In addition to the ~20 versions in the other dispatches shown further down on this page, here are a few entries that arrived overnight. They’ve just made the deadline for tonight’s exciting announcement of the results. Here we go:
Elis Regina, in a duet [as you’ll see] not with Tom Jobim but with a piano. Several people wrote in to mention this one:
A reader in Denmark makes an elegant point about this version:
You already featured the duet between Tom Jobim and Elis. But this version is a live version where the song retains the ‘60s aesthetics so closely tied to Bossa Nova. Personally I don’t think the addition of electric bass and keyboards adds to to Bossa Nova.
An analogy could be the attractiveness of a Don Draper in a black suit and a slim tie—Quintessentially sixties. And when you (come the seventies) add a checkered dressing coat and sideburns, the magic sort of disappears.
For me the lure of Bossa Nova sound is the power of the dream of a time before—before technology, before baby boomers and their new aesthetic—with the winning formula—the sound of a jazz combo.
I was born in the early part of the seventies, so for me it is also the mystery longing for a time I never knew.
And while this version is not a duet with Tom, at the end of the song we still get a duet, but this time it is between the duet Elis and the piano.
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The same reader in Denmark points us to what is apparently a rare, original, semi-garage-sounding very early rendition of the song, in Portuguese, by Jobim himself:
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A reader in the U.S. sends a link to another very early Jobim rendition, but this time singing what I believe to be his own English rendition of the lyrics.
Antonio Carlos Jobim - Waters of March from MXSXK on Vimeo.
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And to close the loop on the Regina/Jobim combos, here is another duet, this time with Jobim playing a flute:
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From the American jazz singer Mark Murphy:
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Thanks to all. Stay tuned for the results.