Cachoeiro do Itapemirim (Brasil), 1941
By José Chrispiniano
The most commercially successful singer-songwriter in Brazilian history, Roberto Carlos Braga, known as “The King,” has a career marked by the romanticism of his songs and his role in strengthening the mass cultural industry. Brazil’s first major rock idol embodied the contradictions between the behavioral and consumer changes of the 1960s and a strong political and religious conservatism.
The son of a watchmaker father and a laundress mother, he lost one of his legs in a train accident at age six, leading him to use a prosthetic. In 1955, he moved to Niterói and later to Lins de Vasconcelos, a suburban neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. He made his TV debut in 1957, singing the rock song “Tutti-frutti” on Tupi TV in Rio. A year later, he met the “Matoso gang,” a group on a street in the Tijuca neighborhood, where he would form friendships with his songwriting partner Erasmo Carlos and also with Tim Maia, with whom he formed the short-lived band The Sputniks. In 1959, he recorded his first single, which went unnoticed, as did his first LP, Louco por você (1961), now disowned by the singer. Advised by the record label, he began focusing on songs aimed at young people. Some were his own compositions, but his first hits were mainly American song adaptations made with Erasmo, like “Splish-splash” (1963) and “Calhambeque” from the album É proibido fumar (1964). The following year, he started being represented by a publicity company, Magaldi-Maia Et Prosperi.
In 1965, the Jovem Guarda TV show premiered on Record TV, broadcast nationwide. Headlined by Roberto Carlos, it created a kind of Brazilian version of Beatlemania. Besides music, the show popularized fashion, slang, and a rock-associated lifestyle. That same year, an album named after the show was released. One of the songs, “Quero que vá tudo pro inferno,” one of his greatest career hits, was later excluded from his repertoire due to his closeness to Catholicism.
To other branches of Brazilian Popular Music (MPB), mainly represented on O Fino da Bossa, a show hosted by Jair Rodrigues and Elis Regina, and to the left-wing youth in universities who were closer to samba and the protest songs of Geraldo Vandré, Jovem Guarda and its artists and fans were seen as overly Americanized and disconnected from the serious political situation of the time.
Between 1966 and 1967, music-related conflicts intensified, while Roberto Carlos experienced one of his most creative periods as a songwriter. He released Roberto Carlos (1966) and the soundtrack for his first movie, directed by Roberto Farias, Roberto Carlos em ritmo de aventura (1967), which established his name as a “brand” associated with clothing and even gas stations. A highlight in the clash with traditional MPB was the protest march against the electric guitar led by Elis Regina in 1967. However, that same year, Roberto Carlos participated in the historic III Festival da Música Popular da Record with the samba “Maria, carnaval e cinzas” by Luiz Carlos Paraná, placing fifth. This festival saw the emergence of Tropicália, a movement led by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. Incorporating rock and MPB influences in a psychedelic, avant-garde blend, Tropicalismo prompted a reevaluation of Jovem Guarda among many in Brazilian music, particularly regarding the quality and importance of Roberto Carlos’s compositions.
The Brazilian Sinatra
On January 19, 1968, Roberto Carlos bid farewell to the Jovem Guarda show and distanced himself from “iê-iê-iê.” That same year, his songs were recorded by MPB artists like Gal Costa and Elis Regina. Additionally, he won the San Remo Festival in Italy with “Canzone per te” by Sergio Endrigo and Sergio Bardotti. This marked his transition from rock idol to romantic singer, earning him the label of a “Brazilian Frank Sinatra.”
During this transitional period, heavily influenced by African-American music, he released As curvas da estrada de Santos (1969), an album that, in addition to the beautiful title track, included the hit “Sua estupidez.” He also starred in his second film, Roberto Carlos e o diamante cor-de-rosa. The following year, he debuted a show directed by Miele and Ronaldo Bôscoli that solidified his image as a romantic singer, and experienced controversy with the success of the religious song “Jesus Cristo.” In this new phase, he began finding success in Europe and especially in Latin America, releasing albums with Spanish versions of his songs. Despite the emotional appeal and quality of many of his compositions, he again distanced himself from most of the MPB scene, no longer viewed as an Americanized rocker but rather as a “brega” singer with grand orchestral arrangements by American maestro Jimmy Wisner for his album Roberto Carlos (1971).
In 1974, he debuted his first Christmas special for Rede Globo, beginning an annual tradition—a year-end TV show with a corresponding album—resulting in an exclusive contract with Brazil’s largest TV network, closely tied to the military regime. Throughout his career, Roberto Carlos maintained an apolitical public stance, refraining from statements or positions during the polarized and repressive military dictatorship.
Roberto Carlos released an album annually, and his 1976 album, also simply titled with his name, was the first in Brazil to reach one million copies sold. At the same time, he solidified his career throughout Latin America. In 1977, he set an impressive new record with 2.2 million copies sold in the Brazilian market. By the late ’70s, he released one successful album after another. In the early ’80s, he released Sail Away (1980) in English and also produced a French album, which did not achieve the same success as his Spanish-language albums, with one reaching the second position on the North American Latin chart in 1986.
Despite consistently high sales, his influence in music began to decline in the ’80s and ’90s due to a combination of increasingly uninspired songs and more formulaic orchestral arrangements. Roberto Carlos gradually settled into a niche market with songs dedicated to taxi drivers, women with glasses, truck drivers, etc. Even though this niche was massive (his 1994 album sold over 1.9 million copies), it was isolated from MPB and the center of musical trends, a space now occupied by a new generation of Brazilian rock in the mid-’80s, sertanejo at the end of that decade, and axé music in the ’90s. This period was also marked by his growing religious leanings and the superstitions and eccentricities that were later diagnosed as obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Rediscovery
During this time, however, interest in Roberto Carlos’s work among MPB artists began to revive. Caetano Veloso and Maria Bethânia (who in 1993 recorded an album entirely of Roberto and Erasmo’s songs, As canções que você fez para mim) led initiatives that revealed interest in his 1960s and ’70s compositions among new generations, as seen in the collective album Rei (1994), where young bands like Skank, Chico Science & Nação Zumbi, and Barão Vermelho recorded his songs.
In December 1999, his wife, Maria Rita de Cássia Simões Braga, passed away from cancer after a two-year battle with the illness. It was the first year since 1963 that Roberto Carlos did not release a new album. Two years later, he launched MTV Unplugged, a project with the youth-oriented channel that revisited various hits from his career. Globo TV banned the show’s airing, but the CD and DVD release renewed his music and image, becoming his best-selling album in two decades. In 2004, his record label began releasing box sets of his albums in Portuguese, except for his disowned debut, Louco por você.
