Portuguese singer Linda de Suza, known for her titles in French and in her native language, has died at the age of 74.
Portuguese singer Linda de Suza, known for her titles in French and in her native language, has died at the age of 74. It was his agent who announced it to AFP on Wednesday.
“His son Joao Lança and I have the pain to inform you of the death this morning at 10:10 am” of Linda de Suza, wrote Fabien Lecoeuvre in a press release.
The singer died at Gisors hospital in Eure, “where she had been transferred very early this very morning, for respiratory failure and positive for Covid 19”, further specifies the press release.
“She had been sick for a few months”, evokes Fabien Lecoeuvre on our antenna. “She caught covid in her nursing home, where she was today.”
The cardboard suitcase
In 1984, the young woman broke the screen of the variety show Champs-Elyseestelling Michel Drucker how she illegally crossed the Franco-Spanish border on foot in 1969, her little boy João under her arm, with a cardboard suitcase as her only luggage, to flee “a tyrannical family” in very conservative Portugal of Salazar, where single mothers like her were not tolerated.
The next day, upset viewers rush to their bookstore to claim “the book of the singer who went to Drucker”.
Already popular before the show, Linda de Suza, whose real name is Teolinda Joaquina de Sousa Lança, born February 22, 1948 in Beringel, in the south of Portugal, changes dimension. Sales of his autobiography exploded: two million copies.
Alcoholic father, malicious mother
She writes as she speaks, a sincere and ecstatic style, sparing no detail to the reader. Her childhood where she takes care of her seven brothers and sisters, under the authority of an alcoholic father and a malicious mother.
Then the boarding school, the meeting at 16 with the father of her child, whom she will refuse to marry, the exodus. “My girlfriends had been forbidden to speak to me. I was the shame of the hamlet…”.
In France, it is the slum of Ivry-sur-Seine, work in a canning factory in Kremlin-Bicêtre, then as a chambermaid in Paris.
In exchange for “a bowl of soup”, if we are to believe the legend, she sings Chez Louisette, a flea market bistro in Saint-Ouen, where she takes over Amalia Rodrigues, queen of fado.
“One day, a composer passes by and seduced by my voice, makes me record a song called The Portuguese”, she says. First visit to Drucker in 1978: 400,000 sales.
sentimental songs
Between French variety and Portuguese sentimental songs, she will sell, mainly in France, millions of records throughout her career, led by her producer, Claude Carrère, Sheila’s pygmalion.
His recipe: catchy tunes – like the reggae chorus of Tiroli Tirola – and texts where she identifies with her audience: “Like you, I have my life, I have my joys and my sorrows. And small worries, me too, like you.”
Linda de Suza connects the tubes, such as Uma moca chorava, Tiroli tirolasold more than 500,000 copies, A child can make the world sing, Chuvinha (Little rain).
She filled the Olympia for two series of concerts in 1983 and 1984, then went on to broadcast to promote her autobiography. Fans are fond of her sense of the formula, she who repeats at will, having gone “from the vacuum cleaner to the microphone” or “from maid to woman of the world”.
In 1986, The cardboard suitcase becomes a musical with Jean-Pierre Cassel, under the leadership of Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier. But despite an intense press campaign, the Casino de Paris sounds empty. The singer multiplies the discomfort for overwork, which forces the producer Jean-Claude Camus, furious, to end the performances.
Last tour with Tender Age
His family also accuses him of having deliberately blackened his life. First crossing of the desert. It was Michel Drucker, again, who gave her a chance in 1988 and invited her to defend a new record and her latest book, “I empty my suitcase”, where she criticized the entertainment industry.
The same year, his life was adapted again, successfully, in a television series in six episodes. But the public shuns her and no longer buys her records. “There is no longer a franc in my cardboard suitcase!”, she revealed in 1997. “Everyone robbed me…”.
Until the end of her life, she will claim to have been the victim of scams, identity theft and administrative errors. Between 2015 and 2017, she will be part of the “Age Tendre” tour, bringing together successful singers from the 1980s.
