Astrud Gilberto, whose smooth and sexy voice in “Girl From Ipanema” (the English version of “Garota de Ipanema,” the first song she recorded) helped make Brazilian bossa nova a success in the United States in the 1960s, died on Monday. She was 83 years old.
Astrud enjoyed a four-decade career, recording albums with famous musicians such as Gil Evans, Stanley Turrentine, and James Last, as well as working with George Michael and others. But her biggest success came with “Garota de Ipanema,” written by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, with English lyrics by Norman Gimbel, which she sang with American jazz saxophonist Stan Getz.
When Astrud recorded this song, she was married to João Gilberto, the Brazilian singer and guitarist often referred to as the father of bossa nova. In 1963, the two traveled from Rio de Janeiro to New York, where he was to record a joint album with Getz, who had already released three records that blended jazz with samba and bossa nova.
It is unclear who had the idea to involve Astrud, an inexperienced singer, in the album, later released as “Getz/Gilberto.” Some believe it was producer Creed Taylor; others say it was Astrud herself. But the singer claimed it was her husband.
The version of the song featuring only Astrud’s voice was released in 1964. The record on which the song appeared reached number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and sold over a million copies. It won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year, and the album that contained it, which included another vocal track by Gilberto, won three Grammys, including Album of the Year. It was the first album by a jazz artist to receive this distinction and one of only two to do so. (River: The Joni Letters by Herbie Hancock, over 40 years later, was the second.)
“Garota de Ipanema” became one of the most covered songs in the history of pop music. It has appeared in over 50 films, many of them using the original Getz-Gilberto version.
Astrud Evangelina Weinert was born on March 29, 1940, in Bahia, the daughter of a German father, Fritz Weinert, a language teacher, and a Brazilian mother, Evangelina Weinert, also an educator.
When Astrud was a girl, her family moved to Rio. There, as a teenager, she befriended a group of young musicians who later became famous in Brazil, including singer Nara Leão and composer Roberto Menescal. She met João Gilberto when she was 19, and they married a few months later.
In addition to Marcelo Gilberto, her son from her first marriage to João Gilberto, Astrud leaves behind another son, Gregory Lasorsa, from her second marriage to Nicholas Lasorsa, which ended in divorce, and two granddaughters. Her two children are musicians who frequently worked with her. João Gilberto passed away in 2019.
Source: The New York Times