That’s Eumir Deodato tickling the plastic horse teeth. He’s from Brazil. He’s been around for what seems like forever, doing his thing. He was mostly an arranger and producer of records. He made records with everyone from Frank Sinatra to Kool and the Gang.

He eventually got around to making his own records in a serious way. In 1973, his first album sold five million copies and won a Grammy. It had his very funky version of Also Sprach Zarathustra on it, which was notably featured in Being There. If you thought using Also Sprach in 2001: A Space Odyssey was brilliant, well, using this version of it in Being There was genius.

The TooYube clip is just the song laid over a truncated clip from the movie, but in the original, it weaves in and out of the dialog and street noise, and lasts a lot longer. It’s the most effective melding of music and film footage I’ve ever seen.

The first video is a performance of Super Strut. It’s much less recognizable than ASZ, but it was a modest hit in the US, too. It’s on Deodato’s second album, which is delightfully odd, with jazz covers of Knights in White Satin, Rhapsody in Blue, and a Ravel piece.

I gather that Eumir tours like a lot of old Blues musicians used to. He travels on his own, and expects whoever puts on the show to assemble a band for him to play with. Chuck Berry used to do that, too. In the first video, Deodato is playing with the Euro Groove Department, who are definitely up to the job. There are many videos of Deodato performing the song online with less capable musicians.

The drummer is terrific, but one can’t help but notice that Deodato gets up and goes to the john or something until the drum solo is over. I cast no aspersions. The audience mostly does during any drum solo, so why can’t the other musicians?