Abelardo Barroso - Cha Cha Cha

Remastered and Pressed on 180g Vinyl!

Abelardo Barroso, golden voice of Cuba’s Cha Cha Cha, gets his due with this new retrospective release on World Circuit. The recordings made by Abelardo Barroso with Orquesta Sensación in Havana during the 1950s represent one of the pinnacles of the golden age of Cuban music. Now World Circuit—the label behind Buena Vista Social Club —is proud to release a remastered selection of fourteen of their most irresistible recordings.

These lush and elegant recordings—among the most exquisite in Cuban music and now remastered for the first time in 60 years—are the subject of Abelardo Barroso with Orquesta Sensación's Cha Cha Cha. The project has been a personal passion for World Circuit’s Nick Gold, a long-time admirer of Barroso’s voice and his classic recordings with Sensación. This set joins World Circuit’s other classic reissues of bands such as Orchestra Baobab, Los Zafiros and classic cumbia recordings.

One of Cuba’s all-time great singers, Abelardo Barroso has a life story that encompasses three distinct careers over half a century of singing and a rags-to-riches finale reminiscent of Ibrahim Ferrer and other members of the Buena Vista Social Club. Born in Havana in 1905, he first burst onto the scene in the 1920s, recording with all three of the era’s finest bands during the first great wave of Cuban son music. In the 1930s he was known as the "Cuban Caruso," performing with the most popular danzón groups of the day and becoming one of Cuba’s first radio stars. By the early 1950s, he found himself in the wilderness, playing for tips outside a nightclub before staging a spectacular comeback after he was discovered by Rolando Valdés, the director of Orquesta Sensación, one of the great charanga bands of the cha cha cha boom of the mid-1950s.

With a classic lineup of flute and violins, and invested with powerful groove and swing courtesy of a dream rhythm section, the recordings Barroso made with Orquesta Sensación for Puchito Records found the singer at the very peak of his powers. Puchito was one of Cuba’s first independent record labels, founded during the mambo and cha cha cha explosion of the '50s and the recordings, sympathetically produced by label founder Jesús Goris, were instant hits. Although known primarily as a cha cha cha band, Barroso and Sensación put their unique stamp on the gamut of other Cuban styles. Barroso toured and performed with Sensación in Venezuela, Miami, and New York and continued to record with the orchestra until 1965.

It is these classic recordings—now remastered for the first time in 60 years—that are the subject of Abelardo Barroso with Orquesta Sensación's Cha Cha Cha.

Features:
• 180g Vinyl
• Remastered
• Download code enclosed

Musicians:
Alberdo Barroso
Orquesta Sensacion

Selections:
1. En Guantanamo
2. La Hija de Juan Simón
3. Tiene Sabor
4. El guajiro de Cunagua
5. Un Brujo en Guanabacoa
6. El Panquelero
7. El Huerfanito
8. El Manisero
9. La Mulata Rumbera
10. Yo ta cansá (Ña Teresa)
11. Macorina
12. Bruca Maniguá
13. La Reina del Guaguanco
14. Triste Lucha