Background
Cadena was born in Oklahoma City on September 26, 1924, and moved as a child to Newark, New Jersey.
Cadena was born in Oklahoma City on September 26, 1924, and moved as a child to Newark, New Jersey.
As a youth, he would visit African-American churches and travel to Harlem to listen to the music He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served for four years in the South Pacific during World World War World War II He worked at Newark"s Radio Record Shop, whose owner Herman Lubinsky also owned of Savoy Records. Together with drummer Kenny Clarke, Cadena arranged series of one-time recordings with groups of musicians, recorded at sound engineer Rudy Van Gelder"s studio in Hackensack, New Jersey.
His recordings at Savoy included work of artists Cannonball Adderley, Shirley Caesar, John Lee Hooker, Milt Jackson, Yusef Lateef, Charles Mingus, Esther Phillips, Jimmy Scott and Marion Williams.
Cadena owned a record store in New Brunswick, New Jersey and another in Newark that would feature jam sessions, and also established the recording label Choice Records. He went to Prestige Records in October 1962 as head of A&R, replacing Esmond Edwards, who left to take a similar position developing jazz artists at the Argo Records label of Chess Records.
At Prestige he was responsible for overseeing the production and release of soul jazz and other records by artists including Red Holloway, Jack McDuff and Shirley Scott. After relocating to the West Coast, and settling in Hermosa Beach, California, in the mid-1970s, Cadena promoted jazz in the Los Angeles area at such clubs as the Lighthouse Café in Hermosa Beach and other influential area clubs.
He had suffered a stroke in 2007.