Was the first popular version of “Girl From Ipanema” sung by Sinatra?
The version that I always find on downloads has Stan Getz singing in Portugese and Astrud Gilberto singing in English.
But that makes the words backword from the way I remember hearing it the first time. The words are clearly “How can I tell her I love her?” But Astrud has to change it to “How can he tell her he loves her” etc.
So I’m sure the first popular version was sung by a man.
But I can’t tell which recordings came first, or which made the Charts.
If it wasn’t Sinatra, maybe it was Sergio Mendez or Antonio Jobim.
According to AMG, it was written by Carlos Jobim, Vinícius DeMoraes, and Norman Gimbel and has appeared on 346 releases by artists ranging from Louis Armstrong to Boy George. The earliest appears to be Stan Getz’ March 18-19, 1963 recording on the Getz/Gilberto album, which is also the most popular version. There are some 1962 references in the list of albums containing this song, but they all appear to be dates attributed to earlier work by Getz that appeared on the same albums.
If you couldn’t figure it out from the above information, AMG is to recorded music what IMDb is to film and TV.
And remember, just because Sinatra recorded it that way doesn’t make it the right way. He just did it his way.<ducks>
On a related note, the Girl From Ipanema is currently involved in a lawsuit with the family of the deceased songwriters, over whether or not she can name her jewelry store “Garota de Ipanema”.