Rita Pavone Fan Club history

RITA PAVONE FAN CLUBS

I suppose a page about the inner workings of a teen-age fan club dedicated to a female teen-idol would be an interesting subject to pursue.

I have been a member of at least three different fan clubs dedicated to Italian teenage-sensation Rita Pavone who burst into Brazilians' consciousness on a Thursday night, 25th June 1964, when a video-tape of her recital at Teatro Record recorded two days earlier was broadcast by Channel 7, TV Record. Her vivacious charisma was instantly taken on by a whole nation. Her boisterous rendition of Italian-style rock’n’roll was wildly applauded. Her bold routine of stepping down from the stage to mingle in the midst of  the audience, sitting on grandpas' knees or making grandmas sing along a few bars of ‘Datemi un martello’ (a loosely adaptation of Pete Seeger's seminal 'If I had a hammer') had never been seen before. It was a sensation in itself. Rita could do no wrong. She enthralled São Paulo and Rio plus the whole nation in one single night.

Her album ‘Meus 18 anos’ (Non è facile avere 18 anni) shot straight up to Number One. Her two EPs - ‘Quando sogno’ and ‘Come te non c’è nessuno' - were Number One and Two at the hit parade. ‘Datemi un martello’ stayed at the top of the charts for 8 straight weeks when the follow-up ‘Scrivi’, went to number 3 and ‘Sul cucuzzolo’ to number 4. Rita Pavone was the greatest foreign act of 1964. While the US was into Beatlemania, Brazil and Argentina were into Pavonemania.

It took some time though for fan clubs dedicated to her to start popping up but when they did - as of mid-1965 - there was a plethora of them spread all over the country. Prospective fan-club-presidents would advertise for members in teen-age oriented magazines like Jeanette Adib’s ‘Revista do Rock’ (edited and printed in Rio), TV Guide ‘Intervalo’, old timer weekly ‘Revista do Radio’ or even on an illustrated magazine like ‘Fatos & Fotos’ which started catering for the teen market.

Fan-club organizers wrote to the letters-section of those mags inviting fans to join in. They had their addresses or PO Boxes numbers printed and were soon flooded with mountains of letters from avid fans asking for photos, lyrics, friendship, records that didn't reach their out-of-the-way towns etc. Sometimes a less-informed fan thought they were writing to Rita herself instead of a fan-club. Some invarialbly asked for money which was a joke for most of FCs were managed by poor teen-agers who had meager incomes.

1966-1967 the golden years

By mid-1966, I had met a few fans who really mattered. It all started when I decided to visit the address of Fã Clube Rita Pavone started by Antonio Carlos Faria aka Totó, a lad of 15 who enjoyed the dynamics of show business, lived with his mother and a younger brother at a house in Bosque da Saúde, a suburb next to Vila Mariana. There was a variation on FCs’ names: ‘RP Fan Club’ or ‘Fan Club RP’. Some would spell the word ‘fan’ as ‘fan’ and others as ‘fã’ which is also possible in the Portuguese language. Toto’s was ‘Fã Clube Rita Pavone’. 

Even though Totó wasn't home when I knocked on his door on a late afternoon, his mother, dona Tina, who was very friendly, told me he was out working as an office-boy at a stationery shop on Rua Afonso Celso at that moment. She showed me a stack of letters he’d received only that week and said I could amuse myself reading some of the fan mail. They were dozens of letter of teenagers responding to an ad published at Revista do Rock inviting Pavone fans to join his F.C. 

Through these letters I ended up meeting other fans... and the most ardent of all was a girl called Silvia Paula Jentsch, who lived not far from there, at Vila Clementino. Silvia had a few imported vinyls like ‘Volvió la Pecosita’, a 1965 Argentine album which had a few tracks never released in Brazil. That was the ultimate Graal chalice of a Pavone fan. He/she who had the supreme happiness of being the owner of an ‘imported record’ was king/queen among their peers. Besides being a fortunate fan Silvia was a skillful artist drawing and painting on china. Her mother ran a family business straight from home and Silvia was independent economically.

On my second visit to Silvia one Saturday afternoon I learned she was also a member of other Fan Clubs. One in São Carlos-SP which I also belonged to and one in Sorocaba-SP which was led by Leda Gonçalves whose parents owned a rolling skate rink in town. Silvia, her brother Roberto and her mother Paula had visited Sorocaba and she became fast friends with Leda and other girls there. 

At the same time I had written Toto I also wrote to a ‘Rita Pavone Fan Club’ located in São Carlos-SP – a mid-sized town some 250 km from São Paulo. That was a much more organized FC having Luís Fabio Miranda as president and Sonia Maria de Oliveira as a 1st secretary, both in their late teens.

Silvia’s house at Vila Clementino, eventually became the ‘de-facto’ São Paulo Fan Club branch where we went to on Saturday afternoons to listen to the latest Pavone releases in Brazil or imported from far-away places like Germany, Italy or the USA.

Silvia as it turned out was a member of three different RP fan-clubs. Toto’s, Fabio’s and Leda   Gonçalves’s 'Fan Clube Rita Pavone Comanda'. Leda lived in Sorocaba, a mid-sized city 90 km from São Paulo. Silvia actually had already visited Leda whose family owned a roller-skate rink that swarmed with teens who danced and roller-skated to the sounds of “Datemi un martello’, 'La partita di pallone', ‘Quando sogno’ and all the rock’n’roll hits belted out by the Italian Vocano.

Silvia’s family had a Volkswagen beetle and that’s how she, her brother Glu and mother Paula and father Otto would drive from town to town. They had already been to Sorocaba. Then when I joined them, Mum & Dad Jentsch would stay home and we all jumped on the beetle and Glu drove us all the way to São Carlos, on 21st April 1967, a Friday which was also a holiday honouring Tiradentes, where we finally met (in person) Fabio, Sonia, Sandra Regina and other teens we only knew by letter-writing. We all became fast friends instantly.

There was a hint of competition and jealousy among the various fan-clubs but we who belonged to two, three or more of them did not take part in this internecine activity.

1966 and 1967 were the golden years of the many Rita Pavone Fan Clubs. Finally, on 15 October 1967, there was a ‘national meeting’ in São Paulo where lots of kids got together at Walter Teruo Tsutsui’s house in Vila Madalena, a São Paulo inner-suburb, where we did the usual: listened to Pavone’s records, talked about how much we loved her and were photographed by Silvia Paula's Yashika. 

Most of the teens who were at Walter's living room on that Sunday afternoon became friends who saw each other fairly often. Little by little the kids started talking about other subjects other than Rita Pavone. Subjects as differente as sexuality, religion or sports were developed among the fans in an intellectually charged atmosphere. Some of us tried desperately to learn Italian to get culturally closer to our idol. Most of us bought Italian magazines which we barely understood but we kept on trying to read them with the help of dictionaries. Many lasting friendships were formed in those halcyon days.

Clockwise from left at the back: Walter Teruo Tsutsui, Sandra Pisani, Silvia Paula Jentsch, Maria de Lourdes Pelaes, Luiz Carlos Amorim & Luiz Carlos Marra. 

Pavone fans at a Saturday meeting in São Paulo in 1967; back row: Claudete Deleva, Luiz Carlos Marra, Walter Teruo Tsutsui, Luiz Amorim, an Unidentified girl; at the front row from left to right: Anadir, Maria de Lourdes Pelaes, Sandra Pisani & Silvia Paula Jentsch. 

1968 – the year all hell broke loose

1968 was a disruptive year to me particularly because I was conscripted into the Brazilian Army. The military dictatorship ran supreme and there was a lot of resentment in the air with students protesting on the streets and the military police killing indiscriminately. I think that atmosphere contribuited to the  demise of Fan Club activities.

Besides there was a big denouement in Pavone’s private life: Rita married Mr. Ferruccio Ricordi, her long-time manager, record-producer and Svengali on 15 March 1968. Mr. Ferruccio Ricordi was known in the show-business as as Teddy Reno and had been a romantic balladeer in the 40s and 50s.

Many fans, like my dearest friend Silvia Jentsch, felt betrayed by Rita’s decision who up to then had a rebellious attitude and all of a sudden had ‘given in’ and married an ‘old man’ double her age. It was a big let-down to some fans, especially the most influential ones.

Rita’s having left RCA Italiana was also negative. She recorded now for Ricordi (no relation to her manager-huband), that was distributed in Brazil by Chantecler a ‘no-frills’ label.

But worse than that was Brazilian RCA’s total lack of interest in keeping apace with Pavone’s latest recordings like ‘Solo tu’ and ‘Stasera con te’ released in Italy in late 1965, ‘Questo nostro amore’ released in early 1967 was note even pressed in Brazil.  

Ever since Rita’s last personal appearance in April 1965, RCA simply ignored she had been the label's best selling act in 1964. Brazilian RCA were caught unawares with the surge of Brazilian native rock’n’roll – Jovem Guarda’s sudden popularity. CBS (Columbia Records) was on top now with Roberto Carlos and RCA which had been the top dog until 1964 was floundering with no clear way out of the dolldrums.

Hard-core fans had to rely on Italian imported magazines such as ‘Giovani’ and ‘Big’ – or ‘Gente’, ‘Oggi’ and ‘L’Europeo’ to read the latest news about Pavone. Those magazines were expensive and arrived in South America two or three months after their original publication. It was the only source of information for the avid fans.

I well remember ‘Non dimenticar le mie parole’, Rita’s last recording for RCA Italiana. I somehow got hold of an Italian 45 giri import and I thought it was a great achievement! The song itself was released in 1937, when Italy was under Fascit rule, made a hit in 1940 by three Hungarian sisters called Trio Lescano. Rita made it as if it were was a soul recording straight out of Motown Records. It was hip, it was modern and it had soul. Rita’s rendition was a tour-de-force. Would Rita Pavone become the Italian Aretha Franklin? She had what it took! But that was only a flash in the pan! When Rita moved to Ricordi the quality of her records was abysmal. Well, never mind.  I guess it was time to grow up, anyway!

Some idols grow up with their fans others don’t. I guess Rita Pavone got lost when she entered a difficult marriage – at least publicly it was the wrong step to take for Mr. Ferruccio was still a married man with a son and a stranged wife. Italy did not recognize divorce and the Italian Press was dead-set against such a union. The marriage also festered a lot of bad blood between her and her father splitting the family in two camps and the Press having a ball out of it.

I guess the dream was over.  The dream had been shattered, crushed to the ground. I went my own way but I kept as my friends a lot of the people I had met during those two or three wonderful years that turned out to be the most beautiful years of my life.

Luiz Amorim, 24 April 2011.