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Habanera AMB 88007 2

Habanera

Recorded 1937 - 19431. Los Hijos De Buda (R. Hernandez)...... 3:12 Vocals:2. En La Plantacion (Armando Orefiche) ...... 3:02 Miguelito Valdés (1 -3. 4) Benabe (Consuelo Bauza) ...... 2:18 Alfredito Valdés (5 • 6) Del Campo (7 - 12)4. Adios Africa (Arsenio Rodriguez)...... 2:43 5. Bruca Manigua (Arsenio Rodriguez) ...... 3:33 6. Habanera (J. Negrete - E. Grenet) ...... 3:19 7. Babalu (M. Lecuona) ...... 2:32 8. Chango Ta’ Beni (Justi Barreto) ...... 1:42 9. Tabu (M. Lecuona)...... 1:53 10. Para Vigo Me Voy (P. D.) ...... 2:50 11. Negra Leonor (Antonia Fernandez)...... 2:29 12. Enlloro (O. Morales - J. Blanco) ...... 4:24

P 1937 (5,6)P 1940• (1-3)P 1941• (4)P •1943 (7-12)

Achtern Dahl 4 • D-27729 Vollersode • PGermany 2010 & C 2010 …AND MORE BEARS LC 12483 AMB 88007 3

The name Xavier Cugat will be one of the first to turn to when searching for the very best in Latin- American dance music. Born on January 1st in 1900, Cugat enrolled at the Frank Damrosch School in New York when he was 12, then at eighteen years married the Cuban singer, Rita Montaner. Xavier then continued his musical studies in Berlin, where he also played some concerts with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. In 1927, after a period of work as caricaturist and a music composer for a motion picture studio, Cugat decided to try his luck forming his own band, specialising in Latin and Spanish rhythms. At the time, this kind of music was almost unknown by the North-American public, and as a result of the popularity that the orchestra acquired, the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles offered him a contract to perform in its famous ‘Cocoanut Grove’ as relief band. The other orchestra at the time was the very famous one led by Gus Arnheim, and forming a part of the whole show were the famous Andrews Sisters, as well as The Three Rhythm Boys, a vocal group which included the young Bing Crosby. In 1930, Cugat’s orchestra appeared in Ramón Navarro’s film ‘In Gay Madrid’, and the following year in Ricardo Cortez and Barbara Stanwyck’s ‘Ten Cents A Dance’, but two more years went by before his big break came. A young dancer named Margo, the 15 year old niece of Cugat’s first lady, Carmen Castillo, was hired by the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, and she had asked her uncle Xavier to handle the negotiations for her, the result of which Cugat acquired a contract for his orchestra as well. Then aside from having a steady job at the best hotel in New York, Cugat played every Sunday (normally his day off) in the Empire Room. This, his second year in New York, saw Cugat also featured on NBC’s ‘Let’s Dance’ program, along with Ken Murray and Benny Goodman. The show was heard coast-to- coast, and really helped Cugat in particular and Latin-American music in general, for it was at this point when he was proclaimed ‘The Rhumba-Tango King’. The popularity gained through radio also helped him secure a redording contract with RCA. Around this same time, Carmen was replaced by a AMB 88007 4

younger singer, Lena Romay, through a suggestion made by the management of the Waldorf Astoria. The years ‘Señor Cugat’ spent at the Waldorf were musically the most interesting and creative of a lengthy career, and Cugat mounted a really fine show, and displayed a lot of talents, such as the dancing of his niece Margo, also Rita Cansino (later better known as the film star Rita Hayworth), and singers such as his wife Carmen, Lena Romay, Dinah Shore and Evelyn Tyner among the ladies, not forgetting the great male singers that were featured with his band during those glamorour years. Names such as Alfredito Valdés, Catalino Rolón, Nico López, Bobby Capó, Del Campo, and in the early days, figures such as Machito and the young Tito Rodríguez. But above all, the extraordinary Miguelito Valdés “the best man of his style that has ever existed”, as Cugat recalled. Miguelito had arrived from Havana, where he had already gained great recognition as the featured singer with the Casino De La Playa Orchestra during the late thirties. With his coal-black hair tossing, his body swaying to the rhythms as he sang, his hands beating on the conga drum, he was a treat to watch as well as to hear. Valdés remained with the band for two years, and his style of singing gave the band a genuine Afro-Cuban sound. Cugat later recalled those days by saying: “The rhythms of our orchestra captivated the North- American public, giving them the desire to get up and dance and not simply to just sit there listening at the dinner table. They had never experienced anything like it before. Music in other clubs was at best created for an ambience that only encouraged conversation at the tables, predominantly by businessmen, but OUR rhythms created a totally different atmosphere, and it was rare when they heard it that they could resist remaining seated for very long at the tables. The dance floor of the Starlight Roof was witness to couples who, with our new rhythms, were living a new life.”