredo De Rocha Vianna, Jr.). Pixinguinha (1897-1973) was one of the earliest composers to mix traditional Brazilian music with jazz, and because of that, the 1930 release of “Carinhoso” was considered very controversial at the time. Jobim, who would go on to mix Brazilian music with jazz in his own way, honors Pixinguinha’s tune with a delicate and ultimately moving performance.

The tremendous “Tema Jazz” has the cinematic structure of “Stone Flower,” but is likely Jobim’s idea of a “blowing tune.” The melody alternates Jobim’s piano with flutes and Urbie Green’s trombone, while Carter and drummer João Palma ignite a fiery Hermeto Pascoal on flute. Even Jobim digs in with an especially crafty solo. “Sue Ann,” the first of three pieces here adapted from Jobim’s score to The Adventurers,2 finds both composer and arranger in their element, with Jobim adding brief electric piano flourishes. Jobim puts the electric piano out in front on “Takatanga” (while comping behind on guitar),3 urged on by Green’s complementary trombone counterpoint.

“Caribe” is, perhaps, arranger Deodato’s most commanding moment on the record, scoring Jobim’s engaging melody superbly and offering Joe Farrell unusually attractive spots on bass flute and soprano sax. Finally, the cleverly titled “Rockanalia” is more or less a jam tune that elicits some of Jobim’s most extroverted pianistics. It’s not exactly rock, but still it rocks. Soulful flutes add the horn line while Deodato comps on guitar and Jobim again offers effective electric-piano counterpoints.

Surprisingly, Tide and Stone Flower ended Jobim’s long relationship with Creed Taylor. But it is one the producer prizes highly and continues to takes great pride in. “Jobim was a genius beyond generations,” Taylor once said. “He singlehandedly put the melody there and the harmonies that made that whole time so appealing. He would sit at the piano or on the guitar, and he would work at a samba groove over and over until it finally clicked. Then we would start to record.”4 It is a collaboration that has resulted in some of the composer’s very best and best-known recordings. With the decline of bossa nova’s popularity, Jobim returned to Brazil, where he recorded often and remained extremely popular.

Sadly, Jobim’s American recordings remained few and far between, but yielded MCA’s Jobim (1973), Warner Bros.’ Urubu (1976) and Terra Brasilis (1980) and Verve’s Rio Revisited (1987). Only a few of Jobim’s Brazilian recordings garnered international release, but they include Passirim (1987) and the acclaimed Antonio Brasileiro (1994), released just three days after his death on December 8, 1994.

About the cover: “Corcovado” (1965 – Rio de Janeiro). Sam Antupit provides the standard frame, this time in a warm beige that contrasts magnificently with Pete Turner’s haunting image of the Cristo Redentor statue in Rio de Janeiro at dusk, shrouded by a tide of fog and mist. “This was yet another assignment for Holiday [magazine],” said Pete Turner. “I was sent to do a series of portraits of Brazilian artists. One day, I took a ride up into the hills where it could be incredibly misty: I just loved the mood it evoked.”5 Here again, the CTI logo is absent from the sleeve – and this time it’s missing from the label too.

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Endnotes:

  1. Eumir Deodato’s debut record, Inútil Paisagem-As Maiores Composições de Antonio Carlos Jobim (1964,) found the pianist and arranger exceptionally performing an entire Jobim program. Jobim himself, in the album’s appreciative liner notes, says “Eumir Deodato is not only the perfect engineer of bridges that every arranger should be, but also the creator and the poet that every arranger has to be.” ↩︎
  2. The Tide tracks derived from The Adventurers include “Sue Ann” (a.k.a. “A Bed of Flowers for Sue Ann”), “Remember” (a.k.a. “Cortegauy”) and “Caribe” (a.k.a. “Dax Rides”). Stone Flower also contains three tracks from the film: “Children’s Games” (a.k.a. “Double Rainbow”), “Amparo” (a.k.a. “Olha Maria”), “God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun” (a.k.a. “Bitter Victory”). ↩︎
  3. “Takatanga” was sampled by Jazzanova in 2002 for “L.O.V.E. and You & I,” which features a solo by vibraphonist David Friedman, who played on Hubert Laws’ early CTI records. ↩︎
  4. Creed Taylor, “For Producer Creed Taylor’s 85th Birthday, A 2005 Downbeat Article and a Pair of Interviews Conducted for it,” interview by Ted Panken, https://tedpanken.wordpress.com, May 13, 2014 (accessed 9/7/18). ↩︎
  5. Turner, Pete, The Color of Jazz (Rizzolli, New York), 2006, p. 49. ↩︎