Despite achieving his international fame in the U.S., Mendes was still enough of a Brazilian icon to work with Pele scoring the football legend’s 1977 documentary. He was also jazz enough to recruit Gerry Mulligan to play on it. Jazz fans might wish Scheinfeld discussed those original sessions more, but most Brazilians will be more interested in his reunion with Pele, which is captured in the film.
Originally in Brazil, Mendes was mentored by Tom Jobim, but he left to pursue a musical career in the USA, as a way to escape the stifling climate under the military regime. His Brasil ’65 band sounded more like the classic bossa artists, but it had trouble catching on. However, the soft, warm vocals of Brasil ’66 were an immediate hit for A&M. The label owner-producer Herb Alpert was also quite interested in Brasil ‘66’s vocalist, Lani Hall (his future wife). Much like Mendes features prominently in Mr. A & Mr. M: The Story of A&M Records, Alpert and Hall are logically heard from throughout Key of Joy.
Scheinfeld does a nice job covering the greatest hits of Mendes’s career and the ups-and-downs of his life. The last half-hour or so is largely dominated by Mendes’s collaborations with the likes of Will.i.am, Common, and John Legend, but unlike documentary rip-offs of Tony Bennett’s Duets, these sessions each came about organically, in very different contexts, rather than as a contrived gimmick to bestow new commerciality on an older artist.
