(Bossa Nova) [LP] [16/44] Walter Wanderley Set - When It Was Done - 1969, FLAC (tracks)

Walter Wanderley moved over to A&M from Verve with producer Creed Taylor, whose influence dominates this heavily produced yet attractive album of mostly Brazilian material. The Wanderley sound is more carefully terraced than ever on this strikingly packaged album, edited and faded for easy airplay. Especially nice is Jobim's "Surfboard," a sleek miniature tone poem. Besides his usual subdued organ work, Wanderley spends almost as much time on the electric harpsichord, upon which he uses a more legato attack than on the organ, a curious reversal of each instrument's properties. He is not helped by the cottonball-textured vocals from a superfluous female trio, who figure most prominently on the two American tunes, Burt Bacharach's "Reach Out For Me" and Jimmy Webb's title track. A few of the usual CTI suspects turn up -- Hubert Laws on flute, Marvin Stamm on flugelhorn; Don Sebesky provides the overlush string backdrops, with other points in the arrangements entrusted to Eumir Deodato. A young Milton Nascimento makes a cameo appearance on "Open Your Arms," scatting a countermelody that he invented on the spot after awakening from a nap (no, it was jet lag, not a commentary on the session!).

Walter Wanderley - organ, electric harsichord
Joao Palma - drums
Jose Marina - bass
Lu Lu Ferreira - percussion
Marvin Stamm, John Glasel - flugelhorn
Lewis Eley, Harry Glickman, Gene Orloff, Raoul Poliakin, Max Pollikoff, Matthew Raimondi, Tosha Samaroff, Sylvan Shulman, Avram Weiss - violin
Harold Coletta, Harold Furmansky - viola
Charles McCracken, George Ricci - cello
Donald Ashworth, Hubert Laws - oboe, English horn, flute, piccolo
George Marge, Stan Webb - flute, piccolo
Gloria Agostini - harp
Anamaria Valle, Marilyn Jackson, Linda November, Milton Nascimento - vocals
Recorded at Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, NJ on December 10-12, 1968.