The Girl From Ipanema

Classic 1960s Bossa Nova, recorded just after the genre was grafted into American Jazz.
Antonio Carlos Jobim who was practically the inventor of Bossa Nova, wrote the song, and plays piano on this recording. Joao Gilberto, the co-creator of Bossa Nova plays guitar and sings in Portuguese on the track.

Joao's then wife Astrud Gilberto joins with a superb chorus with her under-stated trademark of vibrato-less latin sexy sound, in English. Then we get choruses from Stan Getz who takes the piece to the end. Getz played with superb feeling for the Latin jazz fusion without trying to stamp too much pure American jazz onto it. So it was a respectful mix of the two separate worlds.

There was some ill feeling on the part of the Brazillian musicians in the years after Bossa Nova, as they felt the purity of their national music heritage was being "sold out" to American commercial interests. Maybe it did and probably because it lent a little on the Pop Music world for popularity but even so the genre has lasted superbly, and is considered a key part of the evolution of jazz. In fact, the album Getz/Gilberto won album of the year in 1965, and was the final jazz album to receive this award until Herbie Hancock's Joni Mitchell tribute in 2008. (Exceptions for vocal jazz winners, including Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Norah Jones).