King of Mambo [BMG]

Performer: Pérez Prado
Distributor: MSI Music Distribution

Notes: Here is yet another Perez Prado compilation from the folks at RCA; where Prado recorded from the late '50s until 1968. This one features 17 tracks from 1959-1967; grouped in strange order. It wouldn't be a compilation without "Patricia," -- and this is the definitive version -- a single, actually. Also from the 1959 tracks are "Mambo No. 5," "Mambo No. 8," "One Night," "Mambo Jambo," and "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White," as well as a few others. These are the shimmy classics -- raw and dirty and full of Prado's patented take on big band swing set against a Latin backbeat. Of the later tunes, "Rockamabo Baby" and "San Remo," from 1960, as well as "La Rubia" and "Adios Pampa Mia," are quite beautiful, with the 1967 selections being a bit bogus actually; they feel forced and contrived. Despite the fact that there are no personnel notes or liners of any kind, this is a pleasant, if non-definitive, listen. If only some of the earlier tracks and other picks from 1967 were here instead of what ishere, this might have been a better bargain. ~ Thom Jurek

D�maso P�rez Prado, the original Mambo King, served time as an arranger and pianist in several Havana-based bands in the 1930s. By the '40s, the traditional Cuban danzon style was evolving into newer, African-inspired sounds like the cha-cha and the mambo. With an irresistible syncopated rhythm and sensual, brass-heavy melodies, mambo dovetailed nicely with the popular swing music of the day. Prado began to plant the mambo seeds farther away from home, and by the '50s, the mambo craze had taken hold in the U.S. While Prado was not the first musician to play this music, he wrote and/or recorded some of the biggest mambo hits of the era. Though the craze eventually faded, Prado performed and recorded until his death in 1989.

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