Leny Andrade, the Brazilian singer who gained an international following with her soulful fusion of samba, bossa nova and American jazz and whom Tony Bennett once called Brazil’s Ella Fitzgerald, died on July 24 in Rio de Janeiro. He is 80.
His death, in a hospital, from pneumonia, was confirmed in a statement by a retirement home in Rio for artists where he lived. He was also treated for Lewy body dementia.
Often referred to as “the first lady of Brazilian jazz,” Ms. Andrade (pronounced ahn-DRAH-jay) rose from the clubs of Rio, where he performed as a teenager, to build a six-decade career, recording more than 35 albums as a pioneer of what he called bossa -jazz.
In 2007, Ms. Andrade of a Latin Grammy Award for “Ao Vivo,” a live album with the famous Brazilian pianist Cesar Camargo Mariano.
“Leny was one of the world’s greatest improvisers,” Mr. Bennett, who died last month, once said. “I like the way he sings. He is an original.”
Singing mostly in Portuguese, Ms. Andrade brings richness and emotional depth to cool bossa nova tracks, pulse-pounding sambas, and soulful ballads, which she infuses with world-weary sultriness.
Reviewing her 1983 American debut at the Blue Note jazz club in New York, John S. Wilson of The New York Times praised the emotive power she brought to “Cantador,” a ballad in the intense tradition of Edith Piaf. “Miss Andrade sings it in a darker, softer voice than Piaf’s,” he wrote, “with a dramatic effect that reaches even a listener who does not understand Portuguese.”
The career of Ms. Andrade started in the United States in 1993 after he moved to New York, where he became a popular draw, performing at Birdland and other clubs, sometimes with Mr. Bennett and Liza Minnelli in the audience. The following year, he played at Lincoln Center as well as the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
Her voice, a deep, woody contralto with an all-seeing air, carries a hint of a rasp from her longtime love affair with cigarettes. The overall effect can be mesmerizing.
“To describe Ms. Andrade as both the Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald of bossa nova only goes so far as to evoke a performer whose voice seems to embody the body and soul of Brazil,” wrote Stephen Holden when reviewing a 2008 New York club performance in The Times.
“You may think you know ‘The Girl From Ipanema,’” he continued, but “you’ve never really absorbed it until you hear Ms. sing it. Andrade in Portuguese; Disgorge might be a better word than sing, because, like everything else he does, it seems to flow from the center of the earth.
For Ms. Andrade, singing brought livelihood. “my soul is everything I can offer the public,” she said in a 2013 interview with the Brazilian music site Esquina Musical. “When I open my mouth, any pain disappears. I sing without fear. My friends and enemies embraced me.”
“When I sing,” he added, “I go on a magic carpet out of here. I travel to Mars.”
Leny de Andrade Lima was born in Rio on January 25, 1943. His father, Luiz de Oliveira Lima, and mother, Ruth Couto de Andrade, separated when Leny was young. He grew up in Méier, a neighborhood in the city’s North Zone, a hotbed of samba.
At the urging of her mother, Ms. Andrade of classical piano and singing since the age of 6. He earned a scholarship to the Brazilian Conservatory of Music. Beethoven and Brahms, however, were not his destiny.
He was drawn to bossa nova (“new wave” in Portuguese), which combined traditional Brazilian rhythms with American jazz, when it emerged from Brazilian beaches in the late 1950s. He was also influenced by the samba stylings of famous Brazilian singers Dolores Durán.
“I showed my piano diploma to my mother,” he said in a 2013 interview on Brazilian television, and told her, “’Forget about opera, classical music. I’m going to sing popular music — because of Dolores Durán.’”
His professional career began at 15, performing in dances with the bandleader Perminio Goncalves, led by his stepfather, Gustavo Paulo da Silva, since he was still a minor.
Later, he sang with the Sérgio Mendes Trio, a jazz combo, before Mr. Mendes to international pop stardom with his band Brazil 66. “He says hated samba; he didn’t play it,” said Ms. Andrade in Esquina Musical. “And I also talked about jazz. But in the end we gave up and mixed the two.”
He came to embrace jazz and the improvisational style of singing without words known as scat. (In his 1983 Times review, Mr. Wilson praised her scattered “agility that approaches Ella Fitzgerald.”)
In 1961, Ms. Andrade’s first album, “A Sensação,” for RCA, drew sadly from the samba of the earlier era. He hit his stride two years later, combining bossa nova with traditional jazz “An Arte Maior de Leny Andrade,” in Polydor.
He was married briefly when he was younger and never had children. Information about survivors was not immediately available.
As a jazz singer, Ms. Andrade to great commercial success, but that fact did not bother him. “I don’t make music for the masses,” he told Esquina Musical. “They don’t have the ability to understand my work. Bad things are not in my repertoire.”
Flávia Milhorance contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro