Teasing the Korean

Whether some tried to dance to it or not, I don't know, but the name had never been used in relation to a specific dance. Brasil in the 1950s was on the verge of coming into its own as a major player on the world stage, but that never quite happened the way it was promised. Bossa was basically willed into existence by a group of young upper-class intellectual Cariocas. They were obsessed with Frank Sinatra and Stan Kenton, and wanted to create a music that was both inherently Brasilian and modern. Joao Gilberto is credited with coming up with the guitar pattern. It was intended as quiet, introspective, sophisticated music. Ruy Castro's book is worth reading.

Maybe the Brasilians didn't want to let this one slip past them, as they had with the Bossa Nova!

I have that LP. I remember it as being good, but it's been ages since I've spun it. Yeah, I don't hear any evidence that it caught on.

A ringing endorsement, from TTK's perspective!

Duck, You Sucker OST - Morricone The Swimmer OST - Marvin Hamlisch

I have tons of "real" Bossa from Brasil, US Bossa, and - possibly my favorite - international Bossa, especially the Italian stuff. I have only one album by Sacha as a leader, a vocal album on US RCA. So no, I have never heard that track. Thank you for sharing. While I do recognize 1964 as a a hard dividing line, due to the arrival of the Beatles and the accompanying destruction they wrought, many of my favorite LPs date from the late 1960s and early 1970s. I especially love the international jet set albums, in which Bossa is an important part of the mix. Key composers you find covered on those albums will include Jobim, Legrand, Mancini, Morricone, Bacharach, Tony Hatch, Jimmy Webb, and LenMac. In other words, all the songs that Astrud Gilberto and Claudine Longet covered.

This is an absolute masterpiece. And check out the Steve Marriott wail at around the 2:55 mark, and then again at the end of the tune!

The whole album is good, but there is a lot of variety. "Del's Theme" is the only track that sounds like this, and it is the money cut!

Thank you both! That track falls someplace between Jackie & Roy and Brasil '66!

Oh, that is killer, right up may alley, and I never heard of this! Does Dusty sell it? Is the whole album in this kind of a groove? By the mid- to late-1960s, US jazz/pop/EZ artists would sometimes do these moody tracks that had elements of Bossa and "Latin," not trying to be true to any one rhythmic approach, but nevertheless coming up with compelling grooves. I am obsessed with this track.

Do you mean Oscar/Hank in general or specifically with regard to Bossa? Back to Jungle Soul, that track is called "Ca' Purange" on some pressings, and on others it is called "Ca' Purange (Jungle Soul)." Record labels and publishers back then sometimes came up with the titles for instrumentals, so who knows. And I, too, am a snob, and I don't mind saying so!

I have no issues with that sort of thing conceptually, but the results will of course vary. And I'm all for anything that sounds like a spy soundtrack, spoof or not! Some Brasilian snobs will talk about the way that US jazz players put a little bit of swing into their Bossa, but I like the push and pull when that occurs.

There is track with that title on the album, but I don't know if Ammons titled it or if a label/publisher titled it.

To answer your question: I don't have an issue with US albums from the era calling the music Bossa if the musicians were at least making at attempt at playing something roughly in the Bossa solar system. Some of those records of course were better than others. What I may not have clarified in my first post was that two of those albums - the Barney Kessel and Gene Ammons - are not Bossa at all, not even attempts, not anything. (Check them out if you can find them.) Those albums may be OK or good or great on their own terms, but they are mislabeled. And I don't necessarily blame the musicians, as musicians in that era had little if any control over packaging and presentation. It was likely the record labels that slapped on the phrase.

I'll be more than delighted to discuss and debate exotica with you in a dedicated thread, if you wish to start one.

OK, but don't feel hurt if I don't engage on the topic here.

I'll be more than delighted to discuss and debate exotica with you in a dedicated thread, if you wish to start one.

Never cared for him, neither his singing nor his choice of material. Eydie was hit or miss, but I do like her earlier LPs that had more of a pseudo-jazz bent.

We agree!

Actually, Eydie's Blame It On the Bossa Nova LP is pretty good by 1963 US standards, save for the title track. They wisely placed the title track at the end of a side, making it very convenient to avoid. While there are no Brasilians that I could find on the album, the players are at least attempting to play something in the neighborhood of Bossa Nova, unlike on the title track. And while the LP does not feature Luiz Bonfa, it also does not have Steve Lawrence, which we may agree is a good thing.

I'll be more than delighted to discuss and debate exotica with you in a dedicated thread, if you wish to start one. This thread is about misuse of the phrase "Bossa Nova," and we are getting off topic.

Ha ha!

Exotica was a contrived genre that created a fantasy of a tropical paradise. It freely borrowed from jazz, classical, Latin, Brasilian, the South Seas, the Far East, Africa, South America, etc., and put them all in a blender, in varying ratios. It did not try to pass itself off as being any one of these. Similarly, mid-century cocktail culture was was using a spirit from the Caribbean - rum - to create cocktails linked to the south seas. Pure fantasy and imagination, not based in reality. By contrast, creating a contrived dance called the "Bossa Nova" in the US at a time when the Brasilian musical genre known as Bossa Nova was at is peak was entirely misleading. And your dance analogy was flawed. A starving person would not misinterpret the dance called the Mashed Potato as food, nor would a primatologist confuse the dance called The Monkey with the animal. By contrast, someone could reasonably confuse the music called Bossa Nova with the dance called the Bossa Nova. So, I consider there to be a huge difference between exotica as a genre and the Bossa Nova as a dance. YMMV.

Whatevs. My point is that the US "Bossa Nova" dance has zero to do with Brasilian Bossa, and that is a fact.

Whatevs. My point is that the US "Bossa Nova" dance has zero to do with Brasilian Bossa, and that is a fact.