Son of Januário José dos Santos (1888–1978), a farmer and accordion player, and Anna Batista de Jesus (1893–1960), a housewife, Gonzaga was attracted to the
accordion at a very early age, and he used to accompany his father at parties and religious celebrations. He later went to do his military service, where he learned to play the
cornet. On leaving the army he decided to remain in
Rio de Janeiro, performing in the streets and in bars. After noticing that the north-eastern people living in Rio de Janeiro missed the music from their home states, he started to give listeners the sort of music they craved to hear:
xaxados,
baiões, chamegos and
cocos. At
Ary Barroso's talent show, Luiz Gonzaga played his chamego "Vira e Mexe" and was acclaimed by the audience and by the host, who gave him the highest score. After discovering this niche in the market, Gonzaga became a regular at radio shows and started making records. In 1943, he dressed up in typical north-eastern costumes for the first time to perform live, and got hyped. Later on, as well as playing popular tunes on the accordion, he began to sing his own material, and his skills as a songwriter were revealed. His greatest hit ever, "
Asa Branca" (written with
Humberto Teixeira), was recorded in 1947 and covered countless times by many artists. He worked on the radio until 1954, enjoying huge popularity. He became (in the words of
Caetano Veloso, Caderno de Confessões Brasileiras, 1988) a "pop music" star, taking a genre straight from folklore to the pop music, creating with the combination of accordion,
zabumba, and
triangle (which became later the basic ensemble for
Forró) one of the western world's first "small pop music ensembles", ten years before the popularization of the rock music ensemble by
the Beatles. He is widely recognized for single-handedly taking the baião style and the accordion to a wide audience.
RCA (now
BMG), his recording label, was almost exclusively dedicated to printing his singles and albums . During the 1960s, as the public taste shifted to
bossa nova and
iê-iê-iê, he found himself increasingly stranded from big city stages, so he toured the countryside, where his popularity never abated. In the 1970s and 1980s, he slowly re-emerged, partly due to covers of his songs by famous artists like
Geraldo Vandré, Caetano Veloso,
Gilberto Gil, his son
Gonzaguinha and
Milton Nascimento. Some of his greatest hits are "Vozes da Seca" ("Voices From Drought"), "Algodão" ("Cotton"), "A Dança da Moda" ("The Dance in Fashion"), "ABC do Sertão" ("The ABC of Sertão"), "Derramaro o Gai" ("They Spilt the Gas"), "A Letra I" ("The 'i' letter"), "Imbalança" ("Shake It"), "A Volta da Asa-Branca" ("The Return of The
Picazuro Pigeon"), "Cintura Fina" ("Slender Waist"), "O Xote das Meninas" ("The Girls' Schottische", written with Zé Dantas, and "Juazeiro", "Paraíba", "Mangaratiba", "Baião-de-Dois", "No Meu Pé de Serra" ("There in My Homeland"), "Assum Preto" ("Blue-back Grassquit"), "Légua Tirana" ("Tyrannical league"), "Qui Nem Jiló" ("Like Solanum gilo", written with Humberto Teixeira. Other successful collaborations resulted in "Tá Bom Demais" ("It's So Good") (with Onildo de Almeida), "Danado de Bom" ("Damn Good") (with João Silva), "Dezessete e Setecentos" ("Seventeen And Seven hundred") and "Cortando o Pano" ("Cutting Cloth") (both with Miguel Lima). Gonzaga died of natural causes around 8:00 BRT on August 2, 1989, at the age of 76. ==Discography==