Richard Adler/B66 sidebar

[JMK]

I picked up a CD reissue of the sole album by The Groop (not the same groop--er, group--as the Australian band), who placed a song in the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack in 1969. I got it since the back cover mentioned the group's "direct ties to Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66", which turned out to be Richard Adler. Adler was evidently interested in singer Susan Musmanno, who evidently met with Adler and Sergio with the plans for her to join B66 (I'm assuming this must have been circa the dismissal of Janis "and the rest".) Somewhere in all of this Adler himself was dismissed (or whatever happened), and he put together The Groop instead. Nice poppy stuff, very much in The Mamas & Papas vein (or even more similarly to The Collage, a fantastic 1968 group I think I may have mentioned here before in terms of the Perry Botkin orchestrations).

 

[JMK]

For those interested, the two female singers of The Groop went on to sing backup for Leonard Cohen, and they both have reminiscences here:

http://cohencentric.com/2016/02/14/...tarring-susan-bubba-with-leonard-cupid-cohen/

http://cohencentric.com/2016/01/06/...inging-backup-on-the-1970-leonard-cohen-tour/

 

[JMK]

Just noticed in the exhaustive liner notes Dave Grusin orchestrated.

 

[Intuitive Samba]

"singer Susan Musmanno, who evidently met with Adler and Sergio with the plans for her to join B66 (I'm assuming this must have been circa the dismissal of Janis"​

Or, possibly, after Bibi Vogel left Brasil '66 and a replacement was needed? (Maybe Janis was hired quickly, in L.A.) I dunno ; just guessing.

 

[JMK]

This was 1968, long after Bibi.