Sylvia Telles


Silvia Telles was a Brazilian jazz samba and bossa nova singer of the 1950s and 1960s.

Life

She was born in 1934 and she had the ambition to be a ballet dancer. She studied with Madeleine Rosay at the Teatro Municipal's corp de ballet in Rio de Janeiro, but she would also practice singing and playing the piano.
Telles preceded the advent of bossa nova, and began covering songs by such influential composers as Antonio Carlos Jobim, and worked with others such as Luiz Bonfá. She also did several tribute albums to Antonio Carlos Jobim. One of the most famous classic bossa nova songs was written for her by Jobim, its namesake her nickname - "Dindi".
By the early 1960s, she had made her first trip to the United States, recording U.S.A. with Barney Kessel for Philips. Her husband, producer Aloysio de Oliveira, proved instrumental in her later signing to Odeon and Elenco, two labels where he worked. Telles had just recorded her second tribute to Jobim, 1966's The Music of Mr. Jobim, when she was killed in a car accident at the age of 32. Telles is the mother of singer, musician and songwriter Claudia Telles, born August 26, 1957.

Discography