Light On Dark Water

If you weren't there, it may be difficult for you to grasp the effect that "The Girl From Ipanema" had on a young man of the mid-'60s. You needed only her voice to convince you that she was the girl from Ipanema, and to strike in you the deep chord of longing which the song describes and expresses. This was confirmed when you saw a picture of her. 

The album on which the song appeared, a collaboration between Stan Getz and João Gilberto called simply Getz/Gilberto, is a masterpiece which ought to be in every music lover's collection. The video below is the album version, not the hit single which was edited down to little more than half the five-minutes-plus of the album track, removing João's vocal and shortening Getz's solo.

The song would never have been the hit that it was without Astrud's vocal, which came about half-accidentally. She and João divorced a year or two after the album was recorded. She had a "relationship" with Getz and toured with him. She was mistreated and cheated financially by Getz, who was notoriously something of a monster.

Coincidentally, a little while before I read that story I was listening to Nick Cave's song "People Ain't No Good." There's way too much evidence of that. 

But Astrud Gilberto did go on to have a fairly successful musical career in her own right. I have a solo album of hers, The Shadow of Your Smile, recorded a few years after Getz/Gilberto. It's an LP, picked up at Goodwill or someplace when everybody was dumping their vinyl, and I don't think I've ever played it.