Songfacts®:

• Brazilian born songwriter Antonio Carlos Jobim, best known for "The Girl From Ipanema," provided many contributions to jazz music. In fact, a number of his songs became standards, often played in the jazz clubs of his time. He co-wrote this song with Vinicius de Moraes, another Brazilian-born music man.
  
  Jobim was born to parents who were educators, and favored their son studying architecture. Luckily for the jazz world, Jobim's uncle's talent lay with music, and Jobim obviously inherited that skill set, which became apparent after his mother invested in a piano for the family home and he began taking lessons.
• The mountain known as Corcovado ("The Hunchback") is a real place in Rio de Janeiro. The imposing statue of Cristo Redentor ("Christ the Redeemer") sits majestically atop the mountain, giving its 2,329-foot height an additional 125 feet. Weighing in at 635 long tons, the soapstone-and-concrete statue's welcoming arms stretch almost 97 feet across. It is the third largest statue of Christ in the world. Construction of the statue took nine years to complete. It is considered one of the New Seven Wonders of the world and can be seen in many Hollywood movies and music videos. It can also be seen in person, as it is open to tourists. But be prepared for lines; there is always a long wait to a steep climb before you are up close and personal to the Redeemer.
• Jobim is credited with co-creating the bossa nova style, based on samba rhythms with subtle shades of a harmonic coloring drawn from jazz. Bossa nova means "new wave," and it swept the world by way of the soundtrack to a film called Orfeu Negro (or "Black Orpheus"), which was a screen adaptation of a play Jobim co-wrote with Vinicius de Moraes called Orfeu da Conceicção.
• Stan Getz is the American-born sax player known as "The Sound," due to the wispy melodic tone of his singing style. Getz recorded this song with Astrud Gilberto, wife of João Gilberto. What began as a musical partnership between Getz and Astrud became a romance in the mid-'60s after she divorced João. Astrud Gilberto is the singer who brought "The Girl From Ipanema" to life on the same album as this song.