The Music of Brazil!

Ten years after first topping the charts with "Delicado," and having taken a couple of trips to Mexico in the interim, Percy Faith returned to Brazil on this stirring collection, which gave him the chance to revisit "Delicado" in a lively stereo treatment. He opened the collection, though, with "Brazil (Aquarela do Brasil)," Xavier Cugat's 1943 hit, and that gave a good indication of his approach. This was not an album that responded to the new samba craze, despite being released on the heels of Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd's chart-topping Jazz Samba, and thus, in a marketing sense, taking advantage of that trend. Rather, it looked back to the days of the Good Neighbor Policy of the early 1940s, re-creating the Brazilian swing of Cugat, Jimmy Dorsey, and the Disney movie Saludos Amigos and its hit theme "Tico-Tico." Of course, with a giant orchestra at his disposal, Faith was able to produce arrangements that the '40s bandleaders could only dream of, but his style was still rooted in theirs. And the result was often thrilling, as the Latin beats gave unusual vigor to the strings and horns, with other instruments (notably, a fleet-fingered guitar on "Amorada (Brasileirinho)") adding excitement. It might be thought of as easy listening music, but this was really neo-swing in the Cugat tradition.