Saturday nite Debbie Joe and I went to a party that was sort of a Latin American jam session. Enio played bossas (he's Brazillian and does the whole nylon string guitar singing and whistling bit to a tee), a Venezuelan lady sang and played the quatro, and there was Argentinian music as well.

It was so much fun. First of all a lot of times when I am playing in an ensemble I'm self conscious about eye contact, but the fact I couldn't understand the words and didn't know what chord was coming next seemed to obviate that problem, or maybe it was the beer, and then after awhile I began to guess what the lyrics might be about and that was really funny.

Here is "O morro não tem vez" (MP3, PDF page 1, PDF page 2) by Tom Jobim and Vinicius De Moraes. The performance is by Deodato from his 1964 debut solo album "Inutil Passagem", reissued as JSR 8482702 in 1998. Enio scanned the lead sheet from one of his library of Brazillian songbooks. I can almost play it on guitar! and the voicings are very cool.

This is a wonderfully catchy and simple tune that every jazzer should know so they don't have to allatime do the same three bossas.