Based on the success of the preceding collaboration between the great Brazilian composer Tom Jobim, (the international airport in his native Rio de Janeiro is named after him), and Sinatra, which stayed on the Billboard chart for 28 weeks, peaking at #19 in April ’67, this follow up was made.
The cover art was a shot of Frank leaning on the back of a Greyhound bus, taken from the same mid-February '69 photo session which produced the artwork for the albums My Way and A Man Alone.
The LP reached the acetate stage and a limited number of 8-track tape editions were quickly fixed up and released to market. This recording was never commercially released in any other format.
A call to the office from Sinatra himself and a three-word message to the person on the Reprise end of the line: “Kill the album.”
Sinatra didn’t like the cover, and especially didn’t like how he sounds on some of the songs—too strained, too detached, not in charge of the moment. All the arguments in defense of the album are rebuffed by Sinatra—he even (rightly) complained that the time constraints on the 8-track version force the editing of the song “Wave,” which ends side one, into two parts where the tape runs out, with the second part beginning when the tape reverses.
A recall was issued by Warner in the form of a memo ordering the destruction of all 3,500 of the 8-track cassettes that had been manufactured for release. Warner sent this memo to all retailers and distributors of the unsold copies, and even the sold ones!
There are fewer than FIVE copies of the 8-track release known to still exist, and an auction way back in 2006 achieved a record sum of $4550 for one surviving copy.
Acetates or test pressings for the proposed LP are reportedly so scarce that the owner of one such rarity told Goldmine Magazine in a 1991 article that he wouldn't part with his for less than $5,000 even then.
Sinatra's album sales had slumped and his commercial dynasty was slipping, eventually leading to his retirement in 1971. In short, the ten songs that made up this ill-fated second Sinatra-Jobim effort never actually saw release. The recordings were shelved. The project aborted.
Seven tracks from this aborted session eventually made their way onto side one of the Sinatra and Company album in 1971. Three of the Jobim songs which Frank was reportedly unhappy with, "Off Key“, "Song Of The Sabia“, and "Bonita“, remained unreleased.
https://www.discogs.com/Frank-Sinatra-With-Antonio-Carlos-Jobim-Sinatra-Jobim/master/1248696?fbclid=IwAR07NdnhfPlF9_wylpCsUMeLSznsjP6E_aHRRPd-59AMJEJ_B0u01uXUp4s
"they went for the tape-measure blasts in Jobim’s portfolio, starting off the album with a prodigious shot in the form of “The Girl from Ipanema,” the song that put Jobim on the map in the U.S. in 1963, when his collaboration with João Gilberto (and Gilberto’s wife, Astrud, whose breathy, coquettish reading of the lyrics ranks with the ultimate moments in recorded vocal seduction) set off a bossa nova craze in these parts.
Just as Astrud sang from a specifically female point of view, with no small hint of irony and relish in describing the unattainable Girl’s allure and distracting effect on the male populace, so does Sinatra become the man inexorably drawn to the Girl, all the while recognizing the futility of his pursuit.
Jobim replicates his vocal on the original, and his acoustic guitar punctuations evoke wonderful memories of the 1963 classic, but Sinatra takes it somewhere else as he expresses the growing frustration of being ignored.
You can hear that frustration simmering when he breaks up the rhythm into a staccato “Tall. Tan. Young. Lovely.” litany as the song winds down, and lifts his voice hopefully on the word “smile” in “when she passes I smile…” before returning to a somber, “…but she doesn’t see”—then repeats variations on the phrase as Jobim shadows him, singing in Portuguese, until Sinatra gets to the heart of the matter, improvising, “She doesn’t see me,” to put the final hurt on the lament.
True to his style, Sinatra is approaching this timeless tune, definitively done in its original version, with the intent of putting his stamp on it by making it personal, not by trying to conjure the spirit of Astrud, or competing with her, or attempting to one-up her. It’s a measure of the respect he has for her interpretation that he takes his to a place no one else had ventured, and makes it work—so much so that if there is a choice between cueing up the Getz/Gilberto version or the Sinatra/Jobim version, it would be a difficult call, as both stand apart as simply great performances, perfect in all dimensions."
http://toddsturntable.blogspot.com/2018/04/lp-artwork-sinatra-jobim-frank-sinatra.html
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