Rosa Maria – Samba Maneiro
Brazil – Tapecar – CS 376 Year 1973
Track 1 Samba Maneiro
Track 2 Alegria De Poeta
I feel many of these incredible artists, who in my opinion are the top singers and performers of the time, seem to be constantly hidden in a faraway past, with very minimal traces of timelines and successes. Perhaps there’s some personal experiences that should stay in the past? Or maybe in some places, those pivotal moments and events that happened, are still living strong in many hearts, and that’s enough? Perhaps in Brazil, Rosa Maria is still celebrated and gets the recognition she deserves? But to an outsider and fan like myself, that today lives and breathes this music, and who really wants to learn more and more about the artist, it really is a struggle to find facts and details, as is the case with this wonderful singer. I was grateful to discover an interview she did for Museu da Pessoa in 2012. I have referenced some of this information from that source and have tried to translate as best as I can, but please forgive me if I have misinterpreted anything.
This truly is one of my most prized Brazilian records, and one that gets played a lot, and will always excite me on every drop. So here’s what I can find out the lovely Rosa Maria.
Rosa Maria Batista de Souza was born Febuary 27, 1945, in Machado, Minas Gerais, a large inland state in south eastern Brazil, and was the daughter of Jorge Batista de Souza and Armanda Costa de Souza. When she was three years old, her mother took her to the Tabuleiro da Baiana in Rio de Janeiro, where a children’s singing contest was being run. She sang Chiquita Bacana, which was popular at the time by Emilinha Borba, and won first place. It was always in her blood. Her parents separated when she was very young, and Rosa would live with her paternal grandmother in Machado, until she passed (on the day of the feast of São Pedro). Rosa was only 8 when she passed away. “It was the biggest tragedy of my life! It was torture. She was everything to me. My ground, my sky, everything”.* Rosa then move in with her father, in Sao Paulo, and this part of her life sounds like a particular difficult time for her. Her father had “many wives”, but Rosa says she really struggled with a particular step mother that wasn’t a nice person to her at all, especially when she was growing into a young lady, which I feel must have been a frightful experience for Rosa.
She started working in her father’s dry cleaning business, and at the age of 9, and was responsible for the employees, with all the money she made going back to her father. At the age of 12, the Juvenile Court came to pick her up. The first days spent in the court were frightening and terrible for Rosa. The girls were the worst they had. She didn’t mix with the offenders, so they would burn her with cigarettes and hurt her with needles. Rosa would spend time at a boarding school and working at a plastics factory. But soon she would be offered a place to stay at Pensionato Maria Gertrudes. She describes this time as wonderful and the best phase of her life, because there she would get to study. She would take courses in ceramics, botany, cooking and embroidery. It was subsidized by Diários Associados, TV Tupi and Radio Difusora. And on the corner was Wilma Bentivegna’s house, and when she came home, passing by on the street, the girls would say: “Wilma’s there!” Rosa would run upstairs to the bathroom to sing, to see if she could find her. But Mrs. Maria José said that she shouldn’t and couldn’t be a singer, and that Rosa had to be a teacher. She said that a singer was a slut!
The Diários Associados would send the records that the radio stations no longer wanted, to the Pensionato. These would land into the hands of a very excited Rosa, and this is how she discovered and became infatuated and hooked with classical music, jazz, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra and so many more artists. She would learn and sing along to all the great songs and arrangements.
Some time passed, Rosa had turned 18, and she would decide to move back to Rio de Janeiro and live with her mother. Rosa describes her mother as a very bubbly person, who liked people, long nails, and painting herself a la Carnival, but it was sad for her to see her mother drinking beer, and going to the Carnival. Rosa hated it and knew she was the exact opposite of her mother. She would struggle living in a house with so many rooms and being so close to domestic fighting and arguing. She just wanted to sing!
With all her books and a Barsa (English Portuguese) dictionary she had bought, Rosa studied long and hard, and soon she would be giving classes around the community teaching English, and making some money. She taught in the mornings and afternoons and would look for more work during the day. She was always trying to search for her dream, trying to get spots on the local radio shows. The first time she went to Rádio Mairinque Veiga, on a program called Papel Carbono, she thought it a good idea to do a Angela Maria piece. She was “gonged” but that didn’t make the determined Rosa give up. At Rádio Tupi, where Rossini Pinto presented Today É Dia de Brotos, she sang a song in English and another in Portuguese. Pinto of course invited her back. **
He would introduce Rosa Maria to Jair de Thaumaturgo, one of the main broadcasters from Rádio Mairinque Veiga, where he had a program called Alô Brotos that featured young singers playing rock music, and this is how it is said Rosa got introduced to TV interest. In 1964, the artist started to collaborate for TV Tupi and TV Rio, and in 67 she was hired by TV Record. Many were proposing Rosa to perform American music including conductor, arranger, DJ and singer Erlon Chaves who had a program called Embalo. Rosa was popular on Blota Júnior’s music game show Essa Noite se Improvisa also around this time. This family favourite show aired on Thursday nights for 3 years, and every week, 6 music guests would come on arguing facts about songs and lyrics. Some artists had a prodigious musical memory and would always win. This was the case of Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Carlos Imperial, Silvio César, Rosa Maria and the MPB4 group (Música Popular Brasileira 4), who would always be represented by one of its members, Aquiles. Rosa recalls how she was treated with great affection and attention because they knew where she had came from. “In my first show with Wilson Simonal, he took care of me”. Through television, she was discovered by Roberto Menescal and André Midani, who saw her and invited her to record their first album.
But while all this radio and TV direction was developing, Rosa had already started her music career, singing bossa nova and jazz at the infamous Beco das Garrafas, the name given to a cul-de-sac on Duvivier Street, which housed a group of popular nightclubs in the 50’s and 60’s. This was the meeting place for young Brazilian musicians including Sergio Mendes, Luis Carlos, Bebeto and Wilson das Neves and so many more. Also many now legendary singers would meet here including Elis Regina, Jorge Ben, Sylvia Telles and Simonal.
Bossa Nova was the bones of this exciting movement, but the fact is, that almost all of those artists from the lane, really liked jazz. Bossa would present a handful of songs that would serve as standards, but with so many musicians meeting and exchanging experiences and ideas daily, a revolution and new progression that would be the keynote in the 60’s, would form, a new Samba Jazz style. Groups began to emerge, such as the Tamba Trio, the Bossa Três , by Luís Carlos Vinhas, the Sextet by Sérgio Mendes and Sambossa 5 among dozens of others.
Rosa adapted well to the Bossa, Samba and jazz repertoire, and in 1965 she recorded her first EP for Odeon, which included the upbeat Tudo Rosa and also Vai Em Paz, a cover of Walk On By composed by Burt Bacharach. The following year she released the single of Pãozinho Do Leblon with the very great Samba Jovem on the B side. Also 1966 would see her first LP by the name of Uma Rosa Com Bossa and would included the outstanding tracks Capoeira De Oxalá, Minha Filosofia, Fica Só Comigo (with Wilson Simonal) and the brilliant Peter Gunn themed O Grito. This album is so rich and timeless. Orchestrated by João Theodoro Meirelles, composer, arranger, saxophonist and flutist, credited as one of the originators of Samba-Jazz and an important figure in the Bossa Nova movement. And produced by Lyrio Panicali, conductor, arranger and pianist. This would be her only LP release for quite some, up until 1980 on the release of Vagando. But she would release over a dozen singles before that LP release, and some are real rippers, with standouts from 1972, Deixa não deixa and Avenida Atlantica, and also the big Rio Da Felicidade in 1976.
Rosa’s first musical theater experience was in 68, in the production Hair. “It was a revolutionary piece. People were naked. I didn’t get naked because I was already a singer and it wasn’t good for my image to be naked, but a lot of actors did. It was a wonderful experience, it made me smarter about the world.”* She would perform in Hair for a good year.
From the beginning of the 80’s, Rosa Maria established herself as a jazz singer, playing alongside the Traditional Jazz Band. She would release 8 more LP’s from 1980 to 1992. A department store TV commercial in 1988 that included her version of California Dreamin by The Mamas & The Papas, lifted her to the top of the charts. In the late 90’s Rosa changed her name to Rosa Marya Colyn. In 1991, she was honored in her birthplace, Machado, in the state of Minas Gerais, in a gala night at the Clube dos 30, with the Cidade Presépio Award, for her body of work. She would also appear on a few popular TV shows over the years, presenting her acting talent.
I strongly suggest for readers to have a listen to the Rosa Maria interview linked below from 2012. It’s lovely hearing and watching her talk. You can clearly see her eyes light up when things were good, and get that understanding when they weren’t so good. I loved learning a bit more about the wonderful Rosa Maria.
-del Piero
*Museu da Pessoa Project: Suburbia – Rede Globo
https://acervo.museudapessoa.org/pt/conteudo/historia/a-consciencia-negra-de-rosa-marya-colin-47551
A consciência negra de Rosa Marya Colin (you tube link)
** Rossini Pinto was one of the most important names in the Jovem Guarda movement, and helped establish several artists, including Roberto Carlos and Erasmo Carlos, with his own compositions and Portuguese versions of British and American rock songs.
JEAN JACQUES PERREY E.V.A.
Vanguard 3637 Brazil 1973 33 1/3 RPM
Jean-Jacques Perrey, was born in a little village in northern France, on January 20 1929, and received his first musical instrument, an accordion, when he was just 4, as a Christmas present. He would go on to teach himself to play the piano by ear, although he did once attempt to study music at the Amiens Conservatory, but was kicked out for violating school rules by performing in public.
Perrey must have had some sort of epiphany in Paris in 1952, after meeting inventor Georges Jenny. In 1941, the Frenchman had come up with the Ondioline, a very unique vacuum-tube powered electronic keyboard, suspended on special springs which made it possible to introduce a natural vibrato if the player moved the keyboard from side to side with their playing hand. The result was a beautiful, almost human-like expressive vibrato.
Perrey, who at the time was a student of medicine, must have realised that it was actually the science of electronic sound, that was really giving him a buzz, as opposed to the science of medicine. Upon that first meeting, Jenny must have enjoyed Perrey’s excitement towards this new instrument and actually gave him one to take home for six months, to see what someone with Perrey’s mind and talent could do with it. On the return, Jenny was quite impressed, and probably never heard anyone play it like he did. Perrey ditched his medical studies and Jenny hired him as a salesman and demonstrator of the new instrument. Out of these demonstrations grew a cabaret act in which Perrey played piano and Ondioline, at times simultaneously. Titled Around the World in 80 Ways, the show was quite popular and Perrey took it on tour throughout western Europe. Working the nightclub circuit, Perrey became acquainted with singer/songwriter Charles Trenet and also legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhart, who he ended up recording several songs with, one of which, The Soul of a Poet, became a major hit in Europe.
One night after a presentation of the show, Perrey received the notice that someone wanted to talk to him at the bar. To his surprise this person was Jean Cocteau (and by the way, myself having a huge adoration for that artist, when this fact was revealed, my brain exploded a just a little bit). The influential poet gave Perrey the advice to go to the U.S. to follow his music career there. “He said there would be more possibilities and an audience for my approach to music. He asked for my phone number and told me he would hand it to somebody that he knew who could help me find the sponsor in New York I needed. He gave my contact to Édith Piaf!”
Piaf was already really interested in the sounds of the Ondioline, and took Perrey under her wings. They would bond, perform and record together, and she would pay for studio time that enabled Perrey to record his own compositions. But Piaf’s biggest contribution was to send one of these tapes to Carroll Bratman, a music contractor in New York City. Bratman responded immediately, sending plane tickets to Perrey with one word marked on the envelope: “Come!” He moved to the U.S. in March 1960 and stayed there for 10 great years.
Now be sure to watch the online footage of Perrey demonstrating his incredible musical vocabulary on the Ondioline, which was televised on the American I’ve Got A Secret show in 1960 and also in ’66. Quite remarkable to see the reactions for what must have been for the majority of the audience, their first steps into the new world of electronic music.
Also, before Perrey moved to the U.S. he did release two EP’s under the adopted persona of Mr. Ondioline around 59-60 for Pacific Records. The result may have been whimsical commercial pop bent into kooky novel shapes, but it’s probably that bizarre mysterious cover that makes this 7″ EP so sort! Crazy for it’s day!
Bratman built Perrey an experimental laboratory and recording studio, where he would he invent “a new process for generating rhythms with sequences and loops”, utilising the environmental sounds of musique concrète. Like a mad scientist, he’d spend endless hours, even weeks, splicing tape, and tape recorders with scissors, piecing and “looping” together a unique fantastical take on the future.
In 1965 Perrey met Gershon Kingsley, who you could say was a like minded contemporary German American composer, and a former colleague of *John Cage, and at the time was a staff arranger at Vanguard Records. There must have been a strong and obvious connection from the get go. They both shared each others way of musically thinking, way out side and far beyond any square. And it wasn’t long before they found themselves recording together in the Vanguard studios, which normally specialized in folk, and not in avant-garde. The end result of their first collaborative effort was The In Sound from Way Out! released in 66.
With Perrey’s tape loops, and his inventive melodies twinning together with Kingsley’s complementary arrangements and instrumentation, the album created, was filled with tunes that sounded like some kind of surreal animated cartoon from out-of-space gone berserk. And since this was decades before the advent of widespread digital technology, each tune took weeks of painstaking editing and splicing to produce. Their second and final collaborative effort came in 1967 with the release of Kaleidoscopic Vibrations: Electronic Pop Music From Way Out!, and although sounding similar in style, this release was particularly different in two ways. Firstly, most of he compositions were versions of popular songs of the day. And secondly, Perrey’s tape loops and effects were added in post-production after Kingsley’s orchestrations were recorded, a technique now commonly used by electronic artists to this day. Also the album was one of the first to use the new Moog modular synthesizer, a massive, complicated electronic instrument resembling an old-style telephone switchboard.
Kingsley continued to do his own work with the Moog, while Perrey joined with producer John Mack and arranger Dave Mullaney and their company, Laurie Productions, to compose and record, mostly for radio and television advertisements. Perrey recorded two more albums for Vanguard, The Amazing New Electronic Pop Sounds of Jean Jacques Perrey and the legendary sort after Moog Indigo in 1970.
The back cover liner notes to this far out LP read…”Without a ship Columbus could not have traversed the Atlantic, without a telescope Galileo could not have charted the solar system, and what the MOOG SYNTHESIZER opens up for the future of music is beyond dreams”. The enthusiastic proclamation would continue with…”The most amazing instrument is nothing without a mind behind it, and Jean Jacques Perrey’s mind is that of a combined musician and scientist, with a special love for what is happy and vital tin popular music. The way Paganini thought musically in terms of the violin, Perrey thinks musically in terms of the Moog”.
As you’ve probably guessed, there were some pretty great spaced out tracks laid down on this 12″ slab, and as expected from Perrey, cosmically twisted, fun and swinging. There’s the great opener Soul City that every space mod must have played on their Weltron 2007 while preparing a Martini, and also the dark and slinky Cat In The Night. But the real track here, that took Perrey to a new level of greatness, is of course E.V.A.!
Now I know this infamous track is nowadays quite well known, and not just amongst the vintage space pop fanatics, but it’s hard to believe that is was never to be officially released by Vanguard as a 7″ in the US. In fact even the UK had to wait two years for the first Moog Indigo single, and that wasn’t even EVA, but instead the loopy Gossipo Perpetuo with the title track on the flip! THANKFULLY the vanguard people over in Brazil had the sense to release it 3 years after it was recorded as a single and as featured here, a gorgeous EP picture sleeve, that actually runs at 33rpm.
This track is pretty special to me for a number of reasons. It played on the dance floor at Sounds of Seduction when I meet my wife many years ago, and it also played at our wedding and is featured on our Super 8 wedding video. It’s so smooth, it has beats, it has fuzz and Wah wah, and it even has bells…but most importantly, it has so much integrity! And while so many other Perrey recordings happily and contently sit back in that other time from the past, this unstoppable track is still soaring far ahead, smashing through electronic genres, only leaving a traces of space glitter on the occasional hip dance floor.
And so what does E.V.A. stand for? Well to tell you the truth, I don’t know, but it is a space term for extra-vehicular activity, so maybe that was a reference point?
Perrey returned to France in 1970 and became the musical director of a ballet company. He wrote and recorded music for a television commercials and a number of French cartoons, and released several albums of this music on the Montparnasse label. He also continued to work on music for therapeutic purposes, including one project that involved recording with dolphins in the waters near Vancouver, Canada. “It was remarkable,” Perrey says. “If you played sounds of a certain frequency, the dolphins began to swim in perfect circles.”
Perrey’s influence would reverberate for years – The In Sound from Way Out! inspired a tribute from the Beastie Boys, who borrowed both the album’s title and cover art for their own album 30 years later. But sadly, none of this translated into personal fortune. Perrey did not own the publishing rights to his music when it was licensed to Disney, while Stanley Kubrick was able to incorporate some of Perrey’s sound effects into 2001: A Space Odyssey for next to nothing. Perrey says: “Jean Cocteau told me, ‘Thirty years after I die, you will retire a rich man.’ Well, Cocteau died in 1963 and I haven’t been able to retire yet.”
I highly recommend this video interview by Richard Lawson from 2004!
An RL Music Interview with Jean-Jacques Perrey.
Also great Perrey references here…
Space Age Pop!
The godfather of techno!
iCrates
*John Cage, who was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde, and is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound. Musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not “four minutes and 33 seconds of silence,” as is sometimes assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during the performance.
*Photo credit to Marco Zanoni
Seven45rpm 
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