Duke Ellington was in his early 60s when he made the wonderful Afro Bossa for Frank Sinatra’s then-young Reprise label in 1963. Brazil’s Bossa Nova—a wistful, cosmopolitan domestication of the samba with cool jazz harmonies—was taking the music world by storm, but the wave hadn’t yet crested. Duke was always interested in staying current, but he never threw himself into trend without assimilating them into his unique sound-world. I doubt his fans anticipated Ellington would make a romantic, swaying Bossa record that sounded like Stan Getz’s contemporaneous smash-hit “Desafinado,” but he didn’t do anything like that.
What he and his writing companion Billy Strayhorn did was something better: in my opinion, Afro Bossa is his finest collection of songs and arrangements in the LP era. One of the sonic staples of Ellingtonia had always been his ‘exotica’ tunes—like 1941’s “Bakiff,” which relied on the violin of Ray Nance. Nance appears as a soloist on Afro Bossa’s “Sempre Amore” but, rather than evoke darkness and mystery, the East European vibrato is replaced by a soundscape that is warm, playful and joyful.
The rest of Afro Bossa is like that, too, as beautiful melodies and arrangements float by. "Absinthe” is the tune from the record that became something like a standard, and it might be Strayhorn’s finest moment. Duke used to introduce “Afro Bossa” in concert as a “gutbucket bolero,” which is absolutely fitting. But there’s not a track that’s less than genius or compelling on the whole set. It goes without saying that this is one of my Desert Island albums—and if you hear a single Ellington record, you could do far worse than this one. Enjoy.
Great deep dive on a genuine classic....