Because I’m not a boomer who came of age in the ‘60s, I neither fell for these cross-pollinated charmers as a swingin’ sophisticate nor first became aware of Brazilian music via the global smash — Stan Getz & João Gilberto’s ‘The Girl from Ipanema,’ with aloofly dreamy vocals from the late Astrud Gilberto — that put the beguiling sound of bossa nova on a wider musical map.
I remember these leafy lovelies from Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ‘66 and others like them strewn about my childhood home in the ‘70s, yet I don’t recall ever playing them before my folks dumped their vinyl collection altogether. Instead, what I didn’t learn about such slinky sounds from drumming in my high school jazz ensemble I became aware of while dating a girl I almost married at the dawn of the ‘90s.
She was crazy about Polish pop star Basia, who at the time was making a stateside impact with her biggest hit, ‘Cruising for Bruising.’ The accompanying album, ‘London Warsaw New York,’ had more than a few numbers in a Mendes manner, as did its predecessor (‘Time and Tide’) and superior follow-up (‘The Sweetest Illusion’). It was only after I heard those works that I found out Ms. Trzetrzelewska had once been a member of a UK ensemble calling itself Matt Bianco, whose discs were thick with synthed-up sambas when they weren’t mimicking Georgie Fame’s jazzy ‘Yeh Yeh’ vibe.
When my dad heard me singing along with some of the above he finally insisted: ‘You know … you really ought to listen to Brasil ‘66.’ Was he ever right about that!
I started with these two LPs — and tunes I’d subconsciously heard plenty of times over the years suddenly emerged like old flames, especially Jorge Ben’s eternal ‘Mais Que Nada,’ of which B66’s version is undeniably definitive. Plush takes on ‘Goin’ Out of My Head’ and ‘Day Tripper’ and Henry Mancini’s ‘Slow Hot Wind’ and Cole Porter’s ‘Night and Day’ drew me in further, though not as irresistibly as more authentically Brazilian pieces from Jobim like ‘Água de Beber’ (something else I’d learned from Basia) and ‘One Note Samba.’
‘One Note Samba’ was smartly paired on the group’s debut with ‘Spanish Fly,’ already a favorite doodle from Herb Alpert, who not only produced (and ‘presented’) the group — and, with Jerry Moss’s help, essentially stole Mendes away from Atlantic Records — but who also took Brasil ‘66 on tour with his Tijuana Brass, resulting in mega exposure and hefty sales.
It also led the trumpeter to fall for his future bride, Lani Hall, B66’s breakout star, the creamiest of the era’s vocalists and a looker to boot. Her canny ability to convey melodies in both English and Portuguese made her arguably more of a standout than Mendes himself.
Mendes and his swanky soft-groove machine would become one of A&M’s top-tier acts, rivaling Alpert’s own recordings for acclaim and, along with Julius Wechter’s Baja Marimba Band, establishing the label as a leader in modern Latin sounds. Yes, rock bands would make their impact on Mr. A’s & Mr. M’s output and fortunes soon enough. But Mendes’s contributions to both their overall aesthetic and healthy, artists-enabling bottom line can’t be overstated.
If your memories of A&M Records rest within the discographies of Cat Stevens and Peter Frampton and Supertramp and Styx, to list just a few rock-focused names on the horizon of this long-running story, you have Mendes — and Alpert’s & Moss’s support and cultivation of him — to thank for subsidizing all the diversified music to come. He and his outfit merit more attention than this introductory post. Expect other twofers as this #vinyltwosdays corollary continues.