Benito Di Paula dies in São Paulo, aged 84, and leaves behind innovative work in the samba segment

♬ One of the most popular singers and songwriters of the 1970s, Benito Di Paula died on the night of Sunday, October 18, at the age of 84. The artist passed away at Hospital 9 de Julho, in São Paulo (SP), due to complications from cancer.

Singer, composer and musician from Rio de Janeiro, Benito Di Paula was born Uday Velloso (November 28, 1941 – October 18, 2026) in the city of Nova Friburgo (RJ) and was raised in Rio de Janeiro (RJ). But Brazil already knew him as Benito Di Paula from the 1970s, a decade in which the artist achieved national success with a different samba.

Benito Di Paula never considered himself a samba player from the dynasty of Martinho da Vila and Paulinho da Viola, singers and composers who also achieved great success in the 1970s in the samba segment. Benito has always publicly labeled himself as a samba player and a piano player.

It was with the percussive touch of the piano that Benito Di Paula performed his own batucada with a Brazilian swing that, in a way, anticipated the São Paulo pagode that would be propagated in the 1990s by groups like Raça Negra with arrangements full of keyboards. And the fact is that the samba pianist has created a unique signature in Brazilian music.

A graduate of the nightclub night school, a territory where he found that handling the piano keys had the effect of drumming, Benito Di Paula made his mark on the stages of TV show auditoriums with his informal gala look made up of rings, coats, necklaces, bowties, bracelets and, of course, his long, formerly curly hair. Anyone who lived in Brazil throughout the 1970s remembers the figure of Benito.

The singer debuted on the music market in 1967 and released his first album, Benito Di Paula (1971), in 1971, which was followed by the second, Ela (1972), presented a year later with the artist's first success, Violão não se lent itself to nobody (1972).

However, Benito Di Paula's reign actually began in 1973 with the dolent samba-canção, Retalhos de satim, presented in a blockbuster single that year in 1973. Retalhos de satin was the starting point for the success of the work that – based on the mix of the piano played by the artist with percussion instruments – yielded successive hits until 1984, but especially from 1973 to 1977.

During this period, it was impossible to ignore Charlie Brown (1974), Beauty that you are a woman (1974), Bandeira do samba (1975), As the master said (1975), It will stay in saudade (1975), Everything is in its place (1976), The way life wants (1976, samba with the confessional verses “...It's just that my samba helps me in life / My pain is passing forgotten”), Whistling and sucking sugarcane (1977) and Butterfly protection (1977).

Presented over the course of four years, in the aforementioned period from 1973 to 1977, the height of Benito's career, these songs attested to the composer's talent for making samba detached from the genre's matrix, even though the greatest influence on samba was the work of the bamba Ataulfo ​​Alves (1909 – 1969).

Released on albums released by the singer on the Copacabana record label, where Benito remained until 1980 and to which he returned briefly in 1987 and 1992, these hits from the 1970s are enough to guarantee Benito Di Paula's immortality in the gallery of Brazilian music creators.