I have a great diversity of music on my iPod and sometimes I will forget some of it until it just pops up when I’m shuffling through. One artist that sometimes shows up with a great blast of horns and that funky Cuban beat is Perez Prado, one of the original Mambo Kings from the 1940’s and 50’s.
It’s not a name many people, especially those of my age and younger, know or remember and the music seems from a time and place far removed from today. It has age on it but whenever it comes on, especially when I’m driving, it raises my heartbeat just a bit and I find myself driving just little faster. Makes me wish I could mambo just a bit and raises memory flashes of being a sixth grader dancing the cha cha in gym class with a shy little girl whose name evades me at the moment, both of us awkward and nervous. Ah, if it had only been the mambo instead of the cha cha.
Here’s a bit of Prado. It’s his Mambo #8. The male dancer here is famed Mexican actor Resortes (Adalberto Martinez) who is primarily known as a comedian and a dancer. He appears in a lot of Prado’s films of his music. Little known factoid: Resortes originated the Moonwalk made famous by Michael Jackson.
Anyway, it’s the last Saturday of summer. Here’s a little bit of heat for you.
Redtree Times 
This must be my day for having memories of old music stirred. Say Perez Prado to me, and the first thing I remember is “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White”. Here’s a wonderful video that matches the music with images from 1955. I never knew that James Dean and Einstein died in the same year.
Of course, at the same time there was Perry Como singing “Papa Loves Mambo” – a kind of Prado for the suburban set. 😉
Good choice and one of my Prado favorites. The pace really allows for his trademarks vocal bursts, yell or grunts– not something you really got from the mellow Como. I wonder if there was a connection between the Dean and Einstein deaths?!
You mean like “E(instein) = James Dean,squared”?
😉
Or vice versa.