Tribute: Who was Astrud Gilberto, the Brazilian vocalist who didn’t get her due?

Astrud Gilberto, the Brazilian vocalist who passed away aged 83 this week, will be best remembered for taking Brazilian bossa nova to US shores with her vocals on 1964 classic The Girl From Ipanema. But the singer, producer and one-time actor’s influence goes beyond that singular song and genre. Her breathy, icy cool vocal style presaged the sophisti-pop singing of Sade and Everything But The Girl, and earned adoration from the likes of George Michael and Polish jazz-pop star Basia. Perhaps, her most enduring legacy is the grace and strength with which she dealt with an exploitative and misogynist music industry yet to come to terms with women’s liberation.

She was born as Astrud Evangelina Weinert in the Brazilian state of Bahia in 1940, to a German linguistics professor father and a Brazilian educator mother. Her father was a painter in his free time, and practically everyone on her mother’s side of the family could play an instrument. Young Astrud was also musically inclined, and in her teens she started hanging out with a gang of musician friends in Rio De Janeiro which included future pop star Nara Leão and her to-be husband João Gilberto, a pioneer of the newly emerging bossa nova genre.

Astrud and João married in 1959, just as the latter’s career was taking off. When he was invited to record with legendary American saxophonist Stan Getz in New York in 1963, Astrud tagged along, helping out as a studio translator. During the recording session for The Girl From Ipanema — written by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, with English lyrics by Norman Gimbel — producer Creed Taylor was scrambling to find someone to sing the English lyrics so he could call it a day. Someone — it’s not entirely clear who, though Astrud says it was her husband João — suggested that she do it. Astrud had already been singing privately to a small circle of musicians and friends, and though nervous, she agreed.

It was an inspired bit of happenstance. The music Getz and Gilberto were working on mixed slowed-down Brazilian samba rhythms and folk melodies with American pop and jazz, creating a new, urbane Brazilian music: bossa nova literally means “new style”. Astrud’s breathy voice, coolly detached yet still mysterious and evocative, was the perfect fit. A 1964 single featuring The Girl From Ipanema with only Astrud’s vocals on it became an instant smash hit, reaching the US Top 5 and the UK Top 30, and propelling the album it was off (called Getz/Gilberto) to become the top selling jazz record in history at the time. The song also won a Grammy for Song of the Year, and earned Astrud a nomination for Best Female Vocal Performance.

Getz and Taylor knew that they had something special on their hands when the recording session ended, all thanks to Astrud. But they conspired to ensure that she got none of the credits or royalties for the song, receiving just a paltry $120 as a day’s sessions fee for her iconic performance. According to Ruy Castro’s 2003 book Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World, João received $23,000 for the album while Getz pocketed most of a cool million, using it to buy a 23-room mansion in New York. The saxophonist had a reputation in the jazz scene as a bully and a somewhat shady character, but this was also not uncommon in a music industry that happily exploited anyone it could.

The song’s popularity made Astrud world famous, but it also heralded a tumultuous time for the singer. Her marriage with João fell apart, and she spent a difficult year on the road with Getz. The saxophonist had already started taking credit for discovering Astrud, dismissively calling her a “housewife”, which rankled the Brazilian singer. But she was naive, did not know the music industry and, perhaps, was wary of being too assertive for her rights, having grown up in a more conservative milieu. In later interviews, she would call the tour “tortuous”, and though we know no details, Getz’s pattern of bad behaviour towards the other women in his life is well documented.

She was also being being paid peanuts by the saxophonist, even as she dealt with rigorous touring and sexual objectification in the American press. But she did feature on five of the tracks on live album Getz Au Go Go, opening the door for a solo record deal with Verve Records. She made eight solo albums in the next six years for Verve, earning another Grammy nomination for best female vocal performance and working with luminaries like Gil Evans and Walter Wanderley. She also started writing her own songs, and fulfilled a personal dream on her 1977 album The Girl From Ipanema when she collaborated with idol Chet Baker on Far Away.

There were also a couple of film appearances, and recording work with Quincy Jones for the soundtrack to Sidney Lumet spy thriller The Deadly Affair (1961).

These records did not achieve the stratospheric levels of the 1964 single, but they were reviewed favourably and earned her a following of her own. But again, due to a combination of naivete and conflict avoidance, she often didn’t get all the credit and royalties she felt she deserved, especially for her production work. She was also often the target of barbed attacks in the music press back home in Brazil, where her success was considered “un-deserved” because she wasn’t a professional musician before that game-changing recording session (misogyny certainly played a part here).

Disillusionment meant that she stopped recording regularly in the 1980s, though there was an album with the James Last Orchestra. In 1996, she sang a duet with George Michael on AIDS charity song Desafinado and in 2002, she released her final album Jungle. She retired from public performances that same year, retreating to her home in Philadelphia. A newspaper report last year suggested that the years of ill-treatment by musical contemporaries and record labels had taken its toll, damaging “her trust in people”.

It’s tragic to think that a person whose talent touched millions around the world would spend her twilight years isolated and marinating in hurt. But there is also hope. In Astrud’s decades-long devotion to music and performance, despite the betrayals she suffered. In the grace with which she dealt with barbs and misogyny. And in the enduring memory of her music which, despite the best efforts of the likes of Getz and Taylor, will indelibly be associated with Astrud Gilberto.