Derived from Brazil’s traditional samba music and the melodic cool jazz of the 1950s, bossa nova gained further exposure in the 1959 film “Black Orpheus,” with a soundtrack by Jobim and Luiz Bonfa. American jazz musicians soon adopted the new style, and in 1962 guitarist Charlie Byrd and saxophonist Stan Getz recorded “Jazz Samba” at Washington’s All Souls Unitarian Church. The album spent more than a year on the pop charts, reaching No. 1.

In 1963, Mr. Gilberto and Getz recorded an album, “Getz/Gilberto,” that was not released until a year later. The first voice heard on the album’s most famous song, Jobim’s The Girl From Ipanema, is that of Gilberto, singing de Moraes’s Portuguese lyrics while gently strumming his guitar.

He sets a tone of breezy, sun-dappled nonchalance that is picked up in an English-language verse sung by Gilberto’s wife at the time, Astrud Gilberto, and later by Getz’s soaring tenor saxophone. The song became an international hit. The “Getz/Gilberto” album sold more than 1 million copies and received several Grammys, including Album of the Year.

“João probably single-handedly did more for Antonio Carlos Jobim than any other artist could have done,” record producer Tommy LiPuma, who made an album with Gilberto in the 1970s, told the Los Angeles Times. “Nobody knew what to do with those songs like he knew what to do with them. I’ve never heard anybody do them as well or interpret them in the manner he has.”

A follow-up album, “Getz/Gilberto II,” was released in 1966, but Gilberto was never comfortable with the fame that came his way. He remained aloof, comfortable only when delving deep into his music in a private, almost reverential way. He sometimes stopped his performances if audience members were speaking or cancelled engagements if a club or concert hall was too noisy.