Sergio Mendes, the Brazilian-born pianist, composer and arranger who brought bossa nova music to a global audience in the 1960s through his ensemble, Brasil ‘66, and remained a force in popular music for more than six decades, died Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 83.

His family said in a statement that his death, in a hospital, was caused by long COVID.

Mendes released more than 30 albums, won three Grammys and was nominated for an Academy Award in 2012 for best original song (as co-writer of “Real in Rio,” from the animated film “Rio”).

His career in America took flight in 1966 with Brasil ‘66 and the single “Mas Que Nada,” written by Brazilian singer-songwriter Jorge Ben. 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 Mendes chiming in alongside a front line of two female singers.

The group’s lilting, sensual pulse came to embody an adult contemporary cool in the 1960s that contrasted pointedly with the ascendant youth culture that dominated the pop charts in the wake of the Beatles.

“It was completely different from anything, and definitely completely different from rock ‘n’ roll,” Latin music scholar Leila Cobo observed in the 2020 HBO documentary “Sergio Mendes in the Key of Joy.” “But that speaks to how certain Sergio was of that sound. He didn’t try to imitate what was going on.”

After venturing to the United States for the first time in 1962 to perform at a bossa nova concert at Carnegie Hall in New York on a bill with many of the music’s innovators — including his mentor, composer Antonio Carlos Jobim — Mendes ultimately returned to Brazil, only to flee in 1964 in the wake of a violent military coup that witnessed his own brief arrest.

He then recorded and toured America with a new ensemble, Brasil ‘65, but he was generating only tepid audience response when the other members of his band decided to head home to Brazil. Mendes stayed behind; he wanted to try one more time for American success.

His last gig with the group was in Chicago at a club called Mother Blues. 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.” Hall was 19 at the time.

After securing her father’s reluctant permission, Hall flew with Mendes to Los Angeles and went to work. Mendes later brought in a second singer, Brazilian-born Bibi Vogel. “When I heard the two girls singing together,” he said, “I thought, ‘Man, I really like this sound.’ The more we rehearsed, the more I thought, ‘This is so good!’”

The group, newly named Brasil ‘66, made its debut at a resort in the Bahamas — and was paid to stop playing by the management after patrons complained that they could not dance to their music.

A chastened Mendes brought the band back to Los Angeles. Almost immediately, he received an invitation to audition Brasil ‘66 for trumpeter Herb Alpert’s new record label, A&M. Alpert signed them on the spot. The album that ensued, “Herb Alpert Presents Sergio Mendes & Brasil ‘66,” quickly went gold on the strength of “Mas Que Nada” and other tracks that would become staples of the band’s repertoire, including “Going Out of My Head,” and “One-Note Samba.”

In 2011, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

“Their sound was captivating,” Alpert reflected in the documentary, “a hybrid of Brazilian music, a little bit of jazz, folk, African, blues. It had all of those elements. And then, to top it off, it had this fabulous singer, Lani Hall. I just fell in love with the sound. It was very, very, unusually special.”

Sergio Santos Mendes was born in Niteroi, Brazil, on Feb. 11, 1941, the son of a physician. 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. Mendes became one of the first to take it in Brazil, and he was cured.

Still 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. 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.

Audiences at a nearby club, Lojas Murray, sometimes took up collections to pay Mendes’ ferry fare home. Soon he was hosting influential Sunday afternoon jam sessions at another Bottles Lane venue, the Little Club. This led to the formation of the Bossa Rio Sextet, a jazz unit that very quickly became popular across Brazil and recorded the album “Você Ainda Não Iuviu Nada!” (“You Haven’t Heard Anything Yet!”), released in 1962. With arrangements by Jobim and Mendes, it was one of the first albums to mix bossa nova with a jazz ensemble.

In November of that year, both men went to the U.S. for the first time to perform at Carnegie Hall. The next night, at Birdland, New York’s preeminent jazz club, Mendes met celebrated alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, who invited him to stick around and not go right back to Brazil so that they could record together. The resulting album, “Cannonball’s Bossa Nova,” released in 1963, brought Mendes to the attention of Nesuhi Ertegun, vice president in charge of jazz at Atlantic Records, who signed Mendes to a contract and produced his first American release under his own name, “The Swinger From Rio,” recorded in late 1964 and released in 1966.

The subsequent signing of Brasil ‘66 with A&M left a contractual tangle that Ertegun equably resolved by retaining rights to Mendes’ instrumental records only. 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. The title track of the group’s biggest seller, their version of the Beatles’ “The Fool on the Hill,” released in 1968, sold 4 million copies as a single. Mendes later received a letter from Paul McCartney thanking him for his arrangement of the song.

That same year, an appearance on the Academy Awards broadcast performing Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “The Look of Love” boosted Mendes and Brasil ‘66 to international attention. Hall left the band in 1970, having fallen in love with Alpert, whom she would marry three years later.

Mendes continued to record, with and without his ensemble, for more than 50 years. He performed at the White House, toured with Frank Sinatra and, after a late-1970s lull, scored a Top 10 hit in 1983 with “Never Gonna Let You Go,” a pop song written by Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann and sung on Mendes’ recording by Joe Pizzulo and Leeza Miller. He also reconnected with Hall that year, acting as producer of her vocals on the title song for the James Bond film “Never Say Never Again.”

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

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 had virtually invented.

Mendes is survived by his wife of 50 years, Gracinha Leporace, who had replaced Hall in Brazil ‘66; their two children, Tiago and Gustavo; three children from a first marriage that ended in divorce: Bernardo, Rodrigo and Isabella; and seven grandchildren.

Mendes could never escape the limpid allure of his Brasil ‘66 sound — nor did he ever try to — but his long recording career was a journey of exploration. “He doesn’t go backward,” Hall once insisted, in summing him up. “He goes forward. All the time.”

Describing his music, Mendes once said: “The word is ‘joy.’ ‘Alegria.’ The next party. I’m ready.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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