MarÃÂa del RocÃÂo Mohedano Jurado (18 September 1943 â 1 June 2006), simply known as RocÃÂo Jurado (), was a Spanish singer and actress.
Nicknamed La más grande ("The Greatest"), RocÃÂo Jurado sold more than 16 million records, making her one of the best-selling Spanish female singers. She received 5 platinum and 30 gold discs. In 2000, in New York City, she won the prize "La voz del Milenio" for best female voice of the 20th century.
RocÃÂo Jurado was born on Calvo Soto Street #11, Chipiona (Cádiz) in Andalusia, Spain. Her father, Fernando Mohedano Crespo (died at 36 years old), was a shoemaker and flamenco singer in his spare time; her mother, Rosario Jurado Bernal (died at 52 years old because of pancreatic cancer), was housewife and amateur performer of Andalusian traditional music. RocÃÂo Jurado was the eldest of 3 children, Gloria (1950) and Amador (1953) and she had 3 nephews and 5 nieces.
At home, RocÃÂo Jurado learned to love music; her first public performance was at the age of eight, in a play at Colegio La Divina Pastora. She learned to work hard when she was a girl, She sang in the church, and took part in some festivals organized by her school when she was fifteen. After her father's death, she helped with the precarious family finances. She worked as a shoemaker and as a fruit picker, and still had time to show up at Radio Sevilla contests. She came to be known as "The Girl of the Awards" after winning every radio station contest she entered. A friend of her mother introduced her to Manolo Caracol, her teacher.
Pastora Imperio immediately hired RocÃÂo for the tablao (flamenco stage) she ran: El Duende, one of the first of the tablaos period. Being a minor, she had to wear clothes that made her appear older to avoid drawing the attention of the authorities.
Her workmate, the flamenco singer and dancer Cañeta de Málaga, who had also arrived in Madrid under age to seek her art and was hired in El Duende, recalls in an interview how the young RocÃÂo sang "sus alegrÃÂas, sus tientos y sus cosas de la Piquer". RocÃÂo had always said that she was born in 1944 because when she arrived in Madrid to sing in 1960 she was a minor. Until she was 16 she could not sing in the tablaos, so she falsified her date of birth, adding two more years by saying that she was born in 1944 instead of 1946.
Professionally, RocÃÂo Jurado emerged with a repertoire mostly of copla, an Andalusian traditional genre that was beginning to lose force which she revitalized with energetic performances, as much in voice as in stage presence.
Popular in the 60's and early 70's, due to appearances as an actress in television and film as in the Curro Jiménez series, RocÃÂo made the leap to international stardom by adopting a melodic repertoire of romantic ballad with orchestral instruments and a personal image (make-up, hairdressing and costumes) in accordance with the European style.
RocÃÂo alternated the flamenco tailed dress (bata de cola) with sumptuous evening dresses, sometimes highly commented on for their audacity. In the 70's and 80's RocÃÂo recorded her most unmistakable successes: "Como una ola", "Señora", "Como yo te amo", "Ese hombre", "Se nos rompió el amor", "A que no te vas", "Muera el amor", "Vibro"... Many of them composed by Manuel Alejandro and recorded by José Antonio ÃÂlvarez Alija.
The prolonged celebrity of RocÃÂo lies in the romantic songs rather than in its purely Andalusian folkloric facet. She was famous for these ballads also in Hispano-America, where she remained in fashion for longer than in Spain, which explains her later scores with Mexican and Caribbean rhythms: "Me ha dicho la luna", "Te cambio mi bulerÃÂa"...She recorded duets with famous figures from that continent: with José Luis RodrÃÂguez "El Puma" the song "Amigo amor" and with Ana Gabriel the ambiguous song "Amor silencio". In 1990 participated in a show of tribute to Lola Flores in Miami, in which she recorded the duet "Dejándonos la piel".
In 1982 she sang flamenco in a double LP with the collaboration of two main figures of this genre: the guitarist Manolo Sanlúcar and the singer Juan Peña "Lebrijano." Titled Ven & SÃÂgueme, she discovered that the famous singer also moved with ease on the roads of Cante jondo. The filmmaker Carlos Saura used the voice of RocÃÂo in two feature films: El amor brujo with Cristina Hoyos in 1986 and Sevillanas in 1992. In Sevillanas, plays alongside Paco de LucÃÂa, Camarón de la Isla, Tomatito, Lola Flores, Manuela Carrasco, and Matilde Coral.
RocÃÂo Jurado was one of the protagonists of Azabache, a musical based on Andalusian copla in which she took part with other artists specialized in this genre, such as Nati Mistral, Juanita Reina, Imperio Argentina and MarÃÂa Vidal. They released this spectacle during the Universal Exposition of Seville in 1992 (Expo '92).
In 1998, on the occasion of the Festival of Jerez de la Frontera dedicated to flamenco dancing, the Theatre Villamarta had to announce that they were sold out for the RocÃÂo's gala weeks before the spectacle and before any other spectacles. An homage to the singer was made with the adaptation using "bulerÃÂas", a Flamenco variety of the song "Se nos rompió el amor" made by Fernando de Utrera. This song was originally composed by Manuel Alejandro but it was RocÃÂo who had made it popular.
RocÃÂo's voice was recognised internationally. She was awarded with the Best Female Voice of the 20th century in 2000. This award was conceded in 2000 in New York City by a group of journalists of the spectacle. In addition, in 1985, she sang for the President of the United States of America, Ronald Reagan in the White House. She was so popular that her death merited an article in the Billboard website. On 2 April 1988, RocÃÂo received the award "América", which recognised the Best Latin Voice. The ceremony took place at the Caesars Palace Casino (Las Vegas). In 2011, the Spanish media group Antena 3 released a TV Movie (mini series) about RocÃÂo's life titled Como alas al viento.
In August 2004, she had a high-risk surgery at the MonteprÃÂncipe Hospital (Madrid). Later on 17 September, she would announce at a press conference that she had pancreatic cancer. In June 2005, the XIV "Festival de la Yerbabuena" was dedicated to her at Las Cabezas de San Juan, a village from Seville. She accepted with her childhood friend Juan Peña, "El Lebrijano," the award which was given to her father.
After more than a year of professional inactivity, RocÃÂo re-appeared in December 2005, with a special programme in the Spanish Public Television (TVE) called RocÃÂo, siempre, where she demonstrated her condition. The spectacle, which was filmed in two different sessions included an important part dedicated to the folkloric music and the other to her famous ballads and her other hits. She sang in duet some of the songs with the most famous Spanish singers: Raphael, Mónica Naranjo, Paulina Rubio, David Bisbal, Malú and others.
In January 2006, RocÃÂo Jurado was hospitalized in the MD Anderson Hospital in Houston (Texas), for a check-up and to have a small surgery. An allergic reaction to one of the medicines provoked her hospitalization in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) twice, which delayed her return to Spain until March 2006. The same day she returned to Spain, the government gave her an award for her work merits (Medalla al Mérito en el Trabajo), which was announced to her once she landed in Spain.
On 1 June 2006, at 4:15 am, Jurado died surrounded by her close relatives in her house in La Moraleja, an affluent residential area located in the municipality of Alcobendas, a northern suburb of Madrid. The cause of death was the pancreatic cancer she had been struggling with. Her brother and manager, Amador Mohedano Jurado, announced her death in front of the residence at 6 oâÂÂclock in the morning. Her body was transferred to the Centro Cultural de la Villa at Plaza de Colón in central Madrid, where the funeral chapel was visited by over 20,000 individuals. Finally, her body was transferred to Chipiona and buried at the local San José cemetery, where a mausoleum was built in her honour.
RocÃÂo was the first main Spanish celebrity to abandon the use of typical traditional clothes and replace them with clothes from great international high couturiers and stylists, although she never forgot her origins. On 21 May 1976, when she married Spanish boxer Pedro Carrasco at the Sanctuary Virgen de Regla, she wore a traditional costume with a comb and flounces. They only had one daughter, RocÃÂo Carrasco Mohedano. In private, she sometimes recognized that she did not have time to dedicate to her daughter; she had long tours in Latin America and Europe which separated her from her daughter. After she was divorced in July 1989 and after obtaining the marriage annulment, RocÃÂo married bullfighter José Ortega Cano on 17 February 1995 at her house in the country Dehesa Yerbabuena, in front of over 2300 guests. The ceremony was broadcast live (and prerecorded) on the main television channels on country. At the end of 1999, the couple adopted two Colombian children, José Fernando and Gloria Camila, who were presented in public in the Spanish magazine áHola!.
In Spain