Sergio Mendes, Brazilian hitmaker of the 1960s, dies at 83

Sergio Mendes speaks onstage at Reel To Reel: Sergio Mendes: In The Key Of Joy at The Grammy Museum on March 11, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. Photo / Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Sergio Mendes, a Brazilian pianist, composer and arranger whose group Brasil ‘66 offered a tropical-flavoured countermelody to the hard edge of rock ‘n’ roll in the late 1960s and who had a late-career resurgence, recording with younger performers who found an enduring appeal in his music, died on September 5 in hospital in Los Angeles. He was 83.

His family released a statement saying he had complications from Long Covid.

Mendes was a protege of Brazilian bossa nova maestro Antonio Carlos Jobim and, by his late teens, was leading jazz combos in Rio de Janeiro, often performing with visiting American musicians.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1964 – the same year Astrud Gilberto’s The Girl From Ipanema, recorded with jazz saxophonist Stan Getz, propelled bossa nova into the mainstream. Mendes drew on his varied influences to craft a new sound, adding two female vocalists, Bibi Vogel and Lani Hall, to his group, which he called Brasil ‘66.

Some of the songs were in Portuguese, some were in English, but all of them were driven along by Mendes’s piano and infectious Brazilian rhythms, with the vocals wafting like a summer breeze.

“I love the sound of two girls singing together,” he told the Austin American-Statesman in 2022. “So that became my trademark and a sound that I’ve kept until now.”

His 1966 album, Herb Alpert Presents Sergio Mendes and Brasil ‘66, was co-produced by Alpert, a record executive and trumpeter then leading the popular group Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

With an eclectic blend of Brazilian music and pop tunes, the album sold more than 500,000 copies and was later named to the Grammy Hall of Fame. The songs Goin’ Out of My Head and Mas Que Nada – a Brazilian expression roughly meaning “No way!” – became hits.

“People didn’t know what [Mas Que Nada] meant, and it didn’t matter,” Mendes told the Los Angeles Times in 2021. “It just made people feel good.”

Suddenly, Mendes was an international star, appearing on television specials and touring the world.

“Sergio walked through the door that Stan Getz had opened with Girl From Ipanema,” Alpert told The Washington Post in 2006. “His music was very engaging and unique. He turned people on to a whole new form of music.”

Mendes had four straight gold albums, including Look Around (1967), which included a version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s The Look of Love, with singer Janis Hansen’s breathy lead vocal soaring over layers of percussion, brass instruments and swelling strings. After Mendes and his group performed the song at the 1968 Academy Awards show, it soon surpassed Dusty Springfield’s earlier version and rose to No 4 on the Billboard pop chart.

Brasil ‘66 had a string of other hits in the late 1960s – fresh arrangements of the Beatles’ The Fool on the Hill and With a Little Help from My Friends; Otis Redding’s (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay; and Simon and Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair – and for a few years, the group was almost as popular as the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

“It surprised everybody, including myself,” Mendes told The Post. “But it was a good surprise, having a worldwide-accepted sound.”

His music evoked the ‘60s of chic outfits and cocktail parties by the pool, rather than of counterculture protests in the streets. Mendes toured with Frank Sinatra and Alpert, who married Hall, one of the original Brasil ‘66 singers.

By the early 1970s, the pop stardom began to fade. Mendes reconstituted his group as Brasil ‘77, but he seemed to be almost a musical footnote until 1983, when he released a self-titled album that included the song Never Gonna Let You Go, by Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann. Sung as a duet by Joe Pizzulo and Leeza Miller, the tune floated on a sea of synthesisers and sounded nothing like Mendes’s hits from the ‘60s. Still, it hit No 4 on the pop chart and brought renewed attention to Mendes.

He returned to Brazil for inspiration for his 1992 recording, Brasileiro, which won a Grammy Award for best world album. He later won two Latin Grammys, including one for lifetime achievement.

In 1997, the early Brasil ‘66 hit Mas Que Nada was featured in the first Austin Powers satirical spy film. It provided the musical backdrop as the lead character, a British secret agent played by Mike Myers, arrives in Las Vegas and drives his convertible down the neon-lit Strip, exulting, “Viva Las Vegas, baby! Yeah!”

Piano was ‘a joy for me’

Sergio Santos Mendes was born February 11, 1941, in Niteroi, Brazil, across a bay from Rio de Janeiro. His father, a doctor, was a strict disciplinarian who once shaved his son’s head when he did poorly in school.

As a boy, Sergio had the bone disease osteomyelitis in one of his legs and wore a cast for three years. He found a refuge in music, encouraged by his mother.

“I couldn’t play ball or bicycle, none of that stuff,” he told the Austin newspaper. “So when the piano came to the house, it was a joy for me to be able to sit down and play and learn piano. It was the perfect thing for me.”

He studied classical piano in a Brazilian conservatory for several years and was about 15 when someone gave him a record by American jazz musician Dave Brubeck.

“That changed my life,” Mendes later said.

He began listening to other jazz musicians – Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Art Tatum – and soon was leading groups in Rio, where he met many of his musical idols. By then, Jobim, Joao Gilberto and other Brazilian musicians were developing the new bossa nova sound, which Mendes quickly adopted as his own.

The music spread worldwide, spurred in part by a seminal 1962 album by Getz and guitarist Charlie Byrd, Jazz Samba. That year, Mendes made his first trip to the United States, performing with other bossa nova musicians in New York, where he recorded with saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley.

In 1964, after the Brazilian Government was overthrown in a military coup, Mendes left the country and settled in Los Angeles. One of the carpenters who helped build a music studio in his home was a struggling actor named Harrison Ford.

Mendes continued to experiment with different kinds of music over the years, including an unlikely collaboration with Will Adams, better known as will.i.am, the frontman of the hip-hop group Black Eyed Peas. In 2006, he produced a new album for Mendes, which included appearances by such musical stars as Justin Timberlake, Erykah Badu, Stevie Wonder, John Legend, Jill Scott and Q-Tip.

In 2012, Mendes received an Oscar nomination for best original song for Real in Rio, from the animated film Rio, and also wrote music for the sequel, Rio 2.

Survivors include his wife of more than 50 years, Gracinha Leporace, a one-time Brasil ‘66 singer; their two children; three children from an earlier marriage that ended in divorce; and seven grandchildren.

Mendes released more than 40 albums and maintained a busy touring schedule until recent months.

“Being melodic was part of my life,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2004. “You hear Brazilian music even today, there’s magic about it.”