Trivia

Leader of 1960s band, Brasil '66.

Released several successful albums for the A&M Records label. The first album on A&M was "Herb Alpert Presents Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66", which went platinum, largely due to the success of the single "Mas que Nada".

Brazilian pianist, band leader and composer, the son of a physician, influential in the Bossa Nova movement of the 1960s. Leader of groups Brazil '65 and '66.

After touring South America, he settled in the U.S. during the mid-60s.

Frequently collaborated with arranger and guitarist Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Top hits for Mendes included covers of Fool on the Hill, Scarborough Fair, The Look of Love and Mas que Nada.

Mendes is a unique example of a Brazilian musician primarily known in the United States, where his albums were recorded and where most of his touring took place.

Mendes is married to Gracinha Leporace, who has performed with him since the early 1970s.

Mendes formed the Sexteto Bossa Rio and recorded Dance Moderno in 1961.

Finding himself dismissed in the 1990s as a relic who had made "elevator music" in the 1960s, Sergio Mendes returned to his Brazilian roots with the 1992 album "Brasileiro," which won a Grammy for best world music album.

He has over 55 releases and plays bossa nova heavily crossed with jazz and funk.

He was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song in 2012 as co-writer of the song "Real in Rio" from the animated film Rio.

As his interest in jazz grew, he started playing in nightclubs in the late 1950s just as bossa nova, a jazz-inflected derivative of samba, was emerging. Mendes played with Antônio Carlos Jobim (regarded as a mentor) and many U.S. jazz musicians who toured Brazil.

Though his early singles with Brasil '66 (most notably "Mas que Nada") met with some success, Mendes really burst into mainstream prominence when he performed the Oscar-nominated "The Look of Love" on the Academy Awards telecast in April 1968. Brasil '66's version of the song quickly shot into the top 10,[3] peaking at No. 4 and eclipsing Dusty Springfield's version from the soundtrack of the movie Casino Royale.

Mendes' career in the U.S. stalled in the mid-1970s, but he remained popular in South America and Japan.

Mendes spent the rest of 1968 enjoying consecutive top 10 and top 20 hits with his follow-up singles "The Fool on the Hill" and "Scarborough Fair".

Mendes often changed the lineup. Vocalist Kleiner (Bibi Vogel) was replaced by Janis Hansen, who in turn was replaced by Karen Philipp. Veteran drummer Dom Um Romão teamed with Rubens Bassini to assume percussionist duties. Claudio Slon joined the group as drummer in 1969, and went on to play with Mendes for nearly a decade. Sebastião Neto took over on bass and Oscar Castro-Neves took on guitar. These changes gave the group a more orchestral sound than before. In the early 1970s, lead singer Hall pursued a solo career and became Alpert's second wife. Some accounts claim that Mendes was upset with Alpert for years for "stealing" Hall away from his group.

The first album on A&M was Herb Alpert Presents Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66, an album that went platinum based largely on the success of the single "Mas que Nada" (a Jorge Ben cover) and the personal support of Alpert, with whom Mendes toured.

The late-1990s lounge music revival brought retrospection and respect to Mendes' oeuvre, particularly the classic Brasil '66 albums.

From 1968 on, Mendes was arguably the biggest Brazilian star in the world and enjoyed immense popularity worldwide, performing in venues as varied as stadium arenas and the White House, where he gave concerts for presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.

He makes an appearance dancing along for one of the segments Pharrell Williams' 24 hour of happy.

Touring Europe and the United States, Mendes recorded albums with Cannonball Adderley and Herbie Mann and played at the Carnegie Hall.

The original lineup of Brasil '66 was Mendes (piano), vocalists Lani Hall (later Alpert's wife) and Sylvia Dulce Kleiner (Bibi Vogel) (1942 - 2004), Bob Matthews (bass), José Soares (percussion) and João Palma (1943 - 2016) (drums). John Pisano (1931 - ) played guitar. This new line-up then recorded two more albums between 1966 and 1968 (including the best-selling Look Around LP), before there was a major personnel change for their fourth album Fool on the Hill.

He attended the local conservatory with hopes of becoming a classical pianist.

Mendes has collaborated with many artists through the years, including The Black Eyed Peas, with whom he re-recorded in 2006 a version of his breakthrough hit "Mas que Nada".

Mendes became full partners with Richard Adler, a Brooklyn-born American who had previously brought Bossa Trés plus two dancers, Joe Bennett and a Brazilian partner, to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1963. He was also accompanied by Jobim; Flavio Ramos, and Aloísio de Oliveira, a record and TV producer from Rio who used to be a member of Carmen Miranda's backing group Bando da Lua. The Musicians Union only allowed this group to appear on one TV show and make one club appearance (Basin Street East) before ordering them to leave the U.S. When the new group Brasil '65 was formed, Shelly Manne, Bud Shank and other West Coast musicians got Mendes and the others into the local musicians union. Adler and Mendes formed Brasil '65, which consisted of Wanda Sá and Rosinha de Valença, as well as the Sergio Mendes Trio. The group recorded albums for Atlantic and Capitol.

The 2006 re-recorded version of "Mas que Nada" with The Black Eyed Peas had additional vocals by Gracinha Leporace (Mendes' wife); this version is included on Timeless. In Brazil, the song is also well known for being the theme song for the local television channel Globo's Estrelas. The Black Eyed Peas' version contains a sample of their 2004 hit "Hey Mama". The re-recorded song became popular on many European charts. On the UK Singles Chart, the song entered at No. 29 and rose to and peaked at No. 6 on its second week on the chart.

The Brasil '66 group appeared at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan in June 1970.

All of Mendes' jazz albums for Atlantic Records, through Nesuhi and Ahmet Ertegun, had low sales. Richard Adler suggested that Mendes and the group sing in English, as well as Portuguese as Mendes had demanded, and Adler sought new English-based material such as "Goin' Out of My Head" by Teddy Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein. In order to sing these songs properly in English, Adler suggested that the group find two American girl singers who would sing in both English and Portuguese. Adler called his friend Jerry Dennon and A&M Records founders Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, and arranged for an audition for Mendes' new group, which was dubbed "Brasil '66.'" Alpert and Moss signed Mendes and his group to A&M Records. Adler then went to the Ertegun Brothers at Atlantic Records and sought to have them release Mendes from his Atlantic Jazz contract. Ahmet agreed to allow him to record albums under the name "Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66" with A&M. Mendes was not at this meeting, only Adler and Ahmet Ertegun. Alpert took over as producer for the A&M albums, and the group became a huge success with their first single, "Mas que Nada", by writer Jorge Ben.

Mendes moved to the U.S. in 1964 and cut two albums under the Sergio Mendes & Brasil '65 group name with Capitol Records and Atlantic Records.

By the time Mendes released his Grammy-winning Elektra album Brasileiro in 1992, he was the undisputed master of pop-inflected Brazilian jazz.

His two albums with Bell Records in 1973 and 1974 followed by several for Elektra from 1975 on, found Mendes continuing to mine the best in American pop music and post-Bossa writers of his native Brazil, while forging new directions in soul with collaborators like Stevie Wonder, who wrote Mendes' R&B-inflected minor hit "The Real Thing".

The 1980s also saw Mendes working with singer Lani Hall again on the song "No Place to Hide" from the Brasil '86 album, and as producer of her vocals on the title song for the James Bond film Never Say Never Again.

In 1983, he rejoined Alpert's A&M records and enjoyed success with a self-titled album and several follow-up albums, all of which received considerable adult contemporary airplay with charting singles. "Never Gonna Let You Go", featuring vocals by Joe Pizzulo and Leeza Miller, equalled the success of his 1968 single "The Look of Love" by reaching No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart; it also spent four weeks atop the Billboard adult contemporary chart.

In 1984, he recorded the Confetti album, which had the hit songs "Olympia", which was also used as a theme song for the Olympic Games that year and "Alibis" which reached #5 on the A/C chart and #29 on the Hot 100.

Mendes served as co-producer on the soundtrack albums for two animated films about his homeland: 2011's Rio and its 2014 sequel.

He was the subject of the 2020 documentary Sergio Mendes in the Key of Joy.

Prohibited from physical recreation, he was given a piano and music lessons by his mother, which led to studies at the Conservatory of Music in Niterói, across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro.

Of the dozen or so albums Mendes went on to make with Brasil '66 for A&M, from 1966 to 1972, nearly all went gold or platinum.

He reconnected with Lani Hall, acting as producer of her vocals on the title song for the James Bond film "Never Say Never Again.".

The Mendes sound was deceptively sophisticated rhythmically but gentle on the ears, suavely amplifying the original guitar-centered murmur of bossa nova with expansive keyboard-driven arrangements and cooing vocal lines that usually included Mr. Mendes himself chiming in alongside a front line of two female singers.

Diagnosed with osteomyelitis, an inflammation of bone tissue, when he was 3, he spent the next three years in a cast until his father was able to obtain the newly discovered "wonder drug," penicillin, for him. Young Sergio became one of the first to take it in Brazil, and he was cured.

One afternoon in 1956, at a friend's house, he heard the Dave Brubeck Quartet's record "Take Five" and was smitten with jazz.

He began playing with a local dance band at 17, and he continued to play jazz in every sort of venue around Niterói before finally venturing across the bay to Rio by ferry, to substitute for a friend at a new club, Bottles Bar, in the city's infamous Flying Bottles Lane, a strip of tiny nightclubs in the Copacabana entertainment district that was known for its rough crowds but was also where some of the best bossa nova could be heard.

A pianist, composer and arranger, he rose to fame with the group Brasil '66 and remained a force in popular music for more than six decades.

In the 21st century, he reignited his career once more through collaborations with a host of young artists, including the Black Eyed Peas, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, India.Arie, John Legend, Justin Timberlake, Q-Tip and Pharrell Williams.

Sérgio Mendes gave his final performances in November 2023.

In the HBO documentary, he recalled coming through the doors that night and seeing a young woman onstage playing the guitar and singing. "Wow, what an incredible voice," he remembered thinking. "Very different." He introduced himself to her, learned that her name was Lani Hall, and invited her to become the lead singer of his new group. "Well," she said, "you'll have to ask my father." Ms. Hall was 19 at the time.

The title track of the group's biggest seller (Brasil '66), their version of the Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill," released in 1968, sold four million copies as a single. Sergio Mendes later received a letter from Paul McCartney thanking him for his arrangement of the song.

Mendes received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2005 and won another competitive Grammy in 2010 for the album "Bom Tempo" as best Brazilian contemporary pop album - a category he himself had virtually invented.