The Great Arrival - Sergio Mendes

 

Morning

The Great Arrival

Sergio Mendes

Brazil's Leading Pianist Plays The Arrangements of Clare Fischer, Bob Florence and Richard Hazard

Cover Photos: Otto Stupakoff

Album Design: Marvin Israel

Supervision: Nesuhi Ertegun

Recording Engineer: John Norman

Recorded in Hollywood, California 

Atlantic 1466

1966

From the inside cover: I think I shall never cease to be amazed by the new-breed young Brazilians I meet. They are so exciting – so today. The girls seem a merry mixture of Paris chic, "Yé Yé" cool, life, intelligence and Latin beauty. The young men are black-eyed, serious, sensitive, talented and unusually humane. Their music is their cause. They sing to it, dance to it, cry to it and make love to it. The Brazilian song is their song – well, at least it started out that way. Now it is clear that the pop music of Brazil has taken possession of North Americans and people all over the world and become a very special part of their lives. It surely has taken possession of me and become a very special part of my life, too. And so, I heard The Great Arrival of Sergio Mendes, a most talented Brazilian young blood, who, with his lovely wife and two thriving children (and piano), is making his home in California.

To the credit of producer Nesuhi Ertegun, who I suspect is similarly 'possessed' by the Brazil thing," nothing has been spared in bringing us the full jazz and lyrical artistry of Sergio Mendes. This album includes a full-orchestra exploration of some of the most exciting new Brazilian song from the guitars of Lobo and Santos I have heard (and I might add, dream of writing worthy English lyrics for) since the songs of Jobim and Lyra touched down on the U.S. scene via their Varig jet a few years ago. To add to it, Mendes brings his Brazil to some of the tastiest Bacharach pop around as well as to the striking newborns of arranger-composer Clare Fischer, Antonio Jobim and Neal Hefti.

Sergio Mendes is from the capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro, called Niteroi, just across the bay from Ipanema Beach (you know, Ipanema, where the tall and tan go to be ogled by the short and pale). The story goes that composer Jobim heard Mendes play, liked him and invited him into a circle of musicians in Rio who were then creating the new musical style which came to be known as bossa nova. Sergio came to the U.S. in 1964 chaperoned by still another possessed American, Richard Adler, who is now his devoted manager. Atlantic Records of New York wisely signed him and recorded him. The rest is LP 1466: The Great Arrival, and indeed it is. – Norman Gimbel

The Great Arrival (Cheganca) - Bob Florence

Monday, Monday - Bob Florence

Carnaval - Clare Fischer

Cancao Do Amanhecer - Dick Hazard

Here's That Rainy Day - Dick Hazard

Boranda - Clare Fischer

Nana - Bob Florence

Bonita - Dick Hazard

Morning - Clare Fischer

Don't Go Breaking My Heart - Bob Florence

Tristeza De Amar - Dick Hazard

Girl Talk - Clare Fischer