Antonio Carlos Jobim: Stone Flower [ENDLESS HAPPINESS]

Why you'll love it

This stereo LP brings back one of Jobim's richest sets for Creed Taylor's CTI label. It reached No. 18 on Billboard's jazz albums chart in 1971.

This edition

• Stereo mix

About the album

Most people know Jobim as the man behind "The Girl from Ipanema." Stone Flower shows the deeper end of the pool. Recorded across the spring of 1970 at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, with Creed Taylor producing, it trades the breezy bossa nova of the early 60s for something moodier and more rhythmic, with samba and choro in the mix. It was his sixth studio album.

Eumir Deodato arranged and conducted, and plays guitar too. Ron Carter's bass and Airto Moreira's percussion keep things simmering under Jobim's piano and electric piano, while Hubert Laws on flute, Joe Farrell on soprano sax, Urbie Green on trombone and Harry Lookofsky on violin add colour. Ary Barroso's "Brazil" stretches past seven minutes, Jobim sings on "Brazil" and on "Sabiá," which carries lyrics by Chico Buarque, and "God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun" takes its title from Glauber Rocha's film.

Rudy Van Gelder's engineering gives every bit of percussion room to breathe. Put it on at dinner and your guests will assume you've been to Rio, and there's no need to correct them.

Also at Kops: more Antonio Carlos Jobim on vinyl · browse World

Tracklist

Listen

On Endless Happiness (cat# HE70006), a reissue of the 1970 album.