Iconic bossa nova producer, songwriter, pianist and tune interpreter Sérgio Mendes has died at 83. The legendary Brazilian celebrity whose profession spanned greater than six many years and helped craft the trendy sound of Latin pop and dance died in Los Angeles of undisclosed causes.
Starting in his teenagers, Mendes — who was born on Feb. 11, 1941 in Rio de Janeiro — targeted on goals of turning into a classical pianist earlier than being impressed by the then effervescent bossa nova explosion within the late Fifties that put a jazzy spin on the favored samba fashion. He honed his chops performed golf equipment and performing along with his bossa nova mentors, Antônio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto, earlier than forming his first band, the Sexteto Bossa Rio, with whom he launched his 1961 debut recording, Dance Moderno.
Mendes and his band rapidly jumped from the golf equipment of Rio to New York, the place Mendes performed the primary bossa nova competition at Carnegie Corridor, adopted by a pop-in on the iconic Birdland jazz membership in 1962. That serendipitous go to led to an impromptu set with laborious bop legend saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, leading to 1963’s Cannonball’s Bossa Nova album, which featured a mixture of jazz-tinged sambas with Mendes on piano. Mendes’ busy yr additionally included contributions to American jazz flutist Herbie Mann’s 1963 albums, Do the Bossa Nova with Herbie Mann and its follow-up, Latin Fever.
After shifting to the U.S. in 1964, Mendes fashioned the primary in a collection of eponymous bands, Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’65 and launched The Swinger From Rio album, with contributions from Jobim and American jazz trumpeter Artwork Farmer, adopted by a stay album recorded along with his Brasil ’65 crew, In Individual at El Matador.
Bouncing between recordings for Atlantic Data and Capitol, Mendes launched albums at a livid tempo all through the late Nineteen Sixties, rapidly cementing his standing as one of many premier ambassadors for the swinging bossa nova sound. Nevertheless it was when he signed to jazz nice Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss’ A&M Data that Mendes’ album gross sales and chart success started to take off due to the renamed Brasil ’66’s debut single, the Jorge Ben-penned “Mas que Nada.”
The observe with lead vocals from American jazz singer Lani Corridor, appeared on the platinum-selling Herb Alpert Presents Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 and ran as much as No. 47 on the Billboard Scorching 100 chart, serving to cement its standing as one among Mendes’ most beloved songs. The group, which continued to chart via the last decade with groovy samba-inflected covers of pop songs, together with their Grammy-nominated 1968 tackle the Beatles’ “The Idiot on the Hill,” in addition to the Fab 4’s “Day Tripper” and boss nova’d variations of the Mamas & the Papas’ “Monday, Monday” and the Cole Porter normal “Evening and Day.”
The group’s second A&M album, 1967’s Equinox, reached No. 3 on the Billboard Prime Jazz Albums chart, adopted a number of months later by Look Round, which established a soon-to-be-familiar sample of blending bossa nova covers and originals with takes on fashionable English-language songs, together with the Beatles’ “With a Little Assist From My Mates” and Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s Dusty Springfield hit, “The Look of Love”; Mendes’ model bested Springfield’s on the U.S. charts, going all the way in which to No. 4 on the Billboard pop tally. The tune’s reputation was boosted when Mendes carried out the Oscar-nominated tune from the James Bond film On line casino Royale on the 1968 Academy Awards telecast.
In 1968, Mendes changed your complete Brasil ’66 lineup — except for singer Corridor — on the group’s fourth LP, Idiot on the Hill, which spawned two prime 10-charting singles with the Beatles cowl title observe and a tackle Simon & Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Truthful.” Mendes launched three extra albums on A&M via the tip of the Nineteen Sixties — 1968’s Sergio Mendes’ Favourite Issues and Crystal Illusions and 1969’s Ye-Me-Lê — which continued the profitable system of blending bossa nova with grooving takes on Nice American Songbook classics and American pop hits by the likes of Otis Redding, Glen Campbell and Bacharach/David.
His output continued apace within the Seventies, when he launched greater than a dozen albums, together with 1970’s Stillness, which featured new lead vocalist Gracinha Leporace and Love Music, his third album with the reconfigured band — now generally known as Brasil ’77. The acquainted system continued apace, mixing songs by Jobim with covers of well-known tunes by Stevie Surprise and Leon Russell.
By the Eighties his launch schedule started to gradual, however Mendes’ reputation bumped up once more with 1983’s self-titled album, which gave him his first prime 40 LP in additional than a decade, in addition to his highest-charting single, the No. 4 Scorching 100 grownup modern hit written by Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil, “By no means Gonna Let You Go.” Mendes scored his solely Grammy win in 1992 with Brasileiro, which received the 1993 Grammy for greatest world music album.
In 2006 he teamed with Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am for Timeless, a No. 44 Billboard 200 LP which featured vocals from a raft of neo soul singers together with Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and india.arie, in addition to Q-Tip, John Legend, Stevie Surprise and Justin Timberlake.
Mendes continued to launch music all through the 2000s, together with his closing studio album, 2020’s Within the Key of Pleasure. Along with his Grammy award and two Latin Grammys, Mendes was nominated for an Oscar in 2012 for his theme tune to the animated movie Rio, “Actual in Rio.” Mendes was additionally profiled within the 2020 documentary Sérgio Mendes: Within the Key of Pleasure.
This story first appeared on Billboard.com.
