Xavier Cugat

Xavier Cugat (born Jan. 1, 1900, Barcelona, Spain—died Oct. 27, 1990, Barcelona) was a bandleader who introduced Latin American dance music to wide audiences in the United States.

Cugat proved a violin prodigy while growing up in Havana, Cuba, earned enough money to finance his family’s move to Brooklyn, N.Y., and accompanied tenor Enrico Caruso on a world tour at the age of 15. In 1927, having failed as a concert soloist, Cugat became a cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times but quit the next year to form a seven-piece dance band, The Gigolos, which quickly became popular. In 1933 Cugat moved his band to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.

Cugat’s bands included violins, maracas, and bongo and conga drums and featured dancers who demonstrated the rumba, the tango, and other Latin-American dances; one of his series of wives was usually his vocalist. During the 1940s Cugat’s band played in nightclubs, on radio, and in films such as You Were Never Lovelier (1942), Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), and Neptune’s Daughter (1949). In the late 1950s Cugat and his fourth wife, singer Abbe Lane, appeared often on television; beginning in 1966 he was accompanied by his fifth and last wife, singer-guitarist Charo.