Back from São Paulo Oktober 2001 Aus der Serie Meine Lieblingsplatte Heute: Walter Wanderley: Samba é samba Odeon BR-XLD10.637, 1963 Brasil
Obwohl Walter Wanderly der lounge-organ-hero der 90er war, kamen doch nur relativ wenige Reissues seiner alten Aufnahmen auf den Markt, und noch weniger fanden ihren Weg nach Europa. Heute gibt es hierzulande nur ein paar Sampler, nur das 1966 auf dem amerikanischen Jazzlabel erschienene Rain Forest ist als einzelnes Album als CD zu haben. Die in den frühen 60ern in Brasilien erschienen Platten sind dagegen heute gesuchte Sammlerstücke. Das 1963 erschienene Samba é Samba zeigt Wanderely als Meister des leichten Tons, ohne dass er je in Gefahr geriete, in die seichten Untiefen des easy-listening zu geraten. Mit äusserst feinem Geschmack und unaufdringlichem, doch dabei absolut unwiederstehlichem Swing interpretiert er hier einige Samba-Perlen, die LP ist ein Paradebeispiel für zurückhaltende Eleganz und dabei zwanglose Präsenz. aus: All Music Guide, by Richard S. Ginell A Brazilian organist/composer who stumbled upon a gold mine in the 1960s, Walter Wanderley has been resurrected posthumously in the 1990s almost as a camp figure, a purveyor of plastic lounge music for a cynical young generation. Yet his sound on the organ, generated by a crisp, lightweight, staccato attack, can be mistaken for no one else's - and his choice of material showed much good taste, particularly when exploring his countrymen' s songs. Although his most popular records contained only a minimum of melodic jazz improvisation, he could stretch out when he wanted to. Wanderley started playing the piano at age 5, taking a year of theory at 12, and well before he was out of his teens, he moved to São Paulo and got a recording contract. Juxtaposing American hits and Afro-Cuban dance music, he built a following in Brazil during the 1950s, and by the early-'60s, he was immersed in the emerging bossa nova field, recording with Joao Gilberto in 1961 and on his own. Encouraged by Tony Bennett, among others, Wanderley finally took off for New York in 1966, where Creed Taylor recorded him for Verve. His first album, Rain Forest, yielded a smooth-sailing Top 30 hit single, "Summer Samba," peaking at No. 26 and proving that bossa nova was far from a spent force in 1966. Settling in Los Angeles, Wanderley went on to make four more albums for Verve and two for A&M, and other material was issued on World Pacific, Philips, Tower and Canyon. He continued to work at a lower profile after bossa nova went into eclipse in the '70s - and by the time of his death from cancer in 1986, he was virtually a forgotten man. But when the lounge movement discovered him, the values of his out-of-print albums suddenly skyrocketed. Die beste Website zu Walter Wanderley ist http://www.bjbear71.com/Wanderley/main6.html