Bobby Cruz

Roberto "Bobby" Cruz (born February 2, 1938 in Hormigueros , Puerto Rico ) is an American singer and composer of Puerto Rican origin.

life and work

Although born in Puerto Rico, Bobby Cruz grew up in New York . There he met his friend Ricardo Ray at the age of twelve , to whom he remained lifelong. Allegedly, he is said to have played bass in Bobby Cruz's youth band. In 1964 it was the other way around: Bobby Cruz became a singer in Ricardo “Richie” Ray’s orchestra and in 1968 he was the lead singer with the song Mr. Trumpet Man . In the following ten years, the successful duo became the trademark of salsa music. They released a total of nine albums with gold status.

In 1972 Ray produced the album Bobby Cruz Canta Para Ti for his friend , the title song Ya ni te acuerdas immediately became number 1 in the charts.

Bobby Cruz arranged and composed many pieces in collaboration with Richie Ray. One of their most successful was La Zafra in 1975 , with which the duo won first prize at the Festival of Orchestras . The songs Cuando me digas sí and Yo sé que te amo were created in collaboration with Viki Vimari .

When Richie Ray converted to evangelicalism in 1974 , tensions arose within the duo, but Bobby Cruz followed him as a "born again Christian" only four months later. From then on they concentrated on Christian themes in their music, but kept salsa music as the medium of preaching. They said goodbye to secular music together with their song Adiós a la salsa (1987), the last one under Fania Records - and yet they could never completely break away from salsa.

From the 1990s onwards they parted ways, Cruz took over the leadership of various evangelical congregations in the USA and Latin America. In 1999 they gave a comeback concert under the Universal label in Bayamón, Puerto Rico , which attracted a lot of attention. The double CD Un Sonido Bestial , which was also released, contains all of the duo's great successes, including those from the 60s and 70s (see also Ricardo Ray ).

Style and meaning

With Bobby Cruz, the history of salsa goes back to its beginnings. Bobby Cruz and his friend Richie Ray can even claim to have invented the term "salsa":

On one of their successful tours through Latin America, they also made a guest appearance in Venezuela when a well-known presenter, Phidias Danielo Escalona, ​​asked them to describe the unique style of their music in their own words. They said: Our music is like ketchup, “salsa de tomate” that you put on the hamburgers to give them a taste. And then Escalona said to them: Your music is salsa. From now on we will call it "Salsa". And since then, a new style has been added to Latin American music: Salsa. Salsa is indeed the style of music that combines different rhythms in a single piece.

This anecdote also gets a special note from the fact that a moderator from Venezuela is said to have come up with the term “salsa”.

In 1967 Bobby Cruz and Richie Ray recorded a track they called Salsa y Control . This is verifiably the first time in music history that a song officially had the name salsa in its title and also contained salsa rhythms, at that time still under the label UA-Records (United Artists). Under Fania a very famous cover version of the Lebron Brothers was created in 1970 . However, the style was often referred to as salsa boogaloo, which marks the transition to salsa. At the beginning of the 70s the salsa fever really started: the cover became better known than the original. Many clubs and dance schools suddenly called themselves Salsa y Control .

The piece was recently reissued by the New York group Los Soneros Del Barrio (1999).

Web links

• Bobby Cruz at Allmusic (English)