Stories of Standards: How Insensitive/Insensatz

Tune in to Jazz with Victor Cooper – weekdays from 6-9 a.m. MT – for Stories of Standards to hear our favorite versions of this song all week long starting Monday, August 20!

Stories of Standards is sponsored by ListenUp - If you love music, you’ll love ListenUp.

First released as “Insensatz” (“How Foolish”) in 1963 on Antonio Carlos Jobim‘s first album “The Composer of Desafinado, Plays”, “Insensatz” featured lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes. This album was added to the Latin Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001. Although Jobim played both piano and guitar on the album, the American producers focused on the guitar as representative of the Latin lover and didn’t allow him to play piano on his American tours. Norman Gimbel wrote English lyrics for the song under the title “How Insensitive”, which was first released on the 1964 album “Miss Peggy Lee in Love Again”. This version has been recorded by musicians ranging from Liberace to The Monkees, William Shatner, Iggy Pop and The 5th Dimension. In 2014 the Brazilian public voted to name the 2016 Summer Olympics Vinicius and the 2016 Summer Paralympics mascot Tom for the lyricist and composer, respectively.

Antonio Carlos Jobim (1927 – 1994) incorporated influences as diverse as 1940s big bands, 19th-century European classical music, and Brazilian samba. Jobim abandoned architectural school to play piano in a nightclub and write music, and made his first recording in 1954, using the name Tom Jobim, which is how he is still usually remembered in Brazil. His score for 1959’s “Black Orpheus” introduced much of the world to Bossa Nova, while several songs (including “Desafinado”) became hits in America within a short time. After returning to scoring Brazilian movies, he was touring with his own group at the time of his fatal heart attack in 1994.

Vinicius de Moraes (1913-1980) was an influential poet, lyricist, essayist, playwright, diplomat, composer and singer. His Orfeu da Conceição (“Orpheus of the Conception”) was produced as the play “Black Orpheus” in 1956, at which time he met Jobim.  The movie received the 1959 Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film, the Palme d’Or at Cannes and the 1960 British Academy Award. Although his alcoholism proved fatal in 1980.

Norman Gimbel (1927-present) started his musical career with publisher David Blum, went on to Broadway musicals and was introduced in 1963 to a group of Brazilian composers (including Antonio Carlos Jobim, Luiz Bonfa, Carlos Lyra and Baden Powell), and wrote lyrics for many of their songs. He also wrote English lyrics for the 1964 movie “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”. He has been active in writing music for movies and television since 1967.