Elsie Houston

Elsie Houston

The first Brazilian musician to perform abroad was flautist, Pixinguiha, with the band, Os Oito Batutas, venturing to Paris in 1922. But not until Elsie Houston did Brazilian music really acquire international status. A carioca born in Rio de Janeiro on 22 April 1902, Houston came from a family of plantation owners who had traded the United States for Brazil after the Civil War (confederados). Her father, however, was a dentist. Houston studied voice internationally, first in Germany, then Argentina, then Paris. Being something financially advantaged, Houston kept artistic society with such as composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and various painters, her husband for a brief period the poet, Benjamin Péret.

Houston's first performance was in 1926 at a Paris solon hosted by Marguerite and Raoul d'Harcourt. Her first public engagement was a year later, also in Paris, at the Salle Gaveau, with pianist, Heitor Villa-Lobos. Houston made her first recordings with Villa-Lobos in Paris in 1928, also marrying the poet, Benjamin Péret, that year on an unidentified date. Her first tracks with Villa-Lobos were for French HMV (His Master's Voice), four short tunes composed by Villa-Lobos titled 'Desejo', 'Na paz do outono', 'Realejo' and 'Estrela do céu é lua nova'. Those are available as the initial four tracks on the album, 'Elsie Houston: Queen of Brazilian Song'.

Upon Houston's return to Brazil she made her theatre debut at the Municipal Theater of São Paulo, performing in 'Canção do Carreiro' with music by Villa-Lobos and text by Dora Vasconcelos. In 1929 she and Péret traveled Brazil to study indigenous folk songs of which she delivered an account in the book, 'Chants populaires du Brésil', written by request of the International Committee of the League of Nations of the Sorbonne and published in 1930 as the first of a series. Her recordings of 1930 for Columbia were sessioned in Brazil.

As Péret was a Communist, he was expelled from Brazil as an agitator, leaving port back for Paris on 20 December 1931. Houston thus found herself back in France with him where she laid more tracks for French HMV on 26 September 1933. Back in Brazil in 1935, she bounced back to Paris, now separated from Péret (never divorced), before migrating to New York City in 1937 where she first recorded in New York City in 1938 and 1939, followed by numerous sessions in 1941. Houston remained in New York to the end of her career, appearing in all variety of venues from cabarets to private gatherings to stadiums, as well as radio. Howsoever, disappointment as to her career, financial difficulties and romantic complications are all mentioned as external possibilities in the equation to her suicide in NYC on 20 Feb 1943 at age forty.