Rita Lee
| Rita Lee | |
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Rita Lee in 2010
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Rita Lee Jones |
| Also known as | A Rainha do Rock (Queen of Rock) |
| Born | December 31, 1947 |
| Origin | São Paulo, Brazil |
| Genres | Rock, pop, tropicália, psychedelic rock, MPB |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, songwriter, actress, author, TV host |
| Instruments | Vocals, flute, theremin, guitar, bass guitar, drums, percussion, harmonica, piano, synthesizer, Mellotron, Moog |
| Years active | 1966–present |
| Labels |
Som Livre EMI |
| Associated acts | Os Mutantes, Gilberto Gil, Pitty, Ronnie Von, Caetano Veloso, Tutti Frutti, Elis Regina, Roberto de Carvalho |
| Website | Official website |
Rita Lee (born Rita Lee Jones, December 31, 1947) is a Brazilian rock singer and composer. She is a former member of the Brazilian band Os Mutantes and is a popular figure in Brazilian entertainment, where she is also known for being an animal rights activist and a vegetarian. She has sold more than 60 million albums worldwide.
Rita Lee was born in São Paulo, Brazil, to an American Brazilian father, Charles Fenley Jones, a dentist descended from the Confederados, and Romilda Padula, a Brazilian mother of Italian ancestry. She was educated in a French-language school and became fluent in Spanish, French, and Italian, as well as her native Portuguese and the English that her parents spoke at home. She went to college, where she was a colleague of the popular actress Regina Duarte, but she soon left to pursue her musical career.
In 1966, Lee formed the band Os Mutantes with Arnaldo Baptista and Sérgio Dias. The band released five albums between 1968 and 1972. In that time, Lee had also released her first two solo works, although these records were produced with fellow members of Os Mutantes. When the band reformed in 2006, she refused to join, calling the reunion an attempt to "earn cash to pay for geriatry".
The daughter of an amateur female pianist, she never took music lessons. In place of the traditional adolescent debut ball, she asked to receive a drum set. Lee formed a band with two other friends and they were quite good at vocals, backing stars such as Tony Campelo, Jet Blacks, Demetrius, and Prini Lopez, when they met the brothers Arnaldo and Sérgio Dias Baptista. Adopting the name O'Seis (a pun with "the six" and the Brazilian caipira way of saying "you all"), they recorded the single "O Suicida," which was never released. When the rest of the band left for college, only three of them remained. Picking the name Os Mutantes, they backed Nana Caymmi on her then-husband's composition "Bom Dia" (Gilberto Gil). When Gil met them, he immediately knew the Os Mutantes were on the same track as the Baianos, and the band worked extensively with the members of the Tropicalia collective over the next two years, becoming an integral part of the movement. Gil Invited them to accompany him at TV Record's 1967 III Festival da MPB, where they performed Gil's "Domingo no Parque" with the addition of Rogério Duprat conducting an orchestra with his revolutionary arrangements. Gil's friend Caetano Veloso also performed with a rock group (São Paulo band Beat Boys), and although the novelty of electric instruments and the general irreverence of the mixing of western pop and strange orchestral sounds irritated some in the festival audience, both performances ultimately won approval, with Gil coming second and Veloso taking fourth place. Within a year, however, the nascent Tropicalia movement would face strident opposition from both the military junta that ruled Brazil at the time, and from Brazil's student left, who regarded the Tropicalistas' dalliance with Western pop as a sell-out. Soon after, Os Mutantes recorded their single "O Relógio".
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