Biography
Andre Filho composed numerous standards during the golden age of Brazilian popular song, and several of that era’s foremost interpreters committed his pieces—including the enduring “Cidade Maravilhosa”—to disc. Together with Noel Rosa he created “Filosofia,” and he also enjoyed a measure of success fronting a microphone. Early on he mastered violin, violão, mandolin, and piano. In 1929 Henrique de Melo Morais committed “Velho Solar” to wax; the next year Carmen Miranda sang both “O Meu Amor Tem” and “Quero Casar Com Você,” while Sílvio Caldas, collaborating with Felácio Silva, recorded “Nem Queiras Saber.” Mário Reis likewise cut “Filosofia,” a performance Chico Buarque would revisit in 1975. Carmen Miranda returned to the catalog in 1931 with “Bamboleô” and “Quero só Você,” then joined Mário Reis two years afterward for “Alô...Alô....” By 1935, already widely recognized, Andre Filho supplied Aurora Miranda with “Cidade Maravilhosa,” the unofficial civic anthem of Rio de Janeiro that the city formally adopted in 1960; the song placed a wry second in that year’s municipal contest. Vicente Celestino scored a major success with “Cinzas no Coração” in 1941. On the airwaves Andre Filho appeared over Educadora, Philips, Mayrink Veiga, Tupi, and Guanabara, and between 1933 and 1939 he waxed twenty-two titles—virtually all of them his own compositions—for RCA Victor.