1963 - Review

As we have mentioned before weekly magazine 'Revista do Radio' was really biased against foreign acts. The bias was applied not only to their articles but to their Weekly Hit Parade too. When the RR columnist responsible for the charts knew there was a new foreign hit going up the charts like Ray Charles's 'I can't stop loving you', he first tried to foist the Brazilian cover  'P'ra sempre te adorar' (translated by Hamilton di Giorgio) sung by Paulo Marquez instead of the original record (see the week of 19 January 1963). After a while when the facts were too obvious to be hidden under the carpet, then and only then they would acknowledge the truth and get Ray Charles's 'I can't stop loving you' on the top of the list (see 26 January 1963).

'Revista do Radio' was created in 1949 by journalist Anselmo Domingos and soon became the most popular music business rag in the country. By 1959, though the magazine had become a little stilted. Times were rapidly changing and the magazine editor didn't realize it. RR kept on promoting ageing acts and slighting new faces, foreign acts and the emerging rock'n'roll. This conservative chauvinism showed in its Hit Parade with visible rigging and sameness. 

Carnaval has been a most popular celebration in Brazil since colonial times because it coincides with the Southern Hemisphere summer. Since the 1930s record companies released 'carnaval hits' every year that would sell like hot cakes in December, January and March. That trend though changed gradually and by the early 1960s carnaval had become different and people didn't rely on new releases but kept on singing the same old hits from the 1930s & 1940s. People still celebrated Carnaval but they didn't bother to learn new songs. Record buyers kept on buying their favourite artists' releases unrelated to Carnaval. Revista do Radio's editor did not realize the change in attitudes and kept on harping on the same old style. So here we have a sad situation where the magazine wasted 6 weeks publishing a best-selling carnaval-record charts when most people weren't interested in that sort of thing. 

The charts of weeks 16 February, 23 February, 2 March, 16 March, 22 March (there was no chart whatsoever) and 22 March 1963 were only and exclusively of carnaval-hits but the radio stations played the 'normal' hits like 'I can't stop loving you', 'Volta por cima' or 'Filme triste' (Sad moveis make me cry). These 6 wasted weeks give an utterly wrong picture of the times. So beware when you study these charts and come across those 6 weeks mentioned above. The last real carnaval-hit was Moacyr Franco's 'Me dá um dinheiro aí' that went #1 on 14 February 1960.

30 April 1963 - 'Correio da Manhã' shows a photo of France's latest sensation: teenager singer-song-writer Françoise Hardy.