But, soon, she was hired by Rádio Guanabara, which reopened big time and decided to compete with the major radios, Nacional, Tupi, and Mayrink Veiga. Rui counseled her in terms of her performance and took her to Rádio Mauá, where she worked with her discoverer, Jacob do Bandolim. In 1948, Cardoso met Evaldo Rui, who would be instrumental in her artistic career (having also been her lover). She was also, in that period, the crooner for the Orquestra de Guilherme Pereira. Soon, she started to work at other dance ballrooms, like the Brasil, the Samba Danças, the Eldorado, and the Belas Artes. Cardoso worked there for one year and returned to her job at the Dancing Avenida, in Rio, as the crooner of the Orquestra de Dedé. In 1945, she was hired by Júlio Simões to work in his dancing ballroom Casa Verde in São Paulo, where her fan club was expanded and came to include Adoniran Barbosa, the producers Vicente Leporace and Egas Moniz, and Blota Júnior, the A&R director of Rádio Cruzeiro do Sul. Always in financial difficulties, Cardoso got a job as a taxi-girl at the Dancing Avenida, where she also became a crooner in 1941. With Grande Otelo, she kept a duo for over ten years whose pièce de résistance was "Boneca de Piche" (Ary Barroso/Luís Iglésias). Cardoso worked at several other radio stations, but she supplemented her earnings with performances in circuses, clubs, and cinemas. Approved as a member of the cast, she started to perform there regularly at Tuesdays. Enthusiastic about the young singer, Jacob do Bandolim took her to Rádio Guanabara, where she opened, on August 18, 1936, at the Programa Suburbano, with such artists as Noel Rosa, Vicente Celestino, Aracy de Almeida, and Marília Batista. Having to work since very young, she had several small jobs until she was discovered by Jacob do Bandolim at the party for her 16th birthday, where he was brought to by her cousin Pedro, a popular figure among the musicians of the time. At five, Cardoso debuted as a singer, performing at the rancho Kananga do Japão (a historical Carnival rancho founded in 1911). In her almost 70 years of artistic activities, she performed a wide palette of genres, but her preference was for the samba.īorn to a musical family, her father was a seresteiro (serenader) and her mother an amateur singer.
Her ample tessitura, capable of exploring faithfully both low and high registers, and her highly personal interpretation, full of a melancholy that witnessed the essence of an artist who experienced deep sadness in her life (along with all the rewards that success can bring), conveyed an unforgettable poetic density. Adored by Edith Piaf ("C'est merveilleuse! C'est merveilleuse!"), paid homage by Cartola (who wrote especially for her his famous samba-canção "Acontece"), and a most cherished artist by the Brazilian audiences, she was also known as "the Divina" (an alias given to her by Haroldo Costa and popularized by Vinicius de Moraes in his liner notes to Chega de Saudade). Elizete Cardoso, the singer whose album Chega de Saudade launched the bossa nova, was also the first popular singer to interpret Villa-Lobos at the Municipal Theaters of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and was considered by Almirante the best interpreter of Noel Rosa.