Rubén Blades

Asked point-blank whether Ismael Rivera or Cheo Feliciano shaped him more, Blades didn't equivocate. Rivera's attack was "demasiado agresivo para mí" — too aggressive for him — while "el de Cheo era más urbano, más suave, y nuestras voces se parecían mucho. Así que Cheo Feliciano fue mi modelo" — Cheo's was more urbane, smoother, and their voices sounded alike, so Cheo Feliciano became his model. Feliciano later became a friend; when Blades told him he wanted to be as good as him, Feliciano just said, softly: be better than me.

listen: upstream & heresource: Diari ARA — "Rubén Blades ↗share

1971

Franqueza CruelCheo Feliciano

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2012

Franqueza CruelRubén Blades

listen forFeliciano's 1971 "Franqueza Cruel," from the comeback album that relaunched his career, stays unhurried and conversational even as the band pushes underneath him — the urbane calm Blades chased. On their 2012 duet record Eba Say Ajá, Blades sings that exact song back to him, the tribute made literal; years earlier he'd already built it into his own band, giving Seis del Solar a vibraphone specifically, he said, to honor Feliciano's sound.

Blades traces the whole idea of performing to one afternoon around age nine or ten, watching the film Rock, Rock, Rock!: "I saw a young man singing... doing doo-wop with a group called the Teenagers. And I had never seen someone so young singing... when I saw him singing and having so much fun I thought, 'Oh, I'd love to do that.'" Years before he'd heard a single salsa record, Frankie Lymon was the reason he wanted to sing at all.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1956

Why Do Fools Fall in LoveFrankie Lymon and the Teenagers

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1988

Ollie's Doo-WopRubén Blades

listen forLymon, barely a teenager himself, rides "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" on a bright, tightly stacked group harmony built for a kid's unbroken voice to lead grown men. Three decades later, on the English-language Nothing but the Truth, Blades titled a track "Ollie's Doo-Wop" — on the record where he broke his own vow never to sing in English again, a return to the exact vocal form that first made him want to perform.

Blades has put it as absolutely as he puts anything: "Todo lo aprendí escuchando a Benny Moré, en mi casa lo escuchaban a todas horas" — everything I learned, I learned listening to Beny Moré; he was on constantly at home. His father took him to see Moré perform live in Panama in 1958, when Blades was ten — an occasion he later described to Cuban writer Leonardo Padura as being on the scale of visiting the tallest building in the world, because Moré felt unreachable.

listen: upstream & heresource: La Razón de México — "El poeta del pueblo" (Beny Moré self-attribution and 1958 concert memory) ↗share

1953

Cómo FueBeny Moré

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1988

Nuestro AdiósRubén Blades

listen forMoré's "Cómo Fue" is the son-schooled elasticity Blades absorbed as a child: the beat holds steady while the vocal stretches a phrase behind it, unhurried, then snaps back into the groove. "Nuestro Adiós," the bolero cha Blades wrote for 1988's Antecedentes — singled out by one chronicler of the genre as arguably his finest bolero — works that same patient stretch-and-release phrasing over a slower, sparer arrangement: the Cuban foundation surfacing once the horns of his salsa years are gone.