1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 106. Astrud Gilberto – Beach Samba (1967)

 

Back when I was listening to Getz/Gilberto I noted that the best tracks were the ones where Astrud Gilberto was singing. Now we get a whole album of her. Will it be like when you find that your favourite sweet from a selection box is available solo, but somehow it just isn’t the same without the others to highlight it?

Fortunately not, in my opinion. It’s all very bouyant and bouncy, mostly samba and bossa nova based, part from the fun march Parade. The title track, Beach Samba, has Gilberto la-la-ing along to the music rather than singing words, and to me wouldn’t be out of place (nor would the whole album) in the soundtrack of a film, say, a romantic comedy caper set in San Tropez starring Peter Sellers and Audrey Hepburn. Hepburn’s a jewel thief, and Sellers plays two roles – a shy awkward Englishman who gets mixed up in Hepburn’s attempts to steal a diamond and they end up together at the end, and a suave and haughty rich Frenchman who owns the diamond. You thought my Sinatra/Loren heist movie was specific....

But, well, that’s what the album is like. Sunny and frothy, with a very cute duet at the end with her son Marcelo on the song You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice. I note from the Wikipedia entry that this was not a particularly highly rated album of hers, so I wonder why it was chosen instead of others, also what they might be like since this is good. It’s nice to have a solo female artist again, although it’s only been five albums of the boys (feels more somehow).

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