Verve Jazz Masters 13

Antonio Carlos Jobim's entry in the exhaustive VERVE JAZZ MASTERS set of historical reissues is one of the best single-disc Jobim anthologies available. It's not got much in the way of historical range, since it stops in the mid-'60s, just before Jobim left Verve for Reprise and then A&M. However, since Jobim's Verve years were, in the minds of many, his career highpoint, VERVE JAZZ MASTERS 13 distills the best of his most artistically and commercially successful period. Nearly all of Jobim's greatest songs are here in their definitive versions, and the whole is sequenced thoughtfully, so that the disc has a logical and delightful flow. This is magnificent stuff, as well as being the birth of bossa nova. This disc is also available as part of the three-disc box VERVE JAZZ MASTERS: THE BOSSA NOVA STORY, alongside discs by Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz.