Xavier Cugat

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Xavier Cugat (January 1, 1900 - October 27, 1990) was a Spanish-Cuban bandleader whom many consider to have had more to do with the infusion of Latin music into United States popular music than any other musician. Perez Prado followed in Cugat's footsteps.

Cugat was born Francisco de Asis Javier Cugat Mingall de Bru y Deulofeo in Girona, Spain. With his family, he immigrated to Cuba when he was five. He trained as a classical violinist and played with the Orchestra of the Teatro Nacional in Havana.

Sometime between 1915 and 1918, Cugat moved to New York, where he played with a band called "The Gigolos" during the tango craze. Later, he went to work for the Los Angeles Times as a cartoonist (Cugat's caricatures were later nationally syndicated).

In the late 1920s, sound began to be used in movies, he put together another tango band that had some success in early short musical films. By the early 1930s, he began appearing with his group in feature films. Cugat took his band to New York to open the new Waldorf Astoria Hotel and it became the hotel's resident group.

He shuttled between New York and Los Angeles for most of the next thirty years, alternating hotel and radio dates with movie appearances.

In 1940, he recorded the song Perfidia with singer Miguelito Valdés which became a big hit. Cugat followed trends closely, making records for the conga, the mambo, the cha-cha-cha, and the twist when each were in fashion. His first marriage in 1952 was to singer, Abbe Lane, they performed together until they divorced in 1964. He married salsa dancer Charo on August 7, 1966; the two were the first couple to marry in the newly opened Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

Cugat did not lose sleep over artistic compromises: "I would rather play Chiquita Banana and have my swimming pool than play Bach and starve."

Cugat died of heart failure at age 90 in Barcelona in his native Catalonia, Spain.

[edit] In popular culture

Xavier Cugat is mentioned in A Goofy Movie where Goofy calls him the "Mambo King."
Xavier Cugat is mentioned in an I Love Lucy episode, titled "Lucy Goes to Scotland", where Lucy gives Ricky an LP, which he looks at, reads "Xavier Cugat?!" and tosses it away. The joke was meant to poke fun at the fact that both Cugat and Ricky Ricardo were Cuban bandleaders.
Xavier Cugat is mentioned in the song "Joe le taxi", sung by Vanessa Paradis, probably as an artist that Joe, the taxi driver, likes to listen to his music.
Several of the songs he recorded, including Perfidia, were used in the Wong Kar-wai films Days of Being Wild and 2046
Xavier Cugat is mentioned in third scene of A Streetcar Named Desire.
Xavier Cugat is mentioned in an episode of the TV series M*A*S*H. Hawkeye mentions that "The only Latin I know is Xavier Cugat."
Xavier Cugat is mentioned twice in the third season Frasier episode Moondance.
Xavier Cugat and Ben & Jerry's are parodied in an episode of The Simpsons when Lisa finds an ice cream flavor called "Xavier Nougat", to which Homer replies, "No...[I don't want] nothin' made o'dead guys!" In a different episode, "Jazzy and the Pussycats," Bart declared "Xavier Cugat" as a non-sequitur reply to a question while speaking like a jazz musician.
In the ZBS Foundation's series of radio dramas Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe, Cugat is the patron saint of The Moles of Zeeboos, a tango-loving race of sentient humanoid moles; also, one month of the Mole calendar is named for Cugat.
In Tom Griffin's 1983 Play The Boys Next Door, Arnold continually references Cugat saying, "He thinks he's Xavier Cugat or somebody." [See page 26, Dramatists Play Service, Inc.]