Though diminutive in stature, Pérez Prado was a giant in the world of post-war popular music. Dubbed "The Mambo King," he reigned supreme as one of the most influential pop orchestra leaders of the early 1950s. As the mambo rhythm spread across the continents, a society emerged from the dark years of World War II to shed it's inhibitions and embrace the frenzy of this Afro-Cuban beat.

Early Years

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 local cinemas and clubs. He was 26 when he moved to Havana around 1942. There he played piano for the Orquesta del Cabaret Pennsylvania de la Playa de Mariano and soon moved 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. It was directed by Liduvino Pereira and because Cascarita, the lead singer, especially liked these numbers, 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 after hours jam sessions on the tres (a small Cuban guitar) and the resultant cross rhythms and syncopation give him the idea. Jazz writer and critic Ralph J. Gleason reported that "Prez" talked to him about the mambo as 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."

Origins of the Mambo

The word mambo comes from the Ñañigo dialect spoken in Cuba. It probably has no real meaning, but occurs in the phrase "abrecuto y guiri mambo" ("open your eyes and listen") used to open Cuban song contests. In the Bantu language of West Africa, mambo means "conversation with the gods" and in nearby Haiti, a Mambo is a voodoo priestess.

The mambo as we know it today is actually a rhythm whose tempo may be slow or fast, and almost any standard tune can be set to it's tempo. The saxophone usually sets the rhythm pattern and the brass carries the melody. 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 [orchestras with eight or more musicisans] 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 dance bands of the day.

Orestes Lopez played cello 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. Joel Selvin, Pop Music Critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote, "In the '30s, [Orestes and his brother, bassist Israel "Cachao" Lopez] were playing together in a popular but square danzon (dance music) orchestra, Arcano y Sus Maravillas, when Orestes Lopez interrupted the stately procession of the danzon with a dashing, dancing, molten ad-libbed piano solo, as the other band members watched in amazement. Shortly thereafter, in 1939, the brothers formalized the inspired improvisation in a composition they called 'Mambo.'"

Latin percussionist Zeno Okeanos continued, "During the 'mambo' section of this danzon a conga drum was added for the first time to the 'charanga' orchestration. Generally, the term [mambo] seems to connote an 'Africanization' of these other forms by increasing the 'aggressiveness' of the rhythm." However, Cachao pointed out that Prado's mambo was quite different from that of Orestes.

So while it's 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 most likely the innovator.

Mambo Mexicano

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 which had a monopoly of Cuban music publishing at the time. Mcdonald-Ross wrote, "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." When Prado left Cuba in 1947, he embarking on tours which took him first to Buenos Aires, Argentina, 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 which, along with Vera Cruz, was a popular destination for expatriate Cubans. There he formed his own band and established himself as a regular performer at the Club 1-2-3, reputedly a hang-out for the idle rich, becoming known as the "Glenn Miller of Mexico." [A couple of years later, during his first tour of the United States, he would be retitled the "Stan Kenton of Mexico."] Prado 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 vocalist and fellow Cuban Beny Moré (1919-1963) which were released as 78 rpm singles.[3]  Moré arrived from Cuba with the Matamoros Trio and when the Trio returned home, he opted to stay in Mexico City to sing with Prado's orchestra. The songs that the orchestra recorded on RCA's Mexicana label proved to be so popular that in 1949 Prado signed a recording contract with RCA Victor, proper, for international release. His first recording for them was cut in Mexico City on December 12, 1949, and resulted in "Qué rico el mambo" and "Mambo No. 5" being released on two sides of a 78. This record, with its scorching brass and persuasive percussion, took the Americas by storm and the mambo craze was formally launched.[4]  

In Dance Magazine, Robert Farris Thompson, Jr., wrote, "Mambo was soon the toast of Mexico City. To group after group, rich and poor, illiterate and collegiate, special Mambos were dedicated. One wave was for the working class: the 'Fireman Mambo,' the 'Filling Station Mambo,' the 'Newsboy Mambo,' etc. Another covered the educational scene: the 'Normal School Mambo,' the 'Mexico University Mambo,' and the 'Polytechnical Institute Mambo.' The sports world was saluted: ('[Mambo] del Futbol'); rich girls were whistled at ('La Nina Popoff'); the GIs of the 65th USA Infantry were given tribute ('Mambo del 65'). It was as if Harvard undergraduates, New York garment workers, [and] bank clerks everywhere turned on the radios to hear Sinatra singing jazzy songs about them. The Mexicans' response was sensational."

It was also common for dancers to act out spontaneous pantomimes to the theme of the song being played. For example, while dancing to the "Telephone Operator's Mambo," a woman might mimic working at a switchboard on her partner's chest, while dancers to the "Taxi Drivers Mambo" might imitate driving a cab.

In April, 1951, Newsweek reported that in Peru the dance had driven it's practitioners to such wild exuberance that Cardinal Juan Gualberto Guevara of Lima denied absolution to anyone who danced "al compas del mambo." That year, Perez Prado composed a song entitled "Al compas del mambo" in response.

Mambo Americano

Anglo listeners in New York and Southern California first heard Prado's singles on Latino radio stations. The songs soon crossed-over to mainstream pop broadcasts and in 1950 Prado scored moderate hits in the US with his early sides. While vacationing in Mexico, arranger Sonny Burke heard "Qué rico el mambo" and covered it as a single called "Mambo Jambo." It became a hit and Prado decided to profit from its success by launching his own tour of the US. 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 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 out jumps anything around..."

Prado's first appearance in the States was an engagement in New York City at the Puerto Rico Theater in the Bronx during April and May, 1951, where he was hired as a singer. Because of a dispute over rules with Musicians Union Local 802, he was required to perform as a solo act without his orchestra. By 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 a scrawled manuscript, gave them a tough time.

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 Park Avenue's Waldof-Astoria Hotel. 

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 a little too far uptown for the 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 US was engaged in the Korean War and the mambo's uninhibited rhythms were an acceptable way of releasing social tensions in public. In addition, the rhumba craze of the 1940s had peaked. Professional dance studios were looking for a new source of income and mambo lessons were it.

Katherine Dunham hosted Prado and his orchestra at her dance school at 43rd Street and Broadway in New York. In her unpublished autobiography, Dunham wrote, "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. Most notably were Perry Como with "Papa Loves Mambo" and Rosemary Clooney with "Mambo Italiano." Even crooner Vaughn Monroe had a hit with "They Were Doin' The Mambo."

"Cherry Pink..."

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." It 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-cha. It was also danced by Jane Russell in the film Underwater! (originally titled The Big Rainbow) in which Prado, playing himself, had a bit part.

The song features a spectacular trumpet solo by Billy Regis. 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!'"

Watson continued, "...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."

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!" However, he slurs the two syllables together in such a way that to the casual listener it sounds like "Ugh!"

Later on, in the course of his performances, Prado would also give a high kick, which developed into a jump, to further accent his exhortations. Eventually, he got into the habit of shouting "Dilo!" and simultaneously propelling himself into the air, a startling sight to an audience who grew up on Tommy Dorsey and Cab Calloway.

Writing in Jazz Review, Robert Farris Thompson, Jr., 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 mentioned, 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 traditional for children to be given the surname of both parents and in this case the full birth names of the brothers were Dámaso Perez Prado and Pantaleón Pérez Prado, respectively - Pérez being their father's family name, Prado their mother's. RCA originally credited Dámaso's recordings as D. Pérez Prado, but when his albums started to appear in the US, the record company shortened it to the more alliterative name we're familiar with today. In 1955, Prado dropped his first name altogether and changed it officially 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." Pantaleón was then restrained by a court order from posing as Pérez (Dámaso). 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, Panteleón) in Deauville a few weeks before. The suit which followed effectively put Panteleón 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 Dámaso who had passed away.

Working With El Rey

In the studio and on the bandstand, Prado developed a reputation as a perfectionist and a task-master. Trombonist Milt Bernhart recalled an incident during the recording of Voodoo Suite, a collaboration with arranger Shorty Rogers:

"One of the movements involved a supposed street fight in Havana - Carlos Vidal (conga drums) and another Cuban percussionist were to play the roles of the two participants in the rumble. After running the music down once or twice, one of them decided to really get into the spirit of the thing - he stripped down to his shorts!

"Now, we began to record it. In the middle of their chanting and howling, they forgot where they were and really started to grapple. They were mad and they were wrestling. Half the band fell completely apart. The 'take' stopped cold and I fell on the floor convulsed. Prado seemed to be offended by our laughter and was glaring at me - and possibly Maynard Ferguson - we were in hysterics! The trombone player next to me, who was a regular Prado member, sat staring straight ahead, he didn't get it or he was afraid of Prado's anger.

"I learned later that Prado fired him - he hadn't done anything."

Drummer Ed Shaughnessy once talked about the New York recording sessions for albums on which he played, including Havana 3 a.m. and Voodoo Suite. Most of the musicians, like himself, were session men. Because of union regulations, only the percussionists were from the regular Prado Orchestra (this was also true of his touring bands in the US). Prado did not speak English and was often forced to use an interpreter. At other times he just pointed to the score and demanded (in Spanish) that the mainly Anglo musicians play what was written. He remembered that Prado used a lot of sign language "with every part of his body."

Later Years

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-cha with La Culeta. The cha-cha had been introduced the previous year by Cuban violinist Enrique Jorrin. La Culeta was a milder mambo-like dance which was actually a predecessor of the cha-cha, itself. Ironically, in 1956 he appeared in the Columbia Pictures film Cha-Cha-Cha Boom, which was attempt to cash in on the new 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 week 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 1960s, but the recordings became increasingly steeped in gimmicks like mambo versions of the twist and rock-n-roll numbers. Finally, there were La Chunga and El Dengue, the dance crazes 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 1950s, his success declined and the years gave way to new rhythms, like the pachanga and then the boogaloo. Prado's recorded output was mainly limited to smaller labels and recycled Latin-style anthologies.

In the early 1970s, Prado permanently returned to his apartment off 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, South America, and Japan. There he was revered as one of the reigning giants of the music industry and was a regular performer on Mexican television. In Japan, a live concert recording of his 1973 tour was released on LP in an early 4-channel format.

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 passed through his orchestra These included Cuban singer Beny Moré, trumpeter Pete Candoli, bongo and conga drummer Armando Parazo, percussionists Johnny Pacheco and Mongo Santamaria, and reedman (later bandleader) Rene Bloch. A decade after his death, the popularity of 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 Ale television commercial and his entire catalogue of recordings is available today on compact disc. The mambo, reinvigorated under the name salsa, is still the signature dance of Latin popular music and Pérez Prado, Jr., continues to direct the Pérez Prado Orchestra in Mexico City, today.