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Pérez Prado and Mambomania
By
Joseph Levy Early
Years and the Origins of the Mambo
Early Years and the Origins of the Mambo Dámaso Pérez Prado, El Rey del Mambo, was born in Matanzas, Cuba, on December 11, 1916.1 His mother was a schoolteacher, his father a newspaper man. In early childhood, he studied classical piano with Rafael Somavilla at the Principal School of Matanzas and, as a young man, played organ and piano in cinemas and clubs. Around 1941 or 1942, he moved to Havana and played piano for the Orquesta del Cabaret Pennsylvania de la Playa de Mariano, soon moving on to a small band at the Cabaret Kursaal. He apparently changed jobs several times in 1942-1943, playing piano for the Orchesta Cubaney and then the Orchesta Paulina Alvarez. He also began to arrange for Gapar Roca de la Peer, some of whose songs were used by the Orquesta Casino de la Playa, the most famous Cuban band of the day, which was directed by Liduvino Pereira. The lead singer, Cascarita, especially liked these numbers and Prado was hired as pianist and arranger. Prado's conception
of the mambo began to develop in 1943. He later said that four, five,
and sometimes six musicians would often play an after hours jam session
on the tres (a small Cuban guitar) and the resultant cross rhythms
and syncopation give him the idea for the mambo. Jazz writer and critic
Ralph J. Gleason reports that "Prez" talked
to him about the mambo as merely being an Afro-Cuban rhythm with a dash
of American swing. According to Prado, the mambo is "more musical
and swingier than the rhumba.2 It
has more beat." He also explained, "I am a collector of cries
and noises, elemental ones like seagulls on the shore, winds through the
trees, men at work in a foundry. Mambo is a movement back to nature, by
means of rhythms based on such cries and noises, and on simple joys." The mambo as we have come to know it is actually a rhythm whose tempo may be slow or fast, and almost any standard tune can be set to mambo tempo. The saxophone usually sets the rhythm pattern, and the brass carries the melody. The word "mambo" comes from the Ñañigo dialect spoken in Cuba. It probably has no real meaning, but occurs in the ancient phrase abrecuto y guiri mambo ("open your eyes and listen"), used to open Cuban song contests. Other Possible Origins of the Mambo While Prado is generally credited with popularizing the mambo, its beginnings are often attributed to two other Cubans, Arsenio Rodriguez and Orestes Lopez. Arsenio Rodriguez (1911-1970), El Ciego Maravilloso--"the marvelous blind man"--was a musician of Congo descent who was born in Cuba and was blinded at age twelve by a mule kick. He sang and played bass, percussion, and tres in Havana with various sextets and formed his own extremely popular conjunto in 1940. He is known for spicing up the percussion and brass sections of the son, an earlier Cuban rhythm, and setting the standards for salsa bands of the day. Orestes Lopez was a cellist for a rival band, La Maravilla del Siglo, which battled Rodriguez in groove-to-groove combat in the recording studio, as well as on stage. In 1940, Lopez called one of his compositions Mambo, although the actual mambo rhythm was arrived at by the band as a whole. However, his brother Israel Lopez (known as Cachao), pointed out that Prado's mambo was quite different from that of Orestes, whose rhythm was more in the charanga style. Another (though unlikely) theory is that the mambo actually developed in New York City's Spanish Harlem during the 1930's and 40's. At that time, Cuba, under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, was a society in which race and class distinctions had become polarized. There was a large wave of Cuban emigration to New York during this period and the mambo is thought to be the result of a musical blending of Cuban culture with that of the African-Americans and West Indians already resident there, as well as of the Puerto Ricans who arrived after 1945. So while it is clear that several rhythms and dances of the period were given the same name, when it comes to the big band mambo that we know today, Prado was clearly the originator.
In 1947, Prado left Cuba for reasons that are not completely clear. In his unpublished biography of Prado, Michael Mcdonald-Ross quotes Rosendo Ruiz-Quevedo as saying that Prado's incorporation of North American jazz into the mambo was fiercely resisted by certain elements of the Cuban musical establishment. Especially enraged was Fernando Castro, the local agent of the Southern Music Publishing Company and Peer International [publishers], which had a monopoly of Cuban music publishing at the time. Mcdonald-Ross writes, "Castro denounced Prado by stating that he was adulterating Cuban music with jazz. As a result, Prado's arranging assignments ended and, unable to continue to work in Cuba, he left, eventually to settle in Mexico." Also, because of the racial problems, it became increasingly difficult for Cubans of African descent to achieve success in their own country in any field, including music. It may be for this reason, too, that Prado left Cuba, when in 1947 he embarked on tours which took him first to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and then to Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Mcdonald-Ross called these tours "unrewarding," but other accounts say that he won the adulation of teenage dance fans, causing traffic jams and near riots wherever he played. In 1948, Prado settled in Mexico City, a popular destination (along with Vera Cruz) for expatriate Cubans, where he formed his own band. Here he established himself as a regular performer at the Club 1-2-3, reputedly a hang-out for the idle rich, and became known as the "Glenn Miller of Mexico." [A couple of years later, during his first tour of the United States, he would be nicknamed the "Stan Kenton of Mexico."] He soon became a popular choice as musical director for many Mexican films and also became a movie actor (often playing himself), where he mugged and cavorted across the set in a zoot-suit. Between 1947 and 1949, Prado recorded at least 24 songs in with fellow Cuban Beny Moré (1919-1963) which were released on 78 rpm disks.3 Moré arrived from Cuba with the Matamoros Trio and when the Trio returned home, he opted to stay in Mexico City and sing with Prado's orchestra. Although the liner notes to Kuba-Mambo (reissued on CD as Tumbao Cuban Classics TCD-006) say these were made for a Cuban label, Mcdonald-Ross says they were actually recorded by and released on RCA Victor's local Mexicana label. In any event, they proved to be so popular that in 1949 he signed a recording contract with RCA Victor proper. His first recordings for them, made in Mexico City on December 12, 1949, were Qué Rico El Mambo and Mambo No. 5. Released by RCA Victor on its International label, this record, with its scorching brass and persuasive percussion, took the Americas (first South, then North) by storm and the mambo craze was launched.4 In April, 1951, Newsweek reported that the dance had driven it's practitioners to such wild exuberance in Peru that Cardinal Juan Gualberto Guevara of Lima denied absolution to anyone who danced it. Mambo Americano Anglo listeners in New York and Southern California first heard Prado's singles on Latino radio stations. The songs were soon crossing-over to mainstream pop broadcasts and, in 1950, Prado scored moderate hits in the US with his early releases. He had well-disciplined and thoroughly rehearsed musicians and a simple formula--keep the tunes clean and punchy and include plenty of the shrill horns and bright percussion that the public loved. His arrival in the United States was presaged by Barry Ulanov. Writing in the December, 1950, issue of Metronome, Ulanov declared, "The swingingest jazz band in this country right now ain't--it's in Mexico. And furthermore it isn't a jazz band; it blows mambo. Five trumpets, one trombone, four saxophones, five rhythm, one of which is the piano played by its leader, Perez Prado, it outjumps anything around..." Prado's first appearance in the United States was an engagement in New York City during April and May, 1951, at the Puerto Rico Theater in the Bronx, where he was hired as a singer. Because of a dispute over rules with the Musicians' Union Local 802, his performance was under the jurisdiction of AGVA (the American Guild of Variety Artists) and he was required to perform as a solo act without his orchestra. Later (in May), the union problems were resolved and he and the band played a one-night benefit for the Mexican Youth Center at the Ashland Auditorium in Chicago. In August, they played an eight city tour of the West Coast, including stops at the Zenda Ballroom in Los Angeles, Pasadena's Civic Auditorium, and Sweet's Ballroom in Oakland. Despite stiff admissions of (at the time) $1.25-$1.85, each hall was packed with up to 3,500 "Mambonicks" and hundreds more were turned away. The bands at the shows were made up of American musicians, many of Latin origin, who were quickly recruited and rigorously rehearsed for only a few days beforehand. They all agreed later that Prado's musical book, much of it in manuscript, gave them a tough time. The tour continued back across the country to New York and then looped through the South on its return to Los Angeles. On the night of October 26, tragedy struck when the bus Prado and his band were riding in overturned near Ft. Worth, Texas, and Delia Romero, a singer and dancer, was killed. There were other serious injuries among the musicians and Prado, who sustained cuts and bruises, performed with the aid of crutches for the next few months. In New York, his popularity grew over the years and Prado moved progressively downtown, first to the Palladium Ballroom on 53rd Street, then (in 1954) to an extended appearance at the chic Starlight Roof of the Waldof-Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue. Mambomania! The mambo was truly a cross-cultural phenomenon. The Park Plaza Ballroom, at 110th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, was a favorite hangout for enthusiastic dancers from Harlem and other "ethnic" communities. Here inhibitions were checked at the door and dancers performed with spectacular abandon. Although the Park Plaza is acknowledged to be the true temple of the "authentic mambo," it was a little too authentic and too far uptown for the convenience of recent middle-class, white converts to the dance. Ultimately, it was the Palladium Ballroom (originally called the Latin Ballroom and paradoxically renamed by new owner Max Hyman), with its weekly mambo contests--held every Wednesday--which became its most impressive house of worship. It was reported that on Wednesday nights in New York City the demand for baby-sitters underwent a sharp rise and the amount of money lost on Canasta, gin rummy, bridge, and poker dropped precipitously. There were a number of reasons for the mambo's success in the US. As a dance, it was easy to do and people often created their own steps. It also emerged at a time when the United States was engaged in the Korean War and the mambo's uninhibited rhythms were an acceptable way of releasing social tensions in public. Additionally, the rhumba craze of the 1940's had peaked. Professional dance studios were looking for a new source of income and mambo lessons were it. Katherine Dunham, the great dancer, hosted Prado and his orchestra at her school at 43rd Street and Broadway in New York. In her unpublished autobiography, Dunham writes, "Our school became the popular meeting place of Caribbean, Central and South American diplomats, painters, musicians, poets, and the like. At our monthly Boule Blanches we usually presented new and untried Cuban orchestras such as Pérez Prado, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, and Bobby Capo." One might speculate that this introduction to the cultural elite of the African Diaspora lead Prado to experiment with the impressionistic pieces Voodoo Suite, Havana 3 a.m., and the Exotic Suite Of The Americas, in much the way Duke Ellington was also working at the time. Dunham herself would later appear in the 1954 film titled Mambo, which featured musical numbers by Prado on the soundtrack. Oddly enough, as Prado's career developed, his popularity among the Hispanic-American community diminished. There was a general feeling that his version of the mambo catered too much to Anglo tastes and it was the more traditional, less "pop" sounds of Tito Rodriguez, Tito Puente, and Machito [né Frank Grillo] who were perennial favorites among the Latin communities in the US. Nonetheless, the dance craze was such a crossover success that 1954 was dubbed "The Year of the Mambo" and a number of mainstream singers started cashing in, as well. Most notably were Perry Como with Papa Loves Mambo and Rosemary Clooney with Mambo Italiano. Even Vaughn Monroe had a hit with They Were Doin' The Mambo.
Although Prado recorded and toured with great enthusiasm, his first #1 hit in the US wasn't until 1955 with Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White, which stayed on the American pop charts for 26 weeks (10 weeks at #1) and enjoyed similar success in Europe and Japan. Curiously, it was a song that was not a Prado original, but began life in France in 1950 as Cerisier Rose et Pommier Blanc and was then transformed into the Spanish Cerezo Rosa before becoming Anglicized as the tune we know today. Ironically for the Mambo King, his most popular single was actually a cha-cha. It was also danced by Jane Russell in the film Underwater! (originally titled The Big Rainbow) in which Prado, himself, had a bit part. The song features a spectacular trumpet solo by Billy Regis and the story goes that after Regis began to draw applause for his solos during personal appearances, Prado would stand directly in front of him, pretending to play the trumpet.
Dilo (Ugh!) Prado is often remembered for his signature grunt, "Ugh!" According to Wylie Watson, "[He] is [actually] saying, 'Dilo!'-a Spanish word meaning 'Say it!' or, in the context in which Prado uses it, 'Give out!' "So, with his guttural cry of 'Dilo!', he urges the brass section to 'Give out!', he coaxes the saxophones to 'Say it!' and he exhorts a trumpet soloist to make his horn rise and shine." 5 In the course of his performances, Prado would also give a high kick, which later developed into a jump, to further accent his exhortations. Eventually, he got into the habit of shouting "Dilo" ( "Ugh!") and simultaneously propelling himself into the air, a sight that once seen was not easily forgotten. Robert Farris Thompson, Jr., writing in Jazz Review said, "He developed a vocal prank of his Havana days into the trademark of the mambo... With this sign the layman could easily recognize [the] mambo, untroubled by considerations of rhythm. It was a trick and it worked." Michael Mcdonald-Ross points out, too, that "vocables (chants, grunts, shouts &c) are an integral part of African and Afro-Cuban music. [Anyone] familiar with the guaguanco or who has heard Afro-Cuban soneros like Beny Moré or Machito will know how often they produce these inarticulate cries in the course of a number." Dámaso and Pantaleón In 1956, a feud between Prado and his younger brother Pantaleón (1926-1983) resulted in the strange affair of Pérez suing his sibling for $500,000, charging him with impersonation. In Spanish culture it is common for children to be given the surnames of both parents and in this case the birth names of the brothers were Dámaso Pérez Prado and Pantaleón Pérez Prado, respectively--Pérez being their father's family name, Prado their mother's. RCA originally credited Dámaso's recordings to D. Pérez Prado, but when his albums started to appear in the US, the record company shortened his name to the more alliterative one we are familiar with today. In 1955, Prado dropped his first name altogether and changed it legally to Pérez Prado. About this time, Pantaleón, who played bass with his own group, appeared at the Alhambra theater in Paris under the name Pérez Prado, King of the Mambo. Panteleone was then restrained by a court order from posing as Pérez. However, hostilities resumed when an irate French visitor to Hollywood called the Palladium where Pérez was playing and bawled out the management for presenting an "imposter," saying that he had danced to the "real" Prado (actually, Panteleone) in Deauville a few weeks before. The suit which followed effectively put Panteleone out of action, but the younger brother had a form of posthumous revenge. When Pantaleón died in 1983, a widely syndicated obituary was headlined, "Mambo King Dies In Milan," leading many people to believe (falsely) that it was Pérez who had passed away.
As early as 1954, Prado realized that no fad lasts forever and introduced two new dances, the suby and the pau-pau. The former was an accelerated version of the mambo and the latter, a slower one. Neither caught the public's fancy. In 1955, he tried again (also without success) to counter the cha-cha with La Culeta, again a milder mambo-like dance which was actually a predecessor of the cha-cha-cha. Ironically, in 1956 he appeared in the Columbia Pictures film Cha-Cha-Cha Boom, which was attempt to cash in on the cha-cha craze and featured Prado, Luis Alcarez, Helen Grayco (then married to Spike Jones), and the Mary Kaye Trio. In 1958, he had his final hit with Patricia (on the US charts for 21 weeks, including one at #1), which was also used by Nino Rota as the theme song for Federico Fellini's 1960 movie La Dolce Vita. RCA continued to support him through the early 1960's, but the recordings became increasingly steeped in gimmicks--mambo versions of the twist and rock-n-roll numbers, and El Dengue, the dance craze that never really happened. Unfortunately, Prado's later work never had the spontaneous excitement so evident in the Mexico City recordings of 1949-1950. With the end of the 1950's, his success declined and gave way to new rhythms, like the cha-cha-cha and rock-and-roll. In 1962, after RCA stopped releasing new albums of his material in the US, Prado's recorded output was mainly limited to smaller labels and recycled cuts in Latin-style anthologies. In the early 1970's, Prado permanently returned to his apartment off of Mexico City's grand Paseo de la Reforma to live with his wife and two children, son Dámaso Pérez Salinas, also known as Pérez Prado, Jr., and daughter Maria Engracia. Despite his fading star in the US, his career in Latin America was stronger than ever. He still toured and continued to record material which was released in Mexico and South America. There he was still revered as one of the reigning giants of the music industry and was a regular performer on Mexican television. In 1981, he was featured in a musical revue entitled Sun which enjoyed a long run in the Mexican capital. His last American appearance was at the Hollywood Palladium on September 12, 1987, when he played to a packed house. This was also the year of his last recording. Persistent ill health plagued him for the next two years and he died of a stroke in Mexico City on September 14, 1989, at the age of 72. During his lifetime, a cast of musical luminaries including Cuban singer (later bandleader) Beny Moré, trumpeter Pete Candoli, bongo and conga drummer Armando Parazo, percussionists Johnny Pacheco and Mongo Santamaria, and reedman (later bandleader) Rene Bloch were among those who passed through his orchestra. Nine years after his death, the popularity Prado's music was on the rise again. The exciting Guaglione almost made it to the top of the charts in the UK following its use in a Guiness beer television commercial and his entire catalogue of recordings is available today on compact discs. The mambo, reinvigorated under the name salsa, is still the signature dance of Latin popular music and his son continues to direct the orchestra today.
1.
Prado,
himself, claimed to be unsure about his exact date of birth, but apparently
was in the habit of shaving five years off his resume, typically giving
it as 1921 or 1922.
2. Also spelled "rumba," it is another Cuban rhythm which preceded the mambo.
3.
It should be noted that Prado's first recordings were actually in
Cuba as a member of the Orquesta Casino de la Playa, perhaps as early
as 1944. There is also a report of a solo piano version of "Mambo
No. 5" recorded and released in Cuba in 1945.
4. The only exceptions were Argentina and Brazil where the tango and samba were still the predominant dance forms, respectively. 5. At first it seems to be a stretch of the imagination to interpret "Ugh!" as "Dilo!" However, listening closely to an original 78 of Qué Rico El Mambo, one can hear that Prado really is saying "Dilo!" But he slurs the two syllables together in such a way that to the casual listener it sounds like "Ugh!"
Sources:
Other related sites:
Joseph Levy lives in New York State (in the USA) and is an artist, record collector, and author of The Vinyl Tourist web site.
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