The image stayed with anyone who lived in Brazil in the 1970s: the man with long curly hair, rings on his fingers and a bow tie, seated at the piano before packed television studio audiences, drawing from the keys a swing that made the instrument sound like a samba drum section. That was how the country came to know Benito Di Paula. On Sunday (Oct. 18), the singer, songwriter and pianist died at Hospital 9 de Julho in São Paulo at the age of 84, from complications of a cancer he had been fighting for about a year. His press office confirmed the death and, according to Folha de S.Paulo, the illness was prostate cancer. Details of the wake and burial have not been released.
Born Uday Velloso in Nova Friburgo, in Rio de Janeiro state, on November 28, 1941, and raised in the city of Rio, he entered the record market in 1967 and released his first album, "Benito Di Paula", in 1971. The first hit came a year later with "Violão não se empresta a ninguém", from the album "Ela" (1972), according to journalist Mauro Ferreira's music blog on G1. His reign truly began in 1973, when the mournful samba-canção "Retalhos de cetim" took over the radio and opened a run of hits that included "Charlie Brown" (1974), "Bandeira do samba" (1975), "Tudo está no seu lugar" (1976) and "Proteção às borboletas" (1977), nearly all released on the Copacabana label, where he stayed until 1980.
A samba man who called himself a piano man
Benito Di Paula never saw himself as a sambista in the lineage of Martinho da Vila or Paulinho da Viola, the names who shared the genre's success with him in the 1970s. He liked to introduce himself as a sambeiro and a pianeiro, a word he coined to describe his own craft. Schooled in nightclubs, where he discovered that the piano keys could produce the effect of drumming, he built a percussive touch that, combined with percussion instruments, gave his music a singular signature and, in a way, anticipated the pagode sound that groups like Raça Negra would popularize in the 1990s. Folha describes the style as "samba-joia", a blend of traditional samba with piano and romantic arrangements. He himself acknowledged one influence above all: the work of samba composer Ataulfo Alves (1909-1969). The confessional verses of "Do jeito que a vida quer" (1976) captured what samba meant to him:
"It's that my samba helps me through life / My pain slips away, forgotten"
In the 1980s he still scored occasional hits: "Ah! Como eu amei" (1981), written by brothers Jota and Nei Vellozo, and "Amigo do sol amigo da lua" (1984), a partnership with Márcio Brandão Carneiro, his last major success. He kept releasing albums regularly until "Baileiro sem repercussão" (1996) and, after a long absence from the record industry, returned with two albums of new material: "A felicidade é nossa" (2017) and "O infalível zen" (2021), the record with which he celebrated turning 80.
In recent years his innovative work has been reappraised and honored with tributes. In July, he took part in the stage show "Benito 85", created by his son, Rodrigo Vellozo, to celebrate the 85th birthday the singer would have reached in November, revisiting his own repertoire. At São Paulo's 2025 Carnival, the Águia de Ouro samba school paid tribute with an enredo, the theme song each school parades to, titled "Em Retalhos de Cetim, a Águia de Ouro do jeito que a vida quer".
Benito Di Paula dies a little over a month short of 85, his name written into the history of Brazilian popular music. The gala figure of the TV auditoriums takes his leave, and the piano stays where he left it: turned into a tamborim, leading samba in a way no one had imagined before him.