Word: machito
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Scores. La Prensa's poll gave long-nosed Xavier Cugat. captain of the U.S. rumba industry (TIME, Dec. 28, 1942) only eighth place among bandleaders. The winner (pulling more than twice as many votes as his nearest competitor) was a stocky Cuban named Machito ("The Kid"). One of the chief attractions at Manhattan's La Conga, kinky-haired Machito (real name Frank Grillo) has built his reputation among knowing Latins with a high-octane rumba style that would rattle the fenders off a jeep. Often he prances before his ten-piece band in a solo rumba routine known...
Winner among male singers was Miguelito Valdes (real name Eugenio Lazaro Miguel Izquierdo Valdes y Hernandez), whose vigorous song-shouting has been featured with both Cugat and Machito. With the latter's band, big, bull-like Valdes recently recorded an album of his guarachas (risque ballads) and pregons (street-vendor songs) for Decca. He sings in a variety of moods from the comic to the truculent, but always with a full head of steam. He grew up on the Havana docks, became a prize fighter, started as a singer when the Havana Riverside Casino fished him out of tough...