Elis & Tom
In 1974 the quintessential Brazilian vocalist Elis Regina invited the great Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim (also known as Tom) to join her on an album and the result was a thrilling musical ride. Recorded between February 22 and March 9 at MGM Studios in Los Angeles, the album simply titled “Elis & Tom” is one of the most enduring and celebrated recordings of Brazilian music in history.
So many songs on this much acclaimed intimate bossa nova recording just knock my socks off but the most indelible is the magical Elis Regina/Antonio Carlos Jobim duet on Águas de Março (Waters of March), the song many consider the greatest Brazilian song of all time. Composed in 1972 and inspired by a March rain storm, Águas de Março is a joyous Jobim bossa nova that unexpectedly became a global hit.
Jobim penned both the Portuguese and English lyrics for Águas de Março. The lyrics’ configuration is a kind of musical pointillism. Jobim designed a mosaic of seemingly unrelated images from ordinary everyday life. Small dots of color that taken together create a full blown image. All of it held in place by an instantly appealing bossa nova refrain, nearly every line of which begins with "It’s" . . .
A stick, a stone
It's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump
It's a little alone
It's a sliver of glass
It is life, it's the sun
It is night, it is death
It's a trap, it's a gun
The combined entity is more significant than its individual components. Jobim’s small dots of imagery blend into a fuller range of meaning. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Águas de Março can be interpreted as a metaphor for the immanence and transcendence of life, the passing moments of daily life as a continual, inevitable progression towards “the end of the road” and death . . . But Jobim’s song is also a parable acknowledging the beauty and wonder in life’s small things, a reminder that the events of our everyday world carries “the promise of life in your heart.” It is a work of inspired genius.
Elis’ husband at the time, pianist Cesar Camargo Mariano, wrote what became the song’s defining arrangement, a breezy, syncopated rhythm and gentle swing. Elis wanted the recording to sound off the cuff, spontaneous. To amplify the impromptu impression, Elis and Jobim are backed by just Jobim’s guitar and Mariano’s piano.
The economical arrangement perfectly matches the infectious Jobim motif. But what really stands out are the unfeigned expressions of delight and the genuine affection between Elis and Jobim as they toss lines back and forth.
The recording is centered on an exchange of short melodic call-and-response phrases repeated throughout the composition, sometimes slightly varied or transposed to a different pitch. The forward movement of this delicious musical pas de deux between Jobim and Elis is almost imperceptible as with little weight the song mounts in dynamics and intensity delivering short staccato bursts throughout before bringing the piece to an exultant conclusion.
Absolutely breathtaking.
It’s the genuineness of their performance that enables the transformation of Jobim’s song into a vividly memorable human story. They laugh, Jobim whistles, they sing word fragments -- “Esto, oco/Ouco, into” -- and we find ourselves enveloped in the immediacy of an emotional response. It’s a performance that oozes charm and wit. They are having a ball!
It’s match made in heaven by the musical gods. And it’s all captured on film. Effortlessly swinging to a samba rhythm this recording is the least conventional most conceptually daring of musical adventures. The remarkable rapport between the two artists inspires a performance that exudes pure joy. It’s a jubilant Brazilian celebration. I love that at the finish Jobim falls out overcome with laughter and exhaustion. Whew.
The musical meeting of Elis Regina and Jobim continues to reverberate with audiences. “Elis & Tom” achieved high-art status.
The album ranks very high for me as one of the all-time great vocal duet albums right up there with the masterful Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong recordings and the Ray Charles/Betty Carter duets, the wonderful June Christy and Stan Kenton duet album as well as the Bobby Darin and Johnny Mercer album
Águas de Março was used in 1985 by Coca-Cola as a centerpiece for a worldwide advertising campaign. It has been recorded by artists as diverse as Art Garfunkel, Susannah McCorkle, Sérgio Mendes, João Gilberto, Stan Getz . . . and Israeli singers Gidi Gov and Mika Karni even recorded a Hebrew version of the song.
I am an ardent admirer and a big aficionado of Elis Regina.
She was born Elis Regina Carvalho Costa on March 17, 1945 in Porto Alegre the capital city of the southernmost Brazilian state. Known professionally as Elis Regina she began her singing career at a young age performing locally. In her early teens she signed a record contract and moved to Rio de Janeiro.
By 1965 her languid, sensuous and whimsical voice on recordings and in television performances had made her wildly popular. This young, pocket-sized girl, with the close cropped slightly tousled hair and the disarming smile could really sing. Her audacious but utterly natural vocals had a distinctive quave . . . so expressive and rich in tone.
She was a leading figure in what was called “Música popular brasileira” (MPB) a form of Brazilian popular music that combined various bossa nova and samba styles with jazz and rock influences. She had a way of lending emotional integrity to the songs she sang . . . a kind of mystical transference of vulnerability and honest emotion from Regina to her audience. Her sincerity and depth can be felt and appreciated even if you don't speak Portuguese.
The soap opera of her story -- a life filled with visceral moods and emotions, passionate love and divorce, bouts with depression and drug addiction -- was lived in public.
Her sadness and longing liberated Elis’ creative faculty to convert personal sorrow into art. She had a gentle way with a simple love ballad that is wonderfully entrancing. Just listen to her expressive vocal performance of Eu preciso aprender a ser só.
On January 19, 1982 all of Brazil was shocked and stunned at the news that Elis Regina was found dead from a combination of alcohol and cocaine at the age of thirty-six. In an outpouring of national grief, over 100,000 grieving Brazilians lined the streets of her funeral cortege.
Elis Regina's voice is among the most loved in the history of Brazilian music. She is arguably the greatest singer in Brazilian history,
She remains as popular after death as she was in life.
The Art Garfunkel rendition of Águas de Março (Waters of March) appeared in the final scene and closing credits of one of my very favorite films -- Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s 2021 romantic comedy-drama “The Worst Person in the World.”