Mrs Kartoshka...

It was back in 1986 when Mrs Kartoshka was a high school student and an active member of Komsomol that she was selected as the model for this fantastic poster:

Antonio Carlos Jobim - Verve Jazz Masters...

Antonio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim (aka Tom Jobim or Antonio Carlos Jobim -1927-1994) was a giant of Brazilian music who has been hailed as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was central to bringing Brazilian music to a global audience and many of his compositions have become jazz standards. His works are almost ubiquitous- it seems that his name appears somewhere in the credits of just about any bossa nova or easy listening LP that you pick up! Of course, I’m exaggerating here, but the worldwide popularity of what is now instantly recognizable as Brazilian music owes a great deal to the canon of this remarkable gentleman.
By the way- if you’re off to Rio for the World Cup (2014) or the Olympic Games (2016) you will notice that The Rio de Janeiro international airport is named in his honour.

This LP, which features contributions from Stan Getz, Elis Regina, The Stan Getz Joao Gilberto Quintet, Astrud Gilberto and the Nelson Riddle orchestra, as well as performances by Jobim himself, is the closest you can get to a satisfactory anthology of his work on one record. Link:http://rapidshare.com/files/290869425/Antonio_Carlos_Jobim.rar

Françoise Hardy, bonitinha mas sofisticada…

I make no secret of the fact that, second to Mrs Kartoshka, I consider Mlle. Hardy to be the paradigm of female beauty.
Here she is on the cover of a Brazilian magazine from September 1964:



Check out this site for more of the same... http://www.all-over-the-world.com/FrancoiseHardy/magaz.shtml

And here, from 1968, is Françoise with Comment Te Dire Adieu.

Goalkeeper...

So, when considering the footballing greats, why not choose a goalkeeper with the knack of scoring goals?
There is a widely held belief that all goalkeepers are mad. There is also a theory that they are, at heart, frustrated outfield players.
Yashin would come out of the box to sweep up behind his defenders, Schmeichel would go up for corners, Higuita would join his outfield colleagues, sometimes with disastrous consequences, Ramón ‘El Loco’ Quiroga was equally rash in his excursions from the penalty area, but Chilavert…

As well as being solid between the sticks, Paraguayan José Luis Félix Chilavert González also had a reputation for banging them in. he was a free kick specialist as well as a regular penalty taker. Consequently he has a record 62 career goals, a goal every eight games.
Chilavert was also known for his eccentricity and at times fiery temper; during a qualifying game for the 2002 World Cup, he spat on Brazil's Roberto Carlos. He also angered the Paraguayan government by refusing to take part in the Copa America of 1999, as he claimed the funding would be better used for education.
Chilavert played most of his football in Argentina with Vélez Sársfield, helping them win the Argentine championship four times as well as the Copa Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup, both in 1994
He was voted World Goalkeeper of the Year by the IFFHS in 1995, 1997, and 1998.
In 1996 he was named South American player of the year- the only goalkeeper to win this accolade.

FIFA named Chilavert on the France '98 tournament All Star Squad.

1999, he became the first goalkeeper to score a hat-trick in the history of football, while playing for Vélez against Ferro Carril Oeste, scoring all three goals through penalties. He also scored a memorable free-kick from behind the half-way line against River Plate.
He has 74 international caps for Paraguay and an impressive 8 international goals

Domingo

This is the loveliest record in the Kartoshka vault…


Released in 1967, Domingo (Sunday) was the album debut of both Caetano Veloso (b.1942) and Gal Costa (b.1945). In 1965 Costa had recorded a duet with Veloso’s sister, Maria Bethânia, as well as an EP, Maria da Graça (her given names) , but this was Veloso’s first record. Veloso (his actual family name, Velloso appears on the cover of this record, but he has used the single 'l' variant from then on) went on to take a leading role in the development of Tropicalismo, but Domingo is a subdued work in the Bossa Nova style. Unsurprisingly Veloso’s musical idol was Joao Gilberto.
A former student of philosophy, Veloso is a political activist who was imprisoned and exiled by Brazil’s military dictatorship, and has been described as The Bob Dylan of Brazil (although he can sing and play).
Link: http://http//rapidshare.com/files/289036638/Gal_Costa_Caetano_Veloso_Domingo.rar

Winter...

Here in the northern hemisphere winter is creeping up on us. When I feel that chill in the air and notice that it's still dark when the old alarm clock rings there is one thing that consoles me. I know that Mrs Kartoshka will soon be reaching for her kniting needles...

Luiz Bonfá - Black Orpheus Impressions

Luiz Bonfá (1922 - 2001) was a Brazilian guitarist and composer who reached a global audience via his association with Marcel Camus' legendary film Orfeu Negro (1959).
Bonfá was essentially an exponent samba-canção style that predated the arrival of the more refined subdued bossa nova style. When Camus' film and artists such as Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd did much to bring Brazilian popular music to the attention of the world, Bonfá became a highly visible ambassador of Brazilian music in the United States , where he lived from the early 1960s until 1975. He was on the bill of the famous 1962 Bossa Nova concert at New York's Carnegie Hall (coming soon!).

On this LP, recorded in 1968, we have the epitome of 1960’s easy listening.
Personnel:
Luiz Bonfá on guitar, vocal
Eumir Deodato on piano, organ
Ron Carter on bass
Dom Um Romão on drums
Marvin Stamm on trumpet
Maria Helena Toledo on vocal

Link:http://rapidshare.com/files/287510365/Luiz_Bonfa-Black_Orpheus_Impression.rar
There is a really good Bonfá discography at this site: http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/Bonfa/

Cassettes...

What a world that was.
Warbling, fuzzy music, flimsy cases.
Joao Kartoshka has lost count of the number of ‘tapes’ that he has had over the years- all lost now, of course, gradually consigned to the garbage as they turned up in drawers or in the backs of cupboards. A record- now you’d never throw a record in the trash, would you? Regardless of how damaged it was it always seemed to retain some inherent worth as an object- but a cassette. Even the pre recorded ones seemed destined for a short life- the ghastly miniscule sleeve art, unreadable text, the discouraging loose shuck of the spools in the casing and the very fragility of the ribbon of magnetic tape itself. When I form a mental picture of a cassette it is unlabelled, lying discarded on the floor of a dirty car.
And of course the cassette players, from these early surreal toothy pianos to the silver ghetto blasters of the nineties, always with their promises of superior sound. It is tempting to condemn the cassette as ultimately being music packaged for people who did not have much space in their lives for music, whose tastes were fleetingly transient, and who just didn’t care about quality…
On the other hand cassettes might be viewed as the great populist format, giving us our first entree into music piracy- home taping, large collections created at low cost, mass production and distribution of material, easily portable. For sharing. And of course, a means of recording demos without access to a studio. In other words, despite their failings when it came to quality and durability, indispensible.

The Mini Cooper S- Cultural Icon.

Designed for British Motor Corporation by Sir Alec Issigonis, the Mini was developed in response to a fuel shortage caused by the 1956 Suez Crisis.
Minis were produced by the BMC and its successors from 1959 until 2000. An icon of the 1960s, its revolutionary design influenced a generation of car-makers, and was voted the second only to the Ford Model T. as most influential car of the 20th Century.

The Mini Cooper S went into production in 1961 when Sir Alec’s friend John Cooper, owner of the Cooper Car Company and designer and builder of Formula One and rally cars, saw the potential of the Mini for competition.
The Mini Cooper S earned acclaim with Monte Carlo Rally victories in 1964, 1965 and 1967
Rally great Paddy Hopkirk (1933-) is particularly associated with the golden era of the Cooper. Alongside Henry Liddon he won the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally in a Mini Cooper S , the most recent incidence of an all-British crew winning the event.
Hopkirk also enjoyed some success in Australia.He drove for the BMC Works Team in the annual Bathurst 500 race for standard production cars. He drove at Bathurst in a Morris Cooper S from 1965-1967, obtaining a best result of 6th outright and 3rd in class in the 1965 Armstrong 500.

The Mini's iconic status owes much to Peter Collinson’s classic movie The Italian Job (1969), in which 3 Mini Cooper Ss provide the escape route for the gold, able to navigating the gridlocked Turin traffic in spectacularly unconventional ways. It could have been a very different story, however, as despite the publicity the film would undoubtedly give to the Mini, the BMC, were reluctant to commit to the project, providing only a token fleet of Minis. The production company had to buy the remaining number needed for filming. Italian manufacturer Fiat, however recognized the commercial potential of the film and offered the production team as many super-charged Fiat cars as they needed, along with several sports cars and a cash lump sum of $50,000. The producers turned down the offer because it would have meant replacing the Minis with Fiats, and the rest, as they say…

Jazz Samba

Now this is seriously cool!
Released on the Verve label in 1962, Jazz Samba was the first major bossa-nova album on the American jazz scene. It is possibly the biggest selling jazz LP ever.
Recorded at All Souls Unitarian Church, Washington, DC on 13 February 1962:
Bass-Keter Betts, Gene (Joe) Byrd
Drums- Buddy Deppenschmidt, Bill Reichenbach
Tenor sax-Stan Getz
Guitar- Charlie Byrd
Featured composers: Antonio Carlos Jobim, Newton Mendonça, Charlie Byrd Jayme Silva, Neuza Teixeira,Baden Powell, Billy Blanco, Ary Barroso.



The track Desafinado won Getz the Grammy for Best Jazz Performance of 1963, and the 7” 45 rpm issue is here also.

Link:http://rapidshare.com/files/286041628/Getz_Byrd_MP3.rar

Гунди

During the 'Cold War' era the interest in footballers from 'behind the Iron Curtain' was limited. Yashin of The Soviet Union was internationally renowned, the Hungarians of the early 1950's ( some of whom , notably Puskas, fled the uprising and moved to the west) were admired.
Following impressive displays against Benfica in the 1966 European Cup, Georgi Asparuhov (1943 – 1971) of Bulgaria actually attracted attempts from 'western' clubs (Benfica included) to sign him. It is understood that these overtures were scotched by the Bulgarian Government.
Known as Gundi, Asparuhov played for Levski Sofia from 1960 to 1961 and 1964 to 1971, and for Botev Plovdiv from 1961 to 1963. He played 245 matches and scored 150 goals in the Bulgarian first division. He represented Bulgaria 50 times (and at 3 World Cup Finals) scoring 19 goals. He was awarded The Order of Labour.
Asparuhov was killed in a car crash in June 1971, and his funeral brought crowds estimated at 500,000 to the streets of Sofia. The Levski stadium is now named in his honour.
For a study in finishing see the goal that he scored against England at Wembley in 1968- it's on You Tube.

Kasparov vs. Karpov updates...

Keep up to date with the match in Valencia here:

Edmundo Ros and his Orchestra

When I called this blog Where Bossa Nova is King I knew that sooner or later I would have to explain that my musical tastes reach far beyond those delightful rhythms produced by Brazilian musicians during that new wave era. We have already had Big Beat, Baile Funk and Ye Ye Music, but generally speaking it is 'Latin American Music' that is my passion. It's a broad term, I know, embracing the musical genres of several diverse cultures. Less talk Joao, more music.
Here is Edmundo Ros:



This delightful gentleman is now almost 100 years old. He was born in Trinidad to a Venezuelan mother and a Scottish father. Some of the images conjured up by the songs may belong to the era before diversity and political correctness, but what a sound!



FORTY songs here!
Link:http://rapidshare.com/files/283836148/Edmundo_Ros_and_his_Orchestra.rar

Travelling...

I'm not going to post any holiday snaps here, but just take a look at this elegant gentleman:


Joao Kartoshka wishes that he could say that he had cut such a figure as he dragged himself sweatily through airports and railway stations.
If wishes were horses we would all be riders, my friends...