Lani Hall is a jazz-pop vocalist who is best known as the lead singer of Brazilian pop star Sérgio Mendes' group Brasil '66. She's also known as record company executive and trumpeter Herb Alpert's wife. But she's also made a number of solo albums that gained a lot of respect from those who heard them.
Ms. Hall was discovered by Mendes, when he caught her performance of hers at a coffee house in her hometown of Chicago. She was barely twenty years old at the time. Mendes invited her to come to Los Angeles as part of the new group he was performing, Brasil '66. She took him up on his offer, and within a few months, the new group released its first LP on A&M Reocrds, the label founded by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss.
Brasil '66's music can best be described as mod parlor music with a bossa nova beat. Their first hit was "Mas Que Nada" ("which means "more than nothing"), written by Jorge Nada. Brasil '66 hit their stride with material penned by Mendes and/or Alan and Marilyn Bergman - 1969's "Pretty World," a Bergman translation of a song by Antonio Adolfo and Tibério Gaspar, and 1968's "Look Around," which the Bergmans wrote with Mendes, are two examples - but Brasil '66 also scored with hit cover versions of songs from Cole Porter and Simon and Garfunkel. They also did numerous Beatles covers; "The Fool On the Hill" was a big hit for Brasil '66 in early 1968, though it omitted crucial final verse that explains the song's meaning. And Lani Hall was the dominant voice on all of these records.
Lani Hall and Sérgio Mendes parted ways in the seventies - his Brasil '77 records featured female vocalists who sort of sounded like Ms. Hall but not quite the same - as Ms. Hall embarked on a solo career, marrying Herb Alpert in 1973. Her first solo album, 1972's Sun Down Lady, did not disappoint, as Ms. Hall brought her jazzy touch to covers of songs from Lesley Duncan, Elton John, and Don McLean (she covered "Vincent"). She followed that up in 1975 with Hello It's Me, featuring a Todd Rundgren cover for the title track and also covers of Joni Mitchell and Carole King songs." It also features "Sweet Jams and Jellies," a song Ms. Hall wrote herself. Subsequent albums, including 1976's Sweet Bird and 1979's Double or Nothing, continued this pattern.
She's made a few albums with her husband, and in 1983 she recorded the title song for the unofficial James Bond movie Never Say Never Again . . . coincidentally, at the same time Sérgio Mendes had a Top Ten Hit - "Never Gonna Let You Go," written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil - with two vocalists (Joe Pizzulo and Lisa Miller, for the record) performing it as a duet. She reunited with Mendes by singing on "Dreamer" (with Herb Alpert on trumpet) his 2008 album Encanto, which top the Billboard jazz album chart.
Lani Hall and Herb Alpert formed their own band in 2007, and they have performed and toured regularly since. In 2012 she also published a book, "Emotional Memoirs & Short Stories," a collection of her fictional and non-fictional stories about women coping with life. And at age 73, Lani Hall is still going strong.
Fun fact: Lani Hall recorded numerous Spanish-language albums in the 1980s. "Corazón Encadenado," a song she recorded with Camilo Sesto, earned her a Grammy in 1984, and her 1985 album Es Fácil Amar, produced by Gibraltarian singer-songwriter Albert Hammond, won her a Grammy for Best Latin Pop Performance. (The title track is in fact a translation of Leo Sayer's 1977 song "Easy To Love," written by Hammond and Sayer.) She even sang a duet with José Feliciano. Here's the kicker: She doesn't speak Spanish. She just sings the words. :-D
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