Rodriguez, Tito (1923–1973)

Tito Rodriguez was one of the great singers and bandleaders of the mambo era in the 1940s and 1950s. Born on January 4, 1923, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, of Dominican and Cuban parentage, he moved to New York City as a teenager. He had served in the U.S. Army and sung with Xavier Cugat and Nora Morales before he got his musical break in 1946 when he joined the band of Cuban pianist José Curbelo. Curbelo is often given credit for originating the New York mambo sound. In the following year Rodriguez left to form his own Mambo Devils, which recorded for Tico Records and which soon expanded from a small group into a big band, later known as the Lobos del Mambo. He later also recorded for RCA and United Artists. His bands, along with those of Machito and Puente, dominated the mambo scene at the Palladium Ballroom in New York in the early 1950s.

Although there was much made of Rodriguez's alleged rivalry with timbale player and bandleader Tito Puente, they had actually been friends since the 1930s, and both had gotten their start with Curbelo. His band, like Puente's and Machito's, was more influenced by jazz and incorporated more Afro-Cuban elements than the more commercial style of Pérez Prado. In 1962, Rodriguez had three number one hits in Puerto Rico with "Vuela la Paloma," "Cuando, Cuando," and "Cara de Payaso." As a singer, he excelled whether improvising at top speed or slowing down for a romantic ballad. His versatility is demonstrated by the fact that in 1963 he recorded with jazz greats Zoot Sims and Clark Terry on the album Live at Birdland, whereas in the same year he also had a hit with a bolero version of "Inolvidable" ("Unforgettable"), which sold more than a million copies. He disbanded in 1965 and moved to Puerto Rico, where he had a television program for a year or two. Over the next few years, he moved back and forth among New York, Florida, and Puerto Rico. Illness plagued the last five years of his life, and he died of leukemia in New York on February 28, 1973.

See alsoCugat, Xavier; Machito; Mambo; Music: Popular Music and Dance; Pérez Prado; Puente, Tito.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Loza, Steven. Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Roberts, John Storm. Latin Jazz: The First of the Fusions, 1880s to Today. New York: Schirmer Books, 1999.

"Tito Rodriguez." In The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 3rd edition, edited by Colin Larkin. London: Muze, 1998.

                                Andrew J. Kirkendall