Leny Eversong

Leny Eversong was a successful singer from the '30s until the late '60s. Also popular abroad, she performed in Argentina, France, and in the U.S., where she had several seasons and recorded, backed by the Neal Hefti Orchestra, her LP Leny Eversong na América do Norte (1957). Eversong's most celebrated feature was her potent voice, and her main particularity was her devotion to the American repertory, having recorded and performed very little Brazilian music. Her biggest hit was "Jezebel" (Hanklin), recorded by her for the first time in 1952. Eversong started to work in her home town's Rádio Clube at 12. Since the beginning, her specialty was American music, mostly fox trots, that she would learn to sing through exhaustive record listening because she didn't speak English. In 1936, she had a season in Rio, performing at the Rádio Tupi and at the luxurious Cassino da Urca and Copacabana Palace Hotel. In the next year she went to São Paulo, hired for the regular cast of the Night and Day nightclub. Her first individual album came in 1942, in which she recorded the fox trot "Tangerine," accompanied by the Orquestra de Totó. Six years after that she performed in Buenos Aires (Argentina), where she was presented as a North American singer. Returning to Brazil she introduced some Brazilian music into her repertory, until she went to Paris (France) in 1958, where she performed at the Olympia. Two years later she started to go to the U.S., having eight annual seasons in that country until the 'late 60s. Her late performances were in the early '80s.