The Girl From Ipanema Soundtrack

Astrud Gilberto, the winsome naïf whose girlish yet sultry vocals captivated the world on the hit "The Girl from Ipanema," earned her own contract with Verve from its success and recorded throughout the last half of the '60s. Although her material wavered in quality, she was usually paired with excellent arrangers such as Gil Evans, Claus Ogerman, and Antonio Carlos Jobim himself. The Gold compilation is a two-disc set that includes 36 tracks, a good portion of everything she recorded between 1962 and 1969 (plus a pair of tracks from a 1987 comeback album). The first disc is by far the strongest of the two, including her pair of vocals for the Getz/Gilberto album as well as her early masterpieces with Jobim and Gil Evans (plus her bubbly pop album co-billed with organist Walter Wanderley).

Like Nico, Astrud Gilberto's everywoman voiced has always had a polarizing effect on critics and fans alike. While her take on bossa nova is less than reverent and decidedly lightweight, the warmth and approachability she brings to each performance is stunning. Verve's lovingly compiled - and blissfully affordable - Astrud Gilberto's Finest Hour is as solid a collection of her heady mixture of samba, jazz and pop as you're likely to find. Twenty songs, including the classic "Girl From Ipanema," wash in like waves from the warmest of oceans, carrying with them the soft, reverb-drenched soundtrack to summer. If the tropical heat of "Berimbau," the lazy and lonely pulse of Burt Bacharach's "Trains and Boats and Planes" and the upbeat swing of "Wish Me a Rainbow" don't instantly take the drudgery of your day away, then consider yourself hopelessly bitter.

German two CD compilation packaged in a digipak with 20 page booklet.
One of the all-time great tenor saxophonists, Stan Getz was known as "The Sound" because he had one of the most beautiful tones ever heard. Getz, whose main early influence was Lester Young, grew to be a major influence himself, and to his credit he never stopped evolving…