Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Floriano Bonfá

While this contains a wealth of music in which major bossa nova innovators Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá were involved in the mid-'50s, the packaging doesn't make it too easy to figure out exactly what their involvement was in all of these recordings. Running a generous 71 minutes, the 27 tracks -- all but one cut in 1955 and 1956 (the sole exception being a piece that Bonfá did as part of the Quitandinha Serenaders in 1948) -- were all written by Jobim and Bonfá, either on their own, together, or in collaboration with other composers. What the annotation doesn't specify is on which recordings Jobim and Bonfá actually appear, either together or singly. One would guess that they don't appear on every one, particularly as the billed performers on the tracks are not always Bonfá and/or Jobim, but also singers such as Dora Lopez, Dolores Duran, Sylvia Telles, Gilda de Barros, Dick Farney, and Roberto Paiva. It's really a various-artists compilation of mid-'50s material with strong ties to Bonfá and Jobim (particularly as composers), and not an actual Bonfá/Jobim record. All that noted, if you can accept the slim premise of the collection, it's a pretty good survey of Brazilian pop as the bossa nova style was just forming. Much of the material's quite lovely, in fact, although little of it is pure bossa nova, as the genre had yet to solidify. But there are plenty of beguiling tunes (both instrumental and vocal) where you can hear the mixture of languid sensuality, fluid guitar work, Brazilian melodies, jazz, samba, and pop starting to coagulate into something that would soon be recognizable as bossa nova. It might be a little more uneven in tone and sound quality than most compilations (though the fidelity is fairly good for the most part), but the range is admirable, from Hollywood-like ballads with strings to ones that put virtuosic guitar work or accordions at the forefront. Almost always, there's a sense of swinging, breezy romanticism. Note, however, that the tracks (recorded in 1956) from Orfeu da Conceicao (aka Orfus of the Carnival) included here are from the score of the play of that title -- not the score of the movie of that title, which was entirely different (and which means this CD does not include the classic song from that film score, "Manha de Carnaval").