Former A&M Data government Derek Taylor captured the sound of Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66 in a number of well-chosen phrases in in his liner notes to the group’s first album for the label. Taylor wrote excitedly about its “delicately-mixed mix of pianistic jazz, delicate Latin nuances, cool minor chords, a danceable beat, mild laughter and a little bit intercourse.”
With all that going for it, how may it miss?
Mendes, who died on Thursday Sept. 5 at age 83, had the type of profession artists dream about. He had monumental success within the Sixties fronting Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, which had three prime 10 albums on the Billboard 200 and two prime 10 hits on the Billboard Scorching 100. However Mendes’ success didn’t finish when that group’s fortunes cooled. He loved periodic comebacks and durations of rediscovery for many years to return.
He had an enormous comeback in 1983 with the Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil energy ballad “By no means Gonna Let You Go,” which reached the highest 5 on the Scorching 100. He loved one other rediscovery in 2006 when his album Timeless, which he co-produced with will.i.am, reached No. 44 on the Billboard 200 and obtained a pair of Grammy nods. (The album featured such visitor artists as The Black Eyed Peas, Erykah Badu, Stevie Marvel, John Legend and Justin Timberlake.) In 2012, he was nominated for an Oscar for finest authentic music for a music he co-wrote for the movie Rio.
Mendes received a Grammy for finest world music album for his 1992 album Brasileiro and two Latin Grammys for finest Brazilian up to date pop album for Bom Tempo and Timeless. He obtained a lifetime achievement award from the Latin Recording Academy in 2005.
In 1966, Mendes got here to the eye of Herb Alpert, co-founder of A&M Data, and one of many top-selling album artists of the Sixties. Alpert produced the group’s first three albums, all of which went gold. Alpert additionally took Brasil ’66 on tour with him and even wrote an enthusiastic advice that appeared on the again cowl of their debut album: “One afternoon lately, a pal of mine known as to ask if I needed to listen to a brand new group. From the primary notice I used to be grinning like a child who’d simply discovered a brand new toy.” That album remained on the Billboard 200 for greater than two years (a rarity in these days) and was voted into the Grammy Corridor of Fame in 2012.
Alpert was a detailed pal of Mendes’ for almost 60 years. “Sergio Mendes, my brother from one other nation, handed away quietly and peacefully,” Alpert mentioned in a press release on Friday. “He was a real pal and intensely gifted musician who introduced Brazilian music in all its iterations to the complete world with magnificence and pleasure.” (One other bond between the 2 musicians: Lani Corridor, to whom Alpert has been married since 1973, was certainly one of two feminine singers in Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66.)
The group’s sound was cool, but sizzling, and brimming with confidence. Nonetheless, it was a brand new sound in 1966, so new that A&M took no possibilities and provided parenthetical phonetic spellings for 5 music titles on the album, together with “Mais Qu Nada (Ma-sh Kay Nada).” That pronunciation gambit could appear quaint in an period when Unhealthy Bunny offers acceptance speeches on general-audience award exhibits in Spanish, however, hey, child steps. One era paves the way in which for the following.
The group’s music was typically featured in “lounge music” compilations of pop songs from the Sixties, which have been a forerunner to immediately’s “yacht rock” collections of pop songs from the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties. Some folks, it appears, can solely get pleasure from pop music in the event that they’re being ironic about it. (However they’re listening, so I’ll take it.)
Listed below are 10 Mendes tracks which is able to remind you of his greatness or offer you a great place to start out in exploring this gifted and progressive musician.
I wrote the liner notes for a CD compilation, Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66-86, which was launched in 1987 amid A&M’s twenty fifth anniversary celebration. This piece attracts some materials from these notes.
