Deodato - Prelude (1972)

Artista: Eumir Deodato

Álbum: Prelude
Año: 1972
Género: Latin Jazz - Funk
Duración: 33:36
Nacionalidad: Brasil

Lista de Temas:
1 Also Sprach Zarathustra
2 Spirit of Summer
3 Carly & Carole
4 Baubles, Bangles and Beads
5 Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
6 September 13 – Eumir Deodato

Alineación:
- Eumir Deodato / keyboards, electric piano
- Jay Berliner / guitar
- Stanley Clarke / bass
- Airto Moreira / percussion, strings & horns
- Ron Carter / bass
- Ray Barretto / percussion
- John Tropea / electric guitar
- Billy Cobham / drums
With:
Hubert Laws / flute

Y ya que empezamos el día con Latin Jazz, Alberto nos trae más de Deodato, un disco donde, entre otras cosas, está la versión original de "Asi Hablaba Zaratustra" de la banda de sonido de la película "Desde El Jardín", aquella maravilloso film de Peter Sellers, además de "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" basada en una composición de Claude Debussy, y otra vez con grandes músicos alrededor: Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham, Airto Moreira, etc.

Eumir Deodato (22 de junio de 1943, Río de Janeiro) es un músico brasileño, productor y compositor de arreglos basados principalmente en el jazz, pero conocido por su diseño y composiciones eclécticas de la unión de diversos géneros musicales, como el rock, el pop, el R&B, el Jazz-funk y la música de orquesta.
Principalmente, sus temas pueden considerarse pop jazz y también covers. Su éxito como artista original se dio en los años 70 y desde entonces ha producido más de 500 álbumes para bandas como Kool & the Gang y Björk. Intérprete de temas como Así Hablaba Zaratustra y otros éxitos, y arreglista instrumental para artistas como Frank Sinatra y Vinícius de Moraes.

Wikipedia

Vamos con algún comentario en inglés, un video y al disco por favor...

Prelude is the album that established Deodato as a solo artist. It begins with Also Sprach Zarathrustra (2001), which was a big hit for him. The song starts off with some ethereal keys before the drums come in and the horns start that trademark crescendo. After that Deodato really gets down on the electric piano. The best track though is September 13 with its drum break intro, bouncing bass line and some strong solos, plus there’s a short breakdown in the middle. The rest of the album is too mellow for me. Ron Carter, Stanley Clarke, Jay Berliner, Billy Cobham, Airto, Ray Barretto, and Hubert Laws all appeared on Prelude.

Soulstrut

Few movies fanned the flame of pre-Microsoft paranoia about man vs. machine quite the way 2001: A Space Odyssey did when it was released in 1968. Though Neil Armstrong’s walk in space was imminent, the movie’s sparse dialogue and chilling cinematography addressed far more than space technology: artificial intelligence and human evolution were the more critical topics that sparked people’s fearful imaginations.
Though it was met with mixed reviews when it was released, the movie has been retrospectively called one of the greats of all time, particularly in the science fiction genre. And its theme song, “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” though composed as a tone poem in 1896 by Richard Strauss, is as well-known to the masses today as the theme from Rocky or “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Part of the song’s popular evolution came from an unlikely melding of jazz fusion and disco. In 1972, it was Eumir Deodato, a Brazilian-born keyboard player, who fused the sounds of the nightclub and Latin jazz together and created the version of Also Sprach Zarathustra that became a pop music classic. The single, which rose to #2 on the Billboard chart and won a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental, sold several million copies.The album version, which clocked in at over 9 minutes, fueled the sales of his first US release, Prelude, to a level of 5 million copies sold.
Following the single on side one are two Deodato-penned tunes: “Spirit of Summer” and “Carly and Carole.” Recalling that Prelude was recorded at a time in American popular culture when the Odd Couple was the Friday night hit on TV, you can hum Neal Hefti’s theme song and hear, with some slight variations, most of what Deodato laid down on Prelude‘s first side: an easy listening, lounging about the New York apartment vibe that sounds like a combination of Bob James and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
On side two, Deodato returns to classical music and movies as his source of inspiration, relaxing into a version of the George Forrest/Robert Wright chestnut, “Baubles, Bangles and Beads” (taken from the musical, Kismet, and based on Borodin’s “String Quartet In D”). Hubert Laws’ flute takes center stage on Deodato’s articulate reading of Debussy’s “Prelude to an Afternoon of a Faun” while John Tropea’s guitar steals the spotlight on the album’s last cut, “September 13.”
It’s on “September 13″ where, belatedly, the album takes on some life: Billy Cobham lays down a groove in keeping with his solo work, Tropea plays a smoking guitar and the horn arrangement, which echoes some of Quincy Jones‘ work from that period, frames the tune nicely.
While the top quality musicians from the CTI Records are there in full force (Tropea, Laws, Cobham, Ray Barretto and Stanley Clarke), Prelude suffers from being too polite and too restrained for too long. Sadly, Ray Baretto’s NY street vibe didn’t inspire Deodato quite as much as would’ve been beneficial.

Fusion 45