AOTW: Sergio Mendes & Brasil '77 LOVE MUSIC

[Harry]

Sergio Mendes & Brasil '77
LOVE MUSIC
BELL 1119

Also released on CD in Japan as BVCM-37398.

Tracks:

Side One
1. Where Is The Love (McDonald-Salter) 3:12
2. Put A Little Love Away (Lambert-Potter) 3:15
3. Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight (James Taylor) 3:13
4. Killing Me Softly With His Song (Gimbel-Fox) 3:39
5. Love Music (Lambert-Potter) 3:06

Side Two
6. You Can't Dress Up A Broken Heart (Lambert-Potter) 2:56
7. Hey Look At The Sun (Angelo) 3:59
8. Walk The Way You Talk (Bacharach-David) 3:29
9. I Won't Last A Day Without You (Nichols-Williams) 4:32
10. I Can See Clearly Now (Johnny Nash) 2:26

Bonnie Bowden: vocal solos on 2, 5, 7
Gracinha Leporace: vocal solos on 3 and 9
Sergio Mendes: Electric Piano Solo on 3 and 5

PRODUCTION AND SOUND BY BONES HOWE
The rhythm section arrangements are by Bob Alcivar and Sergio Mendes.
The Vocal arrangements are by Bob Alcivar.
Tom Scott arranged the strings and horns on "Love Music," "Put A Little Love Away," "I Won't Last A Day Without You";" and the woodwinds and horns on "You Can't Dress Up A Broken Heart" and "Walk The Way You Talk."
Bob Alcivar arranged the strings and woodwinds on "Hey Look At The Sun," "Killing Me Softly With His Song," "Where Is The Love;" and the strings and woodwinds on "You Can't Dress Up a Broken Heart."

Production Co-ordinator: Pamela Vale
Engineered by Bones Howe at the 16-track facilities of Wally Heider Recording, Hollywood
Assisted by Ed Barton, Ken Caillat, Bill Dawes and Terry Stark
Disc Mastering by John Golden, Artisan Audio, Hollywood
Sergio Mendes: Piano, Electric Piano
Bonnie Bowden & Gracinha Leporace: Vocals
Oscar E. Neves: Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar
Sebastian Neto; Bass
Claudio Slon: Drums
Laudir Oliveira: Congas, Triangle, Percussion
Paulo da Costa: Bongos, Congas, Percussion

Photography: Ed Caraeff
Design: David Larkham & Ron Wong (Tepee Graphics)
Art Direction: Beverley Weinstein

And special thanks to Dennis Budimir: Electric Guitar, Rhythm Guitar, 12-string Guitar; and Bob Alcivar: Keyboard

©1973 BELL RECORDS, A Division of Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
1776 Broadway,
New York, New York 10019
Printed in U.S.A.

 

[Harry]

It's a rather unusual occurence for the A&M Corner Forum to use an Album Of The Week format for a record on another label, but given Sergio Mendes' strong association with A&M, his mid-career albums deserve to be discussed. As such, his Bell and Elektra albums will be discussed here over the coming weeks.

LOVE MUSIC was the first album after his first A&M period. It followed PRIMAL ROOTS as the next studio album in chronological order, and the two couldn't be more different. PRIMAL ROOTS was a tour de force of music of Afro-Brazilian origin, while LOVE MUSIC explored sunshiney American pop music.

Harry

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I love the title track of this album. It's one of my favorite Mendes songs, even if it doesn't have as much "soul" as some of the other versions (notably the Four Tops one). There are a number of bright spots on this album but the lack of Brazilian material makes it seem less like a Sergio Mendes album than his earlier A&M works.

Bonnie Bowden has a beautiful voice but she lacks the soulfulness of Lani Hall or Karen Phillip. Gracinha is a trooper singing mostly backup here, but she is definitely more comfortable on Brazilian material with Portuguese lyrics than she is singing the songs she's given here.

You can tell that Sergio has ceded the production and arrangements over to "hired hands" on this record. I have a feeling that might have been a "condition" of his getting signed by Bell -- Clive Davis probably said, "You need to make some hits, so we're going to bring in a producer and arrangers." The results are not bad, just more "bland" and MOR-ish than we've been used to from Brasil '66 or '77.

I remember when this album came out, I was bummed that Sergio wasn't on A&M any more, but I hadn't liked PRIMAL ROOTS too much when it first came out either, so I was happy to see him doing music that was more in his "normal" style. Since then however, I've found that PRIMAL ROOTS has aged better to my ears, and I listen to it much more often now than LOVE MUSIC.

Besides the title tune, my other favorites on the album are "Put a Little Love Away" (a nice Lambert/Potter ballad) and the Bacharach tune "Walk the Way You Talk," which was the flip-side of the "Love Music" single.

 

[Dave]

Sergio Mendes gets the '70's Bones Howe / Bob Alcivar treatment & a couple Dennis Lambert / Brian Potter -written songs...

Works for the most part, but, yes, juggling MOR, contemporary Adult Pop, & light Soul, doesn't jibe well in retaining the original Brasilian sound, which the band along w/ the '66-'77 name-change pretty much shifted away from... (The sort of thing which would later lead to "Never Gonna Let You Go"--Sergio's 1984 comeback; A&M comeback, too...)

Still, it's a mild & modest project, for the big type of an affair a Howe / Alcivar production would normally command... Not unusual for Bell to also support this type of thing, considering how much this has in common w/ such label-mates as The 5th Dimension, hence a very similar concept, & on the same, but smaller scale...


Dave

 

[Harry]

Mike, that's nearly exactly my take on the album.

I had totally skipped PRIMAL ROOTS - back in that era I wanted my record-buying to reflect what I was hearing on the radio, and none of PRIMAL ROOTS was even considered by radio stations in Philly.

Then I heard a track from the LOVE MUSIC album played on my favorite station - in fact they featured the whole album that week. I immediately rushed to the nearest record store and picked up LOVE MUSIC - and was devastated to see the BELL logo. "First Lani disappeared and now the A&M logo too..." went through my head as I reasoned that, well, at least it was getting played on the radio.

I too picked "Love Music" as my favorite track. It was from day one and remains so to this day - and I also like "Put A Little Love Away" as a second choice.

On the title track, the lead singers, Bonnie and Gracinha, blend well together, and it's (IMHO) the closest to the old Brasil '66 sound on the album.

I still have my original LP and updated it with a Japanese CD purchase.

Harry

 

[Steven J. Gross]

Love Music was a nice track- I listened to this album a lot- it had the same feeling as eating white bread- pretty bland- not awful but certainly no "Equinox".
It's one hideous album cover, typical Bell Records shlock, and the pressing was below average too.
I knew the Sergio I knew was on a long sabatical, and I was right.
I'm glad he's back now. Wish Herb Alpert was....

 

[Mr Bill]

Mike and Harry, my reaction was the same. I remember seeing Love Music and BMB's Baja Marimba Band's Back on Bell Records and wondered if Herb and his friends had had some sort of falling out! (which may have been true in the case of Sergio at the time, but obviously not with Julius as he was part of the new TJB a year later). In hindsight it was obvious a change in direction in pop music that did it (as well as driving other A&M acts to Blue Thumb, Barnaby or ABC/Dunhill).

At that time I was not as "in" to B66 as I became in later life, so I didn't really care much for Love Music. I actually thought Primal Roots was pretty good as I was into latin rhythm at the time (and Julius 'guesting' on marimba enhanced PR IMHO). In fact it was my favorite B66 album of all until I got more into the the Brazilian thing as I got older.

--Mr Bill
64 days to go in Kuwait...

 

[A&Mguyfromwayback]

This and PAIS TROPICAL were the first albums I ever owned (I was 10 years old), so although I hear it now and realize how incredibly Muzak-y it is (and would never play it for anyone else as an example of Sergio's sound), I still have a huge amount of nostalgia for it and it makes me smile when I hear it.....Bonnie's sound is admittedly very smooth, but she's got great pitch and great phrasing and her contributions actually hold up very well.....

 

[JMK]

Love Music is unquestionably the strongest song on the album IMHO. I'm one of the "been there all along" fans, after my eldest sister brought home the first three B66 albums from college in the summer of 1968, and I was hooked, despite being quite young. I bought every album myself as they came out. I had been thrown for a loop by PRIMAL ROOTS at the time, as it seems a lot of us were. In fact, I almost thought those liner notes were a "Monty Python"-esque joke at the time, LOL.

I heard the single on the radio, coming in at the chorus right before Sergio's Rhodes solo and I remember thinking "This is either Sergio or someone ripping off his sound," since Bonnie sounded so different from Karen. The DJ back announced the tune, saying the band's name and then commenting "They're sure looking to the future, aren't they?" A few days later I saw the band on Merv Griffin and he held up the album cover, whose name I couldn't decipher (it didn't dawn on me that it was LOVE MUSIC, duh). I had my Dad run me down to the downtown SLC record store (remember those?) and they had a copy.

Love Music the album has never been a fave of mine in the Sergio canon, but it's agreeable enough. It was obviously a transition album for Sergio. Like Harry and others, I was shocked to see him not on A&M anymore and it was like the beginning of the end of my musical childhood in a way.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

We were already in the retail music business when this album came out. I remember reading about him signing to Bell Records in a small note in Billboard, so I wasn't surprised by the different logo on the album...but it was still a downer when I saw it. I still have my original "Love Music" 45RPM in the red Bell sleeve. It just didn't look right and still doesn't!

 

[Captain Bacardi]

For me this is a horrendous album. I just couldn't find anything positive about this album at all. But then I've always preferred Sergio's actual Brazilian work as opposed to the pop material. Sorry, but I found this album to be rather cheesy sounding.

I'll now run for cover....



Capt. Bacardi

 

[Dave]

As far as a "favorite" goes, I went w/ "You Can't Dress Up A Broken Heart"... A Dennis Lambert / Brian Potter song, which so far there's no other version to date by any other artist... Like most L/P numbers, it is rather sad & fits w/ the rather melancholy mood of the rest of the album...

Sorry to say, this is a way "down-sounding" LP & nothing sounds up-lifting about it...

That said, there's more of the predictable song selection:

"Hey Look At The Sun"--Originally done by Jose Feliciano & actually by a Brasilian composer, Nelson Angelo...

"I Can See Clearly Now"--Which sounds too trivial, especially being the last song to really pick up any of the sobby proceedings...

"Killing Me Softly"--how many versions do we need????

"Don't Leave Me Lonely Tonight"--on which the "go away, then damn you!" is cleaned up with: "go away, then, why don't you?"...

"Where Is The Love"--after the "One, Two, Three, Four!", counted off--though in PORTUGUESE!--and of which it sounds more in common w/ Ray Conniff, Perry Como & Andy Williams version than can be believed that it was actually originated as something written for & done by Roberta Flack... --Just mere pleasant pop pleasantry! And the male voices inter-changing the chorus, along w/ the squeaky female mostly taking the lead, do give it a good change of pace, too!

"Walk The Way You Talk"--which betters the Burt Bacharach version, (possibly originally done by Dionne Warwick), but only slightly...

"I Won't Last A Day Without You--under-cutting Paul Williams original... The still bitter, vain attempt to lift up from a comparatively light-weight "demo" Paul's typical version of his own songs can be noted for...

"Love Music"--running soul-less compared to the more grittier versions by Paul Revere & The Raiders and The Four Tops...

"Put A Little Love Away"--cheesy, heartless, mechanical pop radio fodder...

And the rose petal-soft arrangements, of which the matching of this producer with this group, this clearly resonates of an outing worthwhile, but nothing much more than a rote journey through a similar series of a song-path, done no better, nor no worse than the other batches of garden variety singers of this era, filling in a routine time-slot for the willing back-up musicians to really participate, however, in this capacity, much of them are regular members, so then only requiring the "outside services" (so not to detract too much from the "original sound") of one or two...

Funny how since "Mas Que Nada", this is a not so good portrait of Sergio & his group to see how far they've come, but how far they have to go in this decade w/o the environ of their better part of their career on A&M...


Dave

 

[Michael Hagerty]

I was 17 and a radio program director when this album came out.

Bad album.

However, I liked what Grachina's wearing on the cover.

Did I mention I was 17?

The rest of the album cover looked like a bad disco publicity shot. And in 1973, that hadn't even been invented yet. So, in a sense, Love Music was ahead of its time.

 

[JMK]

In case you didn't know, Sergio produced Angelo's Atlantic album that premiered "Hey Look at the Sun." Interesting to hear the differences between the versions.

 

[Steve Sidoruk]

In case you didn't know, Sergio produced Angelo's Atlantic album that premiered "Hey Look at the Sun." Interesting to hear the differences between the versions.

Yes, and then there was Macondo!!!

 

[JMK]

I actually prefer Macondo, LOL.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

The album cover would have looked better if they'd just used the photo on a white background and skipped the repeating-borders thing. I have always liked that SM&B77 logo though...it's no Carpenters logo by any means, but it's kinda '70s-cool.

 

[Steven J. Gross]

I think the fact that this album came out after the very progressive and unusual "Primal Roots" made it all the more difficult to swallow.
It was almost an insult to his fanbase.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

Well that depends. At that time, I guess I was a typical fan. I was more into the English language pop stuff -- so I thought the album was great when it first came out. Conversely, I didn't think too much of PRIMAL when it first came out. But over time, my opinions of the two albums have pretty much reversed.

 

[A&Mguyfromwayback]

I remember Down Beat magazine gave PRIMAL ROOTS five stars (highest rating) and a rave, rave review praising this new direction for Sergio - then was basically horrified by LOVE MUSIC, giving it a star and a half or something.... The two albums truly couldn't be more different....

 

[Michael Hagerty]

I remember Down Beat magazine gave PRIMAL ROOTS five stars (highest rating) and a rave, rave review praising this new direction for Sergio - then was basically horrified by LOVE MUSIC, giving it a star and a half or something.... The two albums truly couldn't be more different....

If it weren't for the available recording studio and producer information, I'd wonder whether A&M's split with Sergio didn't come about by A&M rejecting the album.

 

[JMK]

There's no question A&M had let Sergio go before LOVE MUSIC came along. There's also no question that Sergio was on the hunt for another Top 40 hit to reestablish his career.

 

[Steven J. Gross]

Sergio's latest stuff has been great- he really got his beat back!