Your Sunday Sinatra: “The Girl from Ipanema” – Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim

Sinatra’s cover of the landmark 1962 Bossa Nova song from the album “Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim”

Reward yourself with three minutes and nineteen seconds to let Frank Sinatra and Anonio Carlos Jobim remind you of why Sundays were invented with the woozy, relaxed swing of “The Girl from Ipanema,” embedded below.

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Tv Food and Drink: Podcast #1 Featuring Sammy Davis Jr, Ann-Margret and Frank Sinatra

I know… you’ve been asking yourself for over two years now… “What does Gary Green actually sound like? Could his voice possibly be as masculine and virile-sounding as I’ve always imagined??”

Well, your curiosity is about to be satisfied. Please enjoy my debut podcast. This was truly my very first attempt at something I’ve wanted to tackle for a long, long time. As it progresses, I hope to involve all of my regular visitors into the conversation via phone interview, so all us food/drink/tv bloggers can connect to one another on a more personal level!

And because it wouldn’t be a Gary Green/Tv Food and Drink Production without a game show element, there’s, of course, a giveaway element. If you know the answer to the trivia question I ask mid-way through the podcast, and you’re the first person to e-mail me at TvFoodAndDrink@gmail.com, there are two inaugural podcast prizes on their way to your doorstep!

Thanks for taking a listen!

Listening To: Sway – Dean Martin

“Sway” is the English version of “Quién Será”, a 1953 Latin pop song with a mambo beat written by Mexican composer and bandleader Pablo Beltrán Ruiz. In 1954 the English lyrics were written by Norman Gimbel and originally recorded by Dean Martin for Capitol. The song has been recorded and remixed by many artists including Bobby Rydell, Julie London, Jennifer Lopez, The Pussycat Dolls, Michael Buble and even Bjork, but the Dean Martin version is in my opinion, impossible to top.

Listening To: “Cry Me a River” – Julie London

It’s not too often you hear a song that’s capable of casually tossing off the word “plebeian,” but “Cry Me a River,” does just that.

cry_me_a_river.mp3

Written by Arthur Hamilton and originally recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, the song became Julie London’s biggest hit ever after being included in the 1956 film The Girl Can’t Help It starring Jayne Mansfield and Tom Ewell. Ewell plays an alcoholic press agent hired to promote Mansfield’s singing career based on his past (ficticious) success with real-life singer London.

Julie appears in the film as a serenading vision to an intoxicated Ewell, and makes it very clear where the film’s wardrobe budget went. The two minute parade of glam 1950s fashions is reason enough to send this flick up to the top of your Netflix queue.

By the way, did people routinely keep their booze in their kitchen cabinets during the 1950s? Is Tom just loading up on the cooking sherry? It’s not the first time I’ve seen the liquor stashed there in movies from this era. What exactly is going on?

Check out Julie London performing “Cry Me a River” from the film below.

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Señor Verde’s Slow Cooked Montezuma Chicken (Music by Sergio Mendes and ‘Brasil 66!)

For those of you out there who’ve been looking for that perfect dish to serve alongside a healthy dose of Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 on your iPod, you’ve come to the right post.

Show of hands, please?

How many of you out there don’t even own any Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66?  Another show of hands, please?

For shame.

What is the fun of a meal this colorful, vibrant and bursting with flavor if you don’t serve it up with music to match its rich, kaleidoscopic, south of the border beauty?

Fear not.  I’m not hear to pass judgment.  I’m here to help.

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Listening To: “From Russia with Love” – John Barry

A good ninety percent of my time spent in the kitchen is accompanied by the music from five time Oscar winner, John Barry.  In fact, as I type these words, the music from the Fort Knox raid scene in Goldfinger is pumping through my living room.

Barry’s first two Oscar wins were for Best Original Score and Best Original Song, both from the 1966 film, Born Free.  That was followed by three more wins for Best Score with The Lion in Winter (1968), Out of Africa (1985) and Dances with Wolves (1990).  Additionally, Barry provided the score for nearly a hundred other films, including Midnight Cowboy, Somewhere in Time, Body Heat, The Cotton Club, Peggy Sue Got Married and Chaplin.

Most importantly (to me anyway), Barry scored eleven of the James Bond films and defined the musical style that still dominates the 007 series to this day.  Although Barry is not credited with wrtiting the “James Bond Theme” itself, he claims that it was he, in fact, who penned it when the producers found the original arrangement by Monty Norman unsatisfactory.  And while Norman has won multiple libel suits over the years upholding his claim on the theme, no composer is more closely associated with the Bond film series than John Barry.

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Listening To: “The Girl from Ipanema” – Stan Getz, João Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes, Astrud Gilberto

“The Girl from Ipanema”  (“Garota de Ipanema”) was written in 1962 by Antonio Carlos Jobim with original Portuguese lyrics by poet Vinicius de Moraes. The song became famous worldwide with its inclusion on the 1964 landmark Bossa Nova album Getz/Gilberto. Jobim originally composed the music at his home in the seaside Ipanema distritc of Rio De Janeiro. The photo above is of the girl who inspired the song, Heloísa Pinheiro.

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Listening To: “One For My Baby” – Frank Sinatra

Though I have never found myself sitting at the end of a line of empty tavern stools, hunched over a bourbon and rocks with a tilted fedora, regretting broken love, Frank Sinatra’s “One for My Baby” from the Only the Lonely album makes me wonder if I’m missing something.  Never has a pained heart sounded so damn good.

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