Antônio Carlos Jobim, music · Newton Mendonça, Portuguese lyrics · Jon Hendricks, English lyrics · Samba de Uma Nota Só, 1960
One Note Samba
Samba de Uma Nota Só, or One Note Samba, is a song by Antônio Carlos Jobim. Its melody keeps coming back to one repeated note while the underneath keep moving. João Gilberto recorded it first, in 1960, and Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd brought it to a wide audience.
Listen in this order
The path opens with Jobim playing in New York and with Herbie Mann in Rio, where Jobim sings. It moves to Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd's hit record and Coleman Hawkins on tenor saxophone, then a vocal trio, a vibraphone quartet with a guitarist and Ella Fitzgerald with Joe Pass, and ends with Eliane Elias's trio.
Jobim recorded this on The Composer of Desafinado, Plays, his first album under his own name, in New York on 9 and 10 May 1963. The album is all instrumental, and this track runs 2:14.
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Listen for
Jobim plays with a bass player and a drummer, and the whole tune is over in 2:14. Hear it through once, then listen for the one note the melody keeps coming back to.
Try it on your instrument
Play the first eight of the chart slowly, , , and and then the same four again, while you hum the melody. If those are new, hold just Dm7 and Cm7 and hum along.
Stan Getz and guitarist Charlie Byrd recorded Jazz Samba in a church hall in Washington, DC, on February 13, 1962. According to Wikipedia, the album gave this song its first wide audience and reached number one on the Billboard 200 in 1963.
Wide audience through Jazz Samba, 1962
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Listen for
Getz plays tenor saxophone and Byrd plays guitar, with bass and drums behind them. At 6:11 this version is much longer than the first two.
Try it on your instrument
Play the first 16 of the chart (the A and B strains) with the , then with the melody alone. When you improvise, start with the one repeated note and change only its rhythm.
“One Note Samba (Samba de Uma Nota Só)”, Desafinado
Tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins recorded this in New York on September 12, 1962, for his Impulse! album Desafinado. Manny Albam arranged the session, and Tommy Flanagan played piano.
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Listen for
Hawkins plays tenor saxophone, with a of piano, two guitars, bass and drums plus extra percussion. The track runs 6:01.
Try it on your instrument
Play the middle section of the chart, 17 to 24, slowly: , , , D♭maj7, , , , then and . If that is too much, play only the first two bars, E♭m7 and A♭7.
Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan recorded a live album at the Basin Street East club in New York, and Discogs dates the shows to September 6 to 8, 1962. Jon Hendricks, who wrote the song's English words, is one of the three singers.
English words by Jon Hendricks
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Listen for
Three singers lead, and one of them, Jon Hendricks, wrote the English words. This is a live recording from a New York club, and the track is three minutes long.
Try it on your instrument
Sing the melody on one syllable over the first eight of the chart, then try the first line of the English words from a published lead sheet.
Ella Fitzgerald and guitarist Joe Pass recorded Fitzgerald and Pass... Again for Pablo in sessions that ran from January 26 to February 8, 1976, in Los Angeles. Jon Hendricks is credited with the English words.
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Listen for
Only two musicians play here: Fitzgerald sings and Pass plays guitar. At just over five minutes it is longer than the Jobim versions.
Try it on your instrument
Play the of the first eight on any chord instrument and sing the melody to them, as Fitzgerald and Pass do here with voice and guitar alone.
Brazilian pianist Eliane Elias recorded Eliane Elias Plays Jobim in December 1989, and Blue Note released it in 1990. Eddie Gómez played bass, Jack DeJohnette drums and Naná Vasconcelos percussion.
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Listen for
Elias leads a piano trio with an added percussionist. The track runs 4:23.
Try it on your instrument
Play through the whole chart once at a slow tempo, and mark the middle section, which starts at bar 17, and the closing four bars, which end the tune on .
João Gilberto records the song in 1960. According to Wikipedia, it first reached a wide audience on Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd's Jazz Samba, and Jobim plays it himself in New York in 1963.
1970s
Ella Fitzgerald sings it with guitarist Joe Pass in early 1976, just the two of them, in Los Angeles.
1980s
Ella Fitzgerald returns to the song for her Jobim songbook album, recorded in 1980 and 1981. In December 1989 Eliane Elias records it with a piano trio and a percussionist.
More great versions
4 more, from 1960 to 1980. Tap a cover to play it here.
“Samba de Uma Nota Só”, O Amor, o Sorriso e a Flor
According to Wikipedia, João Gilberto first recorded the song in 1960 on this Odeon album, which opens with it. The Jobim Institute's catalog says the album was recorded in five days at the Odeon studio in Rio de Janeiro, with arrangements by Jobim.
“One Note Samba (Samba de Uma Nota Só)”, Ella Abraça Jobim: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Antonio Carlos Jobim Songbook
Ella Fitzgerald sang the song again on her Jobim songbook album, recorded at Group IV Studios in Hollywood in September 1980 and March 1981 and released in 1981.
The tune's layout, its keys and the chord chart, for anyone who wants to play along.
Show the form and chords
How the tune works
B♭ majorusual key
40 barsA · B · C · A · B form
B♭ major → D♭ major → B major → B♭ majorkey centers
A8 bars
B8 bars
C8 bars · bridge
A8 bars
B8 bars
B♭
D♭
B
B♭
The runs 40 in five 8-bar strains, which JazzStandards.com labels A, B, C, A and B. A plays a four-bar pattern twice: , , and , with the bass stepping down. B starts on , , and , then plays that pattern again, with Cm7 and B7♯11 sharing a bar, and settles on . C is the contrasting middle: , A♭7 and (two bars) lift the music to D♭, then , and move it to B, and a last bar of and leads back to B♭. The second A repeats the first. The last B opens the same way as the first and ends differently, sliding through , and Bmaj7 to B♭6. The usual is .