Brasil '66 singles

Suppress your fandom of Brasil '66 for a moment and try to look at this as someone in their late teens or early 20s […]:




That's death, right there. I personally love Andy Williams and Sergio (and I had a massive crush on Lani)---but even if the group could have somehow made themselves as 1970-hip-now as the "Stillness" album cover suggested, nobody was gonna buy it coming from them.


I wonder if Michael's perspective and insights on this matter would have only been possible after-the-fact (with the benefit of hind-sight / in-retrospect).
I suppose Sergio, or his manager, or A&M marketing (or whoever it was who made these decisions for how to promote the band and its music) were trying (I assume that their strategy was) to appeal to a broad array of demographics. The TV appearances seem to reflect such an approach.

For one thing, Sergio had a connection with Andy Williams (That's where he got Janis Hansen from) (correct?).

The Music Scene show on ABC had a lot of the younger, hipper Soul and Rock acts -- and the footage that I see seems to be mostly live -- whereas, B'66's appearance was largely mimed (albeit with live acoustic piano on "Lineman").
I suppose B'66 looked out-of-place in that context (by 1969).

But, there is footage on INA (French) TV that is live doing a fast-tempo rendition of Edu Lobo's "Upa Neguino" -- no orchestration. To my ears (in the 21st century) it seems like hip, cutting-edge Brasilian M.P.B. and not any old lounge Jazz Bossa Nova (the way the American mainstream maybe have perceived that).
 
I wonder how many of those young, hip, Rock and Soul fans of the late 1960s (who had these cultural hang-ups/sensibilities that Michael speaks of) were watching the Andy Williams show. (That clip is from 1968, or maybe 1969, right?)

I wonder if they cared about what, and who was on that show.

I suppose, if I am not mistaken, the typical middle-class American household back then (51 years ago) had only one television set, so -- the senario might be something like -- the teenager would be walking past the living room with that show on, and maybe Mom and or Dad were watching it?

The clip is from '68. Of the mainstream variety shows, Andy's was the hippest. That's largely due to his choice of musical director---Mike Post (who we'd later know from the themes for The Rockford Files, Hill Street Blues, Magnum, P.I. and others). Mike booked acts like Sergio, but he also booked Simon and Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt and other young artists of the time---and part of the show was a duet. Here's the one with Linda:




And here's the one with Simon and Garfunkel:




You're right that it was one TV set and only three channels---seven or nine in the very biggest cities with multiple independent stations---but even if it wasn't all rock and roll, Andy treated the newer artists with respect, which is not something you could say of every variety host at the time.
 
I wonder if Michael's perspective and insights on this matter would have only been possible after-the-fact (with the benefit of hind-sight / in-retrospect).



Nope. I was in the thick of it---aged 12 to 15 during the run of Andy's shows. That's what my contemporaries thought then. I had more tolerance for MOR acts than most.


I suppose Sergio, or his manager, or A&M marketing (or whoever it was who made these decisions for how to promote the band and its music) were trying (I assume that their strategy was) to appeal to a broad array of demographics. The TV appearances seem to reflect such an approach.

Mike Post booked the acts, but there were a lot of connections. For starters, Andy's wife Claudine Longet, recorded for A&M as well.
 
Some serious out of context editing there, Intuitive.

The quote was about MOR radio stations,---and it read:

I wasn't trying take anything mis-leadingly (disingenuously) out-of-context. I missed it and now I think I get what you were saying --

I honestly was under the impression that you were referring (more-broadly) to all (American) record-buyers of that demographic (at the time -- mid- and late- 1960s) -- not just the Herb Albert fans who were within that age range.

(I've been busy and this thread is long and has a lot of content, so I might miss a few things. Thank you for clarifying that.)
 
The Andy Williams Show had a string of great arrangers starting with Bob Mersey from the early 60's, who arranged Andy's biggest hit from that decade--Can't Get Used to Losing You--and later Dave Grusin and Nick De Carlo, who we know from their association with A&M records. We must not forget the Ed Sullivan Show from the 60's which also had an amazing variety of musical stars from opera to pop crooners to the top rock and roll acts. And all the singing and orchestrations were done live--nothing was pre-recorded. The 60's were the heyday for good TV variety show music. I also fondly recall the Kraft Music Hall, the Perry Como Show and the Hollywood Palace.
 
In my pre-teen days, I never bought singles that I heard on the radio. In 1969,when I was 14, I went out to stores and bought some discounted singles at a department store as they were three for one dollar and Fool On The Hill was one of them along with The Look Of Love. I also bought the Look Around album and that was the first album that I had ever bought. I bought only one or two singles at regular price after that and saved and spent more on albums and I now only buy CD's of artists that I like and none by artists that have come on the scene after 1985.
 
In my pre-teen days, I never bought singles that I heard on the radio.
In my pre-teen days, I didn't even listen to the radio. I listened to a lot of records that my parents owned, and also had some of the earlier LPs in my own early collection (which sadly weren't too well cared for, or played on the best of equipment). I've always been an LP listener at heart and didn't find much use for 45s back then. Up to a certain point, I only had my own "kid" 45s, and a handful of others including some A&Ms. When my cousin took us on a tour of the studio he was an engineer at, I suddenly had over 100 new 45s--he gave us a couple of empty 45 shipping cartons and had us pick among all the promos they had on hand.

I started listening to the radio probably around 1977 or so, to the local funk and dance stations. So at that point, I was buying up 12-inch singles regularly. And not too long after, having my own tuner in my system, I would keep WJZZ on for hours, and they played fusion and contemporary jazz along with a few classics. Those would always be album-based purchases, as most jazz records didn't have 45 RPM singles.

On top of that, our local record store chain had a yearly "Gran Prix" sale and would feature everything in the store at like 20-25% off, so I would often buy as many as a dozen albums during those couple of weeks.

At that point, and even today, the only time I would buy a single is if it had a non-album track I couldn't get anywhere else. I wasn't (and still am not) into the single-mix versions of the records--I think that since I grew up being so album-centric, I never grew attached to singles. They are still a very small part of my main collection. Maybe 80-90 at the very most, with no desire to buy any unless it's an upgrade to one I already own. I still have all those old 45s stored in the basement but haven't played them in decades. They're in no great condition.
 
To put it in perspective, here's a video that pretty much crystallizes the problem. Suppress your fandom of Brasil '66 for a moment and try to look at this as someone in their late teens or early 20s who reveres the Beatles and the "authenticity" of the late 60s rock era, as it begins to transition into the singer-songwriter movement:




That's death, right there. I personally love Andy Williams and Sergio (and I had a massive crush on Lani)---but even if the group could have somehow made themselves as 1970-hip-now as the "Stillness" album cover suggested, nobody was gonna buy it coming from them.


tumblr_n1p1vgZImB1sq8jbeo1_500.jpg


(Don't ask me how, where, and why I found that particular image/photo, there. : ) I (honestly) have no idea who she is. )

It seems that she is into the "heavy" groups of the late 1960s -- Cream, Hendrix, and I see a psychedelic image of John Lennon. That photo might very well be from 1968, or maybe 1969.
 
tumblr_n1p1vgZImB1sq8jbeo1_500.jpg


(Don't ask me how, where, and why I found that particular image/photo, there. : ) I (honestly) have no idea who she is. )

It seems that she is into the "heavy" groups of the late 1960s -- Cream, Hendrix, and I see a psychedelic image of John Lennon. That photo might very well be from 1968, or maybe 1969.

Probably '68. Could be '67, which is the year Richard Avedon did the Lennon poster. But cream didn't really break here in the U.S. until 1968.
 
In my pre-teen days, I never bought singles that I heard on the radio. In 1969,when I was 14, I went out to stores and bought some discounted singles at a department store as they were three for one dollar and Fool On The Hill was one of them along with The Look Of Love. I also bought the Look Around album and that was the first album that I had ever bought. I bought only one or two singles at regular price after that and saved and spent more on albums and I now only buy CD's of artists that I like and none by artists that have come on the scene after 1985.
I made an error. I have not bought anything by an artist that has come on the scene after 1988. There are very few artists that have come on after that year that I really like and maybe I will get a "Greatest Hits" but that would be all.
 
The first breakthrough hit for Harry Nilsson (as a recording artist / singer in his own right, as opposed to another artist recording his songs) was : "Everybody's Talkin'
(which was written by Fred Neil, interestingly)

In a sense, would that have been perceived as M.O.R. (back in the late '60s -- by young Rock and Soul listeners, or older adults, radio station programmers, or whoever, for that matter?)
It has orchestration, no hard Rock or Soul elements, is a ballad. I mean, from the perspective of someone who knew nothing (at first) about this new singer (Nilsson) - what could their first impression of that record be?

I am reading the Wikipedia article on that song:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everybody%27s_Talkin%27#Nilsson_version
 
The first breakthrough hit for Harry Nilsson (as a recording artist / singer in his own right, as opposed to another artist recording his songs) was : "Everybody's Talkin'
(which was written by Fred Neil, interestingly)

In a sense, would that have been perceived as M.O.R. (back in the late '60s -- by young Rock and Soul listeners, or older adults, radio station programmers, or whoever, for that matter?)
It has orchestration, no hard Rock or Soul elements, is a ballad. I mean, from the perspective of someone who knew nothing (at first) about this new singer (Nilsson) - what could their first impression of that record be?

I am reading the Wikipedia article on that song:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everybody%27s_Talkin%27#Nilsson_version

Nilsson's career got a huge boost when the Beatles' press officer, Derek Taylor, bought a box (25) of Nilsson's PANDEMONIUM SHADOW SHOW and gave copies to friends---including all four Beatles, who soon after, at a news conference, when asked if they liked any American groups, replied "Nilsson".

That gave him some rock and roll credibility, but didn't do much for sales in the U.S. He actually released "Everybody's Talkin'" as a single in 1968 and it stiffed in the US (though it was a minor hit in L.A., peaking at #14 on KHJ).

It was the inclusion of "Everybody's Talkin'" in the soundtrack of the movie MIDNIGHT COWBOY that slowly built it into a hit single by the fall of 1969 (the movie, notorious for being the first non-pornographic film to get an X rating, came out in April of that year), and it was a mass-appeal hit, charting on both the Hot 100 and Easy Listening charts.

Younger audiences, aware of Nilsson by the Beatles' fandom as well as his songs that had been covered by other popular artists ("Cuddly Toy" by the Monkees, "One" by Three Dog Night, and the theme song to THE COURTSHIP OF EDDIE'S FATHER, which premiered on ABC that same fall, weren't put off by the orchestration. The song straddled the generations. And Nilsson was perceived as one of them.

But despite the cachet of Nilsson at that moment, Herb Alpert could only get to #63 with "Without Her". Herb, only six years older than Harry, had the audience's perception working against him.

As for the adults who liked "Everybody's Talkin'", many of them loved "Without You" in 1972, as well, but if they bought NILSSON SCHMILSSON, they probably weren't quite sure what to make of "Jump Into The Fire":



And if they stuck around for SON OF SCHMILSSON, there was this:



Which probably chased them away for good. Which is a shame, because they missed a glorious album of standards next, A LITTLE TOUCH OF SCHMILSSON IN THE NIGHT.




But then, the kids didn't like that.
 
At the risk of dragging this thread back to its initial subject - "Brasil '66 Singles" - I noticed today that the b-side of the "For Me" single (AM 836) has an odd subtitle that I'd not seen anywhere else. The song is "Gente" from the EQUINOX album and there's a subtitle in parentheses of "99 Lollipops". I just find it odd that the subtitle was used on the single, but not on the EQUINOX album.

Gente99Lollipops.jpg

Apparently, that is an alternate title to the song. I found it used on a Walter Wanderley album as the main title with "Gente" in parenthesis.

According to my records, the song by Sergio Mendes has not appeared anywhere else, other than the single b-side and EQUINOX.
 
At the risk of dragging this thread back to its initial subject - "Brasil '66 Singles" - I noticed today that the b-side of the "For Me" single (AM 836) has an odd subtitle that I'd not seen anywhere else. The song is "Gente" from the EQUINOX album and there's a subtitle in parentheses of "99 Lollipops". I just find it odd that the subtitle was used on the single, but not on the EQUINOX album.

Gente99Lollipops.jpg

Apparently, that is an alternate title to the song. I found it used on a Walter Wanderley album as the main title with "Gente" in parenthesis.

According to my records, the song by Sergio Mendes has not appeared anywhere else, other than the single b-side and EQUINOX.

At the time of this single and of EQUINOX, Walter Wanderley was better known and a bigger-selling artist in the U.S. than Sergio. Since 45 RPM singles were often sold in browsable bins in record stores, it made sense to subtitle this with what Wanderley used as the title. They should have done it on EQUINOX too, but it may have been that someone thought of it after the back cover of the album was locked in but before the single label had been.
 
1589371615650.png

I wonder if perhaps the similarity of form of the three middle titles led the graphics people to choose the short, one-word title, so the flow would be:

TRISTE
GENTE
WAVE

Still, they could have added it to the label.

1589371816076.png
 
1589371615650.png

I wonder if perhaps the similarity of form of the three middle titles led the graphics people to choose the short, one-word title, so the flow would be:

TRISTE
GENTE
WAVE

Still, they could have added it to the label.

1589371816076.png

Good point. I'm betting the LP labels were ordered first and the addition on the single was an afterthought.
 
I apologize if this has been discussed. I'm not primarily a Sérgio Mendes fan (I'm primarily here for the Carpenters), but as someone who understands written Portuguese and a good deal of spoken Brazilian Portuguese, I have to ask a few questions!

Was "Mas que nada" a single for Sérgio Mendes & Brasil '66? If not, wow. The song is even better than Jorge Ben Jor's version, in my opinion. I believe Lani Hall was part of Brasil '66 at the time, is that correct? Good on her for her fantastic contribution to this song. I'm thoroughly impressed by the rendition I just heard (the TV appearance with the Eartha Kitt introduction).

Hearing "Mas que nada" makes me want to listen to more of Sérgio Mendes and his various Brasil iterations. From the "Herb Alpert Presents..." album, I know this song, "Day Tripper" and "Água de beber" (a fantastic song). The only thing that admittedly ruins the track listing to me is the English approximations (O Pawtoo... Agwa gee Beberr).

I will be looking through these forums to see what other songs you all like. Looks like Sérgio Mendes & Brasil (the many iterations of the band) covered a lot of classics.
 
Oop, the other note about that song may have been mentioned, but “mais” (more) and “mas” (but) are pronounced identically in many dialects of Brazilian Portuguese, to the point that I often meet Brazilians who write “mais” when they mean “mas”.

So, this whole time I thought it was “Mais que nada” (“more than anything,” or “above all”) and am only now reading that it’s “Mas que nada” (literally “but that nothing,” but I read it’s a saying for “yeah right”). Even Mr. Mendes thought it was “mais que nada,” as I see on his “Greatest Hits” album cover! I don’t blame him! It makes more sense to me 🤪
 
I apologize if this has been discussed. I'm not primarily a Sérgio Mendes fan (I'm primarily here for the Carpenters), but as someone who understands written Portuguese and a good deal of spoken Brazilian Portuguese, I have to ask a few questions!

Was "Mas que nada" a single for Sérgio Mendes & Brasil '66? If not, wow. The song is even better than Jorge Ben Jor's version, in my opinion. I believe Lani Hall was part of Brasil '66 at the time, is that correct? Good on her for her fantastic contribution to this song. I'm thoroughly impressed by the rendition I just heard (the TV appearance with the Eartha Kitt introduction).

Hearing "Mas que nada" makes me want to listen to more of Sérgio Mendes and his various Brasil iterations. From the "Herb Alpert Presents..." album, I know this song, "Day Tripper" and "Água de beber" (a fantastic song). The only thing that admittedly ruins the track listing to me is the English approximations (O Pawtoo... Agwa gee Beberr).
I apologize if this has been discussed. I'm not primarily a Sérgio Mendes fan (I'm primarily here for the Carpenters), but as someone who understands written Portuguese and a good deal of spoken Brazilian Portuguese, I have to ask a few questions!

Was "Mas que nada" a single for Sérgio Mendes & Brasil '66? If not, wow. The song is even better than Jorge Ben Jor's version, in my opinion. I believe Lani Hall was part of Brasil '66 at the time, is that correct? Good on her for her fantastic contribution to this song. I'm thoroughly impressed by the rendition I just heard (the TV appearance with the Eartha Kitt introduction).

Hearing "Mas que nada" makes me want to listen to more of Sérgio Mendes and his various Brasil iterations. From the "Herb Alpert Presents..." album, I know this song, "Day Tripper" and "Água de beber" (a fantastic song). The only thing that admittedly ruins the track listing to me is the English approximations (O Pawtoo... Agwa gee Beberr).

I will be looking through these forums to see what other songs you all like. Looks like Sérgio Mendes & Brasil (the many iterations of the band) covered a lot of classics.
“Mas Que Nada” was Brazil ‘66’s first single. Though it only peaked at #47, it got significant airplay on radio stations programmed to adult listeners (for A&M’s first few years, the strategy was to use radio airplay of singles to sell albums to adults).

Lani was part of the original group. Hired by Sergio at age 20. She was remarkable.

The phonetics on the liner notes were necessary. At the time, most Americans struggled with Spanish words (some Mexican restaurants had phonetic pronunciations of menu items until the 70s). Portuguese was very exotic.

Lani, at the time fresh from her hometown of Chicago, sang the lyrics phonetically.
 
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Lani Hall was the only female singer on the first album, HERB ALPERT PRESENTS SERGIO MENDES & BRASIL '66. Though another lady appears on the cover, she was only with the group for photos. Lani was double-tracked until Janis Hansen arrived for the second album, EQUINOX.

Some of us are pretty big fans without any, or very much, knowledge of Brazilian Portuguese.

Sergio's FOOL ON THE HILL album was the unfortunate first album to get the HAECO-CSG treatment. Even so, it remains a favorite for some of us, myself included. Thankfully, there have been ways in recent years of undoing the damage.
 
Lani, at the time fresh from her hometown of Chicago, sang the lyrics phonetically.
This is shocking to me, actually. I never knew that Lani was part of Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66, and when I heard this rendition on YouTube, I asked myself if Lani knew Portuguese. Her diction is fantastic, including her nasal vowels. (And nasal vowels are not something that can be transcribed in English, since they simply don't exist in English.) I can very much tell she's talented and has a keen ear for phonetics.
 
Also, does anyone know the story behind her name, Leilani? Coming from Hawaii, I know it means "heavenly lei (flower garland)." I always find myself surprised when people not born in Hawaii have Hawaiian names (like Leilani Hall or Keanu Reeves).
 
Also, does anyone know the story behind her name, Leilani? Coming from Hawaii, I know it means "heavenly lei (flower garland)." I always find myself surprised when people not born in Hawaii have Hawaiian names (like Leilani Hall or Keanu Reeves).
I believe Herb said somewhere that her parents were big fans of Bing Crosby’s song “Sweet Leilani, which was a hit less than a decade before she was born.

 
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