Cha Cha Cha
Abelardo Barroso with Orquestra Sensación
We say: A rebooted vintage Cuban golden voice from the 1950s.
This is the real deal: old-style Cuban music from the 1950s. Abelardo Barroso was born in poverty in Havana in 1905 and started singing in the 1920s when he quickly became known as "El Caruso de Cuba." The missing link before the Buena Vista Social Club generation—Barroso died in 1972. These remixed recordings come from the period 1955-7 when, after being reduced to playing for tips outside nightclubs, he made a final comeback as vocalist with Orquesta Sensación. Vocal cord problems eventually got the better of his golden voice and the last time Barroso sang was in 1968, a few years before his death from emphysema.
Cha Cha Cha has a deliciously warm retro sound and all the musical elements—flutes, percussion, violins—that characterize big band Cuban music of the period. Purists should note that few of the tracks could be strictly defined as Cha Cha Cha but that's no hardship. It's hard to pick out a favorite, but the rumba "La Reina Guancuano" stands out for its unashamed Africanness and percussion-heavy Santería slant, while "Tiene Sabor," with its call-and-response and pizzicato groove, is pretty irresistible too. There's also a nice guajiro, "El Guajiro de Cunagua," with great angular piano-thumping, and a pleasing version of the classic "El Manisero," which, dating from the late 1920s and being the first Cuban/Latin million-seller, could be said to be the first ever "world music" hit. The song has been recorded at least 160 times and Barroso's mellifluous version is a worthy addition of the canon.
The only complaint is the shortness of the tracks, which are all around the three-minute mark, but these recordings would have been originally been released on 78 rpm vinyl so total playing time would have been tightly constrained. Nevertheless, there's much to admire: a golden voice from the 1950s, remixed for the 21st century, this is exactly the sort of thing that Buena Vista Social Club members would have been listening to when they were aspiring young musicians strolling Havana's Malecón.