Nora Ney

Nora Ney (b. Iracema de Sousa Ferreira, Rio de Janeiro, March 20, 1922 - Rio de Janeiro, October 2003) was a Brazilian singer. She is also the most notable interpreter of the samba-canção music style and a pioneer of the Brazilian rock.

She first approached music by playing guitar by herself, and the father, in order to motivate, offered the instrument as a birthday gift.

Along with Maysa Matarazzo, Ângela Maria and Dolores Duran, was consecrated as the greatest samba-canção interpreter (emerged in the thirties). Often compared to bolero, for the featured exaltation and exploration of romantic love or the suffering of a non accomplished love affair was also called "elbow ache" (jealousy, heart ache). Samba-canção preceded the bossa nova (1957–1963) music style. But this one, inheritor of the American jazz, presented a more refined, gentle and soft melodies and interpretations, in detriment of those resented, melancholic ones.

She began her career in 1950 and in 1953 she was already one of the greatest divas of the Brazilian Radio Era, interpreting Dorival Caymmi, Noel Rosa, Ary Barroso. In 1952 she recorded her first LP for the record label Continental Records, entitled Menino da rua. Despite being a notable samba-canção interpreter, Nora Ney became one of the pioneers of the Brazilian rock by recording the first rock LP in the country: the Brazilian version of the Rock around the Clock, by Bill Haley & His Comets (soundtrack of Sementes da Violência movie), in October 1955. After only one week after the launch the song became a hit parade.

Among the curiosities of her public life stands out a second marriage with the singer Jorge Goulart; the daughter of that union, Vera Lúcia, became Miss Brasil in 1963. Due to the political involvement of Goulart within the Communist Party, she was forced into exile after the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, which the military justified as being aimed at freeing the country against a communist threat.