Dámaso Pérez Prado was a legendary figure on the world musical stage during the 1940s and 1950s. The man who called himself "The King of Mambo" brought music and entertainment to scores of music fans throughout the world. His music has recently seen resurgence with the filming of the 1992 movie The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. His orchestra, now led by his son, keeps his the musical compositions alive.
Background
Pérez Prado was bom in the province of Matanzas in Cuba on December 11, 1916. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father was a print journalist working for Cuban newspapers. As a child, he learned to play the piano and the organ. He developed a love for music and a series of musical skills that led to a musical career that lasted a lifetime. His brother, Pantaleón Pérez Prado, was also a prominent musician and bandleader who has a successful musical career in Europe.
Education
He studied classical piano in his early childhood, and later played organ and piano in local clubs. For a time, he was pianist and arranger for the Sonora Matancera, Cuba's best-known musical group at the time. He also worked with casino orchestras in Havana for most of the 1940s. He was nicknamed "El Cara de Foca" ("Seal Face") by his peers at the time.
Career
There have been many debates among music scholars about Pérez Prado's role in the invention of the mambo. Music historian John Storm Roberts has identified two schools in the development of mambo: the "Cuban School" and the "New York School." While Pérez Prado liked to take credit for its invention and was very fond of his "King of Mambo" moniker, there were many other important musicians who worked simultaneously on mambo's development. People such as Cuban musicians Israel Cachao López and his brother Oreste, Arsenio Rodriguez, and Oreste Ramos worked together with Pérez Prado in the development of the genre and were interpreting similar music with their respective orchestras. While Pérez Prado was developing this rhythm in Cuba, musicians Xavier Cugat and Tito Puente were also playing a similar style of music during the 1940s and 1950s in New York. It is acknowledged, however, that Pérez Prado was ultimately responsible for the popularization of the genre throughout Latin America, the United States, and the rest of the world.
Mambo, as interpreted by Pérez Prado, is a combination of Afro-Cuban rhythms such as the rumba and the cha-cha-chá, underscored by the use of wind, brass, and percussion instruments. Roberts characterizes Pérez Prado's mambo as: "a bright octave sound with ingenious and fairly rhythmic sections based on such fine percussionist as Mongo Santa Maria, though even the best of Peréz Prado's work lacks the richness of the New York school". According to one source, Pérez Prado's work was also influenced by American swing and jazz, especially the music of Stan Kenton. Pérez Prado's mambo incorporates a series of cries or grunts such as "Dilo," "Uh," "Vaya," and Ahí. While critics have called these distinctive internal features of his mambo style, in reality Pérez Prado used these calls as musical commands to cue and hype the musicians in his orchestra.
During the 1940s Pérez Prado left Cuba and traveled to Puerto Rico and the rest of Latin America. In 1948 he finally settled in Mexico, where he formed an orchestra with the late Benny Moré, another famous musician of the time. Their collaboration brought a refinement to the mambo, which led to its wide acceptance and success in Mexico and Latin America. The Latin division of RCA records, based in Mexico, signed him up in 1949. Working with RCA and Moré, Pérez Prado released many successful records and songs. One of his most popular creations of the time was "Mambo #5." He continued traveling to Latin America where he played to sold-out dance houses and appeared in scores of Mexican films.
The 1950s represented one of the most fertile and popular periods for Latino music and musicians in the United States. Scores of innovative Latino performers were emerging, creating, and influencing the music and dancing styles of the times. In 1951 Pérez Prado made his first visit to the United States to tour with his band. He initially targeted mostly Latino audiences in New York, as he thought that his music would only appeal to Latino audiences. Although he was successful iir New York, he found that Cugat and Puente already dominated the music market in the city. Moreover, non-Latino audiences who frequently attended the ballrooms at the big hotels in New York preferred the more stylized big band adaptations of Latin music and mambo than the ones generally played by Pérez Prado. During his stay in the United States, music unions threatened to stop Pérez Prado from appearing unless he accepted American musicians in his band. I hus, he had to open the band to American performers who eventually influenced his music with their own unique playing style.
Pérez Prado and his orchestra eventually went to California, where they played in concerts attended by thousands of people in Los Angeles and in San Francisco. Latino radio stations started to play his records vigorously. As a result, American audiences began to listen to the music and were caught in the frenzy that led to what was known as Mambo Fever. Since the majority of mambo interpreters marketed the genre as dance music, the vocals eventually disappeared from the songs interpreted by Pérez Prado and his band.
Throughout the decade of the 1950s Pérez Prado was an important Latino performer in the United States and catered mostly to the American market. His band released the hit "Cerezo Rosa" (Pink and Apple Blossom White) in 1955. This song was number one in the Top 40 charts for ten consecutive weeks and was used as a soundtrack for Jane Russell's movie Underwater. He also scored other hits with the songs "Voodoo," "Suite Havana 3:00 A.M.," and "Exotic Suite of the Americas." Peréz Prado's recording of the mambo "Patricia" in 1958 also reached number one in the charts and was his last major hit. The song became so popular that Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini used it in his 1960 movie La Dolce Vita.
Toward the end of the 1950s, the popularity of Pérez Prado's band started to decline as the nation's music styles and tastes began to change and audiences favored other rhythms. Pérez Prado returned to Mexico and continued to tour the world until the end of his life. In 1981 he had a successful musical titled Sun in Mexico City. Although he never reached the level of success arid popularity that he had attained during the 1950s, he was perceived as a world-class bandleader and arranger. Pérez Prado died on September 14,1989, of a stroke in Mexico City. Although he has been dead for more than a decade, his son, Dámaso Pérez Prado Jr., keeps the band alive. One of the authors recently witnessed a performance of the band in Tokyo, Japan, that was extremely well received. The band, which tours the world every year, not only retains the quality established by Pérez Prado but it also manages to attract scores of fans to their performances. Some of Pérez Prado's other hits were "Que Rico el Mambo," "Mambo Universitario," "El Ruletero," "Mambo en Sax," "La Niña Popof," "Mambo del Taconazo," and "Caballo Negro."