We’re still inching our way toward the ‘70s, a stylistically packed decade that will see A&M Records (the focus of this #TuesdaysWithJerry offshoot of #VinylTwosDays) swing from soft pop to hard rock to new wave by the time that era’s glittering New Year’s Eve ball dropped into 1980.
But first we should revisit several of the mainstays that made Mr. A (Herb Alpert) and Mr. M (Jerry Moss) the moguls they became. Which is why we’re jetting back to the Summer of Love for this 12th installment, where we find Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ‘66 approaching the peak of their popularity.
It’s July ‘67, to be exact. ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ is only a month old, yet already Mendes and his Latin jazz mavens are launching their third disc with a hip-swaying cover of ‘With a Little Help from My Friends.’ Never ceases to amaze me how rapidly remakes surfaced back then.
And with such great success!
Chief example: ‘The Look of Love,’ that seductive Bacharach/David classic inspired by Ursula Andress.
January ‘67 brought Dusty Springfield’s original vocal edition following Stan Getz’s instrumental the previous December. Come April hers is spotlighted in the convoluted James Bond spoof ‘Casino Royale’ (scant relation to the later Daniel Craig flick). Mendes and his group cut their version in February, issuing it on ‘Look Around’ (upper left) five months later.
When the tune rescued an Oscar nod out of cinematic rubble requiring four directors — by which time Nina Simone, Lainie Kazan and Claudine Longet had also covered it — there was nothing unusual in having Brasil ‘66 be the ones to perform the song at the ceremony. What wasn’t fully anticipated was the sudden mania for Mendes’s music that ensued because of that appearance, rocketing their rendition to No. 4 on the singles chart and pushing ‘Look Around’ nearly as high up the albums countdown months after its initial release.
They’d never been bigger.
So of course Mendes broke up the band.
By the time ‘Fool on the Hill’ (bottom right) surfaced in late ‘68, kicked off by another Beatles redo merely a year after that particular song debuted, Mendes had dismissed all but lead vocalist Lani Hall (the future — and still — Mrs. Herb Alpert) and replaced them with a new iteration of Brasil ‘66. Why? Couldn’t tell you.
I’d like to say it had something to do with wanting to achieve greater authenticity, as much of this LP focuses on livelier Brazilian complexities; the only other pure pop interpretations are ‘Scarborough Fair’ (itself a folk traditional then-recently recast by Simon & Garfunkel) and a new composition, ‘When Summer Turns to Snow,’ co-written by a new team that would become titans of easy listening: Alan & Marilyn Bergman.
The third author of that piece, by the way, is legendary composer Dave Grusin, who also provided arrangements for the ‘Look Around’ and ‘Fool’ albums. Contributing to the former but missing from the latter, however, is the veteran arranger/orchestrator with the one of the best names ever: Dick Hazard.
To what degree the revamping of Brasil ‘66 is noticeable, however, is highly debatable. New harmony vocalist Karen Philipp is essentially a replica of pink-slipped predecessor Janis Hansen, another white Midwesterner trained to sing in Portuguese. I wonder if Mendes might have become acutely aware of that dichotomy, seeing as he also chose to spotlight newcomer Gracinha Leporace (here billed as Leporael) on the dreamy ‘Lapinha.’ Literally a girl from Ipanema, she brings a dusky elegance very redolent of Astrud Gilberto.
Another reason Sérgio might have wanted to include Gracinha: she was, and still is, his wife. Together since ‘64.