Rita Lee Jones (; 31 December 1947 – 8 May 2023) was a Brazilian rock singer, composer, and writer. She was a member of the Brazilian band Os Mutantes and a popular figure in Brazilian entertainment. She was also known for being an animal rights activist and a vegan. She sold more than 55 million records worldwide. Her autobiography Rita Lee: Uma Autobiografia was the best-selling non-fiction book of 2017 in Brazil.
Early life and education
Rita Lee was born in Vila Mariana (district of São Paulo), Brazil, to an American-Brazilian father, Charles Fenley Jones, a dentist descended from the Confederates, and Romilda Padula, a Brazilian mother of Italian ancestry and a pianist. She studied classical piano with the renowned pianist Magdalena Tagliaferro. In place of the traditional adolescent debut ball, she asked to receive a drum set.
Lee 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, with the popular actress Regina Duarte as one of her classmates, but she soon left to pursue her musical career.
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 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".
Lee formed a band with two other friends, excelling at vocals so much that they backed 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 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".