In the record shops, racks full of bossa nova, authentic Brazilian style and also translated into American by American bands. Bossa nova at the White House. on stage in the East Room, Paul Winter and his sextet. They came back from a State Department tour of South America, playing a new beat. And that young arbiter of the American taste Jacqueline Kennedy gave it her cool blessing.

 

  In November 1962, Brazil's bossa hierarchy, including Gilberto, Jobim, Sergio Mendes and Carlos Lyra, were invited to New York's Carnegie Hall for a legendary concert in which they performed alongside Jazz musicians like Getz and Byrd. The result is remembered as something of a historic mess.   

 

  It was terrible. The guy who did the concert, sometimes they don't like me to tell the story, but the story/ was just like this. The guy, he didn't care about playing a concert for New Yorker people. He just wanted to do a recording session in a stage, so he spread microphones all over the stage and they called everybody from Brazil to do the concert. And everybody from New York, whoever wanted to play, would come up and play.

 

  So I went to Jobim and said, Let's go away, let's get you, me, Joao Gilberto and all the people that came here to do something serious, and let's go back home. And Jobim was very funny at that time. I'll never forget, because he said, Carlos, did you sign that paper? I said, Yes, I did sign. In here we cannot do this like in Brazil. In here they have electric chair! You know. And I understood that nobody was gonna go home. I said ok, let’s stay and do what we can.