Jo�o Gilberto and Stan Getz's Getz/Gilberto

Most die-hard Brazilian music fans would agree that Getz/Gilberto, the iconic 1964 album featuring “The Girl From Ipanema,” is not the best bossa nova record. Yet we've all heard “The Girl from Ipanema” as background music in a thousand anodyne settings, from cocktail parties to telephone hold music. So how did Getz/Gilberto become the Brazilian album known around the world, crossing generational and demographic divides?

Bryan McCann traces the history and making of Getz/Gilberto as a musical collaboration between leading figure of bossa nova João Gilberto and Philadelphia-born and New York-raised cool jazz artist Stan Getz. Gilberto and Getz came together to combine a growing interest in bossa nova among North American jazz fans with a broader popular fashion of cool, cosmopolitan Latin chic. Yet in spite of the album's namesake, it was more than just Getz and Gilberto who propelled the album's international success. McCann elucidates the less-understood contributors (Astrud Gilberto's unrehearsed, English-language vocals; Creed Taylor's immaculate production; Olga Albizú's arresting, abstract-expressionist cover art) to show how a perfect balance of talents led to not just a great album, but a global pop sensation that still deserves to be taken seriously today.

33 1/3 Global, a series related to but independent from 33 1/3, takes the format of the original series of short, music-basedbooks and brings the focus to music throughout the world. With initial volumes focusing on Japanese and Brazilian music, the series will also include volumes on the popular music of Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more.