专辑简介

Singer and orchestra leader Antonio Machín was born in Sagua la Grande, in the Cuban province of Santa Clara, in the year 1900 as one of sixteen children. His mother was Cuban but his Spanish-born father came from Galicia, the north-east part of the Iberian peninsular. The early stages of Machín’s life were very difficult, and at eight years of age he went to work as a delivery boy due to his father being taken ill. One day, he happened to be in the main square waiting for his next errand, and humming and singing in a low voice. The priest heard him and immediately invited him to sing at a fiesta, due to take place shortly. And so Antonio sang, and for the first time at such a tender age, Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’. From that day onwards he only ever thought about becoming a singer. His love of opera was growing more and more, although within his environment he would have to sing popular songs as well. Antonio was aware that a deep-seated sensation was coming from the innermost part of his soul, like some kind of ancestral cry from the past that could only end by his acceding to those same lyrical fantasies. He had serious ambitions to sing opera, until one day he was made to realize that his dark skin was a serious obstacle between him and all his hopes. At twelve years of age he was the idol of all the girls in his neighbourhood and on moonlit nights he liked to serenade the pretty ones. He had been working as a bricklayer but at fourteen he got away from home to try and make it on his own. In 1929, Machín with his friend guitarist and singer Daniel Sanchez (with whom Antonio had already sung in duo) founded a sextet, which included also the tres guitar Alejandro ‘Mulaton’ Rodriguez, and recorded his first sones. Machín was indulged by the public, and in demand by insistent impresarios who wanted to whisk him away to New York, where awaiting him were the beckoning lights and dollars of Broadway. For the young Cuban, to leave his country was a genuine wrench. Its blue skies, its passionate music, his family’s loving warmth. But the offers were so enticing and tempting that he finally departed. He arrived in New York with Don Azpiazu’s orchestra in the spring of 1930. Wall Street was shaking with fear at the current financial panic, but, turning its back on the imminent economic collapse, the monied aristocrats only thought about having fun and forgetting the realities, wallowing in a flood of music and bootleg liquor to help ward off the warnings of the disaster still to come. Don Azpiazu’s Havana Casino Orchestra performed at the Palace Theater in New York on Saturday the 26th of April 1930, with Antonio Machín as lead singer. Azpiazu was giving the American public, for the very first time, authentic Cuban music, complete with maracas, claves, guiros, bongos, congas and timbales. And they introduced what was to become the best known of all Cuban tunes in the United States: El Manisero (The Peanut Vendor), the ‘son’ of a street vendor that had been written by Moisés Simon for the great Cuban singer Rita Montaner, and which was made popular by Machin in rhumba rhythm. However, the full success of El Manisero came some months later, when Don Azpiazu performed it at the RKO Coliseum Theater. Much of the tune’s popularity was based on its vaudeville trappings. An overture version by Phil Fabellio, orchestra leader of the RKO Coliseum Theater, included cocktail shakers filled with gun-shot and used as maracas, with Antonio Machín coming on stage pushing a peanut stand. Don Azpiazu’s version was a polished but authentically Cuban piece. By early 1931 the song had become a national hit. Meanwhile Antonio Machín had decided to reside in New York, where he continued his career at the head of a quartet, the legendary Cuarteto Machín, made up by his old companion singer/guitarist Daniel Sanchez, who was the only permanent member of the group. After his success in America he went to Europe in 1934. There he triumphed in London and later in Paris with a show by Moisés Simon entitled ‘La Noche De Los Tropicos’; and later his silhouette was a familiar sight in Montparnasse, where in one of its salons, ‘La Coupule’, he performed in front of his Havana orchestra. In 1939 he finally settled in Spain, a country that adopted him for ever. Always at the very top of popularity, he finally died in Madrid on the 4th of August 1977.