Recorded March 9 and 14, 1966, but it was only released in 1994 on the collection Bassey - The EMI/UA Years 1959 - 1979.
 

Background

This song was originally written in Portuguese by Antonio Carlos Jobim and the poet Vinícius de Moraes. In 1963 the great tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, who was known as "The Sound", made an album "Getz/Gilberto" with Antonio Carlos Jobim and Joao Gilberto. For the song "The Girl From Ipanema", Astrud Gilberto was added to the team at the last minute, though he had never sung professionally before, but it was mainly this song which made the album Getz's biggest seller. Norman Gimbel wrote the English-language adaptation of that song. The song became a classic all around the world, and has been interpreted by many artists, including such fine names like: Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, Petula Clark, Frank Sinatra, and of course, Shirley Bassey.

Read about Norman Gimbel in Killing Me Softly With His Song.
 

Antonio Carlos Jobim

The famous Brazilian jazz pianist, guitarist, singer and composer Antonio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim contributed many songs to the jazz repertoire. Because of his musical style and his international fame he even tends to symbolize his country in the eyes of the rest of the world. In 1958, the then-unknown Brazilian singer Joao Gilberto recorded some of Jobim's songs, which had the effect of launching the phenomenon known as Bossa Nova. Jobim's breakthrough outside Brazil occurred in 1962 when Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd scored a surprise hit with his tune "Desafinado" - and later that year, he and several other Brazilian musicians were invited to participate in a Carnegie Hall showcase. Fuelled by Jobim's songs, the Bossa Nova became an international fad. He's among the great songwriters of the last century, mainly in the jazz scene.
 

Antonio Carlos Jobim By Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide

It has been said that Antonio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim was the George Gershwin of Brazil; and there is a solid ring of truth in that, for both contributed large bodies of songs to the jazz repertoire, both expanded their reach into the concert hall, and both tend to symbolize their countries in the eyes of the rest of the world. With their gracefully urbane, sensuously aching melodies and harmonies, Jobim's songs gave jazz musicians in the 1960s a quiet, strikingly original alternative to their traditional Tin Pan Alley source.
Jobim's roots were always planted firmly in jazz; the records of Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Barney Kessel and other West Coast jazz musicians made an enormous impact upon him in the 1950s. But he also claimed that the French impressionist composer Claude Debussy had a decisive influence upon his harmonies, and the Brazilian samba gave his music a uniquely exotic rhythmic underpinning. As a pianist, he usually kept things simple and melodically to the point with a touch that reminds some of Claude Thornhill, but some of his records show that he could also stretch out when given room. His guitar was limited mostly to gentle strumming of the syncopated rhythms, and he sang in a modest, slightly hoarse yet often hauntingly emotional manner.

Born in the Tijuca neighborhood of Rio, Jobim originally was headed for a career as an architect. Yet by the time he turned 20, the lure of music was too powerful, and so he started playing piano in nightclubs and working in recording studios. He made his first record in 1954 backing singer Bill Farr as the leader of "Tom and His Band" (Tom was Jobim's lifelong nickname), and he first found fame in 1956 when he teamed up with poet Vinícius de Moraes to provide part of the score for a play called Orfeo do Carnaval (later made into the famous film Black Orpheus). In 1958, the then-unknown Brazilian singer João Gilberto recorded some of Jobim's songs, which had the effect of launching the phenomenon known as bossa nova. Jobim's breakthrough outside Brazil occurred in 1962 when Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd scored a surprise hit with his tune "Desafinado" — and later that year, he and several other Brazilian musicians were invited to participate in a Carnegie Hall showcase. Fueled by Jobim's songs, the bossa nova became an international fad, and jazz musicians jumped on the bandwagon recording album after album of bossa novas until the trend ran out of commercial steam in the late '60s.

Jobim himself preferred the recording studios to touring, making several lovely albums of his music as a pianist, guitarist and singer for Verve, Warner Bros., Discovery, A&M, CTI, and MCA in the '60s and '70s, and Verve again in the last decade of his life. Early on, he started collaborating with arranger/conductor Claus Ogerman, whose subtle, caressing, occasionally moody charts gave his records a haunting ambience. When Brazilian music was in its American eclipse after the '60s, a victim of overexposure and the burgeoning rock revolution, Jobim retreated more into the background, concentrating much energy upon film and TV scores in Brazil. But by 1985, as the idea of world music and a second Brazilian wave gathered steam, Jobim started touring again with a group containing his second wife Ana Lontra, his son Paulo, daughter Elizabeth and various musician friends. At the time of his final concerts in Brazil in September 1993 and at Carnegie Hall in April 1994 (both available on Verve), Jobim at last was receiving the universal recognition he deserved, and a plethora of tribute albums and concerts followed in the wake of his sudden death in New York City of heart failure. Jobim's reputation as one of the great songwriters of the century is now secure, nowhere more so than on the jazz scene where every other set seems to contain at least one bossa nova.

Review text © All Music Guide
 

Lyrics

Tall and tan and young and handsome
The boy from Ipanema goes walking
And when he passes, each girl he passes goes aaah

When he walks, he's like a samba
That swings so cool and sways so gentle
That when he passes, each girl he passes goes aaah

Ooh, but I watch him so sadly
How can I tell him I love him
Yes, I would give my heart gladly
But each day, when he walks to the sea
He looks straight ahead, not at me

Tall, and tan, and young, and handsome
The boy from Ipanema goes walking
And when he passes, I smile
But he doesn't see

And when he passes, each girl he passes goes aaah
And when he passes, each girl he passes goes aaah

Ooh, but I watch him so sadly
How can I tell him I love him
Yes, I would give my heart gladly
But each day, when he walks to the sea
He looks straight ahead, not at me

Tall, and tan, and young, and handsome
The boy from Ipanema goes walking
And when he passes, I smile
But he doesn't see

No, he doesn't see
Oh, poor little me
Why can't it be me
I wish ...