On this day, March 16th, 1970, Antonio Carlos Jobim started recording his last great albums for Creed Taylor. This essentially brought to an end a 7-year partnership that resulted in numerous awards including but not limited to the 1964 Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto’s version of The Girl From Ipanema, which won the GRAMMY for Record Of The Year and Getz/Gilberto winning the GRAMMY award for Album of the Year, a first for a jazz album.
Eumir Deodato had arranged, and the musicians that included longtime Taylor artists like Urbie Green, Ron Carter, as well as relative newcomers like Airto Moreira, Hubert Laws, with Jobim, would record some 20 tracks on March 16th, April 23rd, 24th, and 29th. Strings and Horns would be overdubbed aka added on May 8th, 20th, 22nd.
The end result would be two albums produced by Creed Taylor, one, Stone Flower, would be released on CTI. The other, Tide, would be released on A&M but not with the normal CTI accoutrements, no CTI logo, no signature on the labels.
According to Jazz Producer, and CTI historian Arnaldo DeSouteiro
[Jobim] referred to “Stone Flower” as one of his favorite albums ever. “I think that it still sounds very modern”, Jobim told me proudly when we met for the last time, in October 1994,
Arnaldo DeSouteiro, writing for Doug Payne Sound Insights, June 2000
Both Doug and Arnaldo agree that Taylor used the best tracks on Stone Flower. For me, Tide, still has a great, and fairly enjoyable set of tracks. What do you think? 50-year later…
TO READ
Antonio Carlos Jobim: Stone Flower [Written by Arnaldo DeSouteiro for Doug Payne Sound Insights.]
TO LISTEN
Stone Flower [CTI Records 40th Anniversary Edition via music.youtube(free)]
Tide [Verve By Request reissue, includes 4x bonus tracks via music.youtube(free)]