Dance With Xavier Cugat

Bim Bam Bum

Dance With Xavier Cugat

Xavier Cugat
Columbia CL 537
1953

From the back cover: Born in Spain, Cugat moved with his family to Cuba as a youngster, and studied the violin with great acumen. After several important engagements with local orchestras, he came to the United States and went on tour as an assisting artist with Enrico Caruso. Then, suddenly deciding music was not for him, he became a cartoonist on a Los Angeles newspaper, developing the style that is even today one of the most trenchant and recognizable around. But even the lively atmosphere of a newspaper office could not keep the irrepressible Cugat contented, and her returned to  music on a somewhat different level. He organized a small group of instrumentalists with the modest intention of supplying relief music for regular orchestras. His success, however, was even more modest then his intention, and several lean years followed. Then, suddenly, people began to learn the dances he was playing, to become fascinated by the orchestration, by the exotic rhythms, and the Cugat bandwagon was under way. For years his orchestra was a fixture at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, his records were best-sellers, he appeared on the radio, in theaters and in the movies. As each successive dance came along – the rhumba, the conga, the samba, the mambo – he helped in pioneering its acceptance, and became one of the most successful maestros in the business.

Rhumba: Oye Negra

Tango: El Choclo

Conga: Cuba Libre

Beguine: Begin The Beguine

Mambo: El Barijuano

Paso-doble: Touradas en Madrid

Afro-Cuban: Babalu - Vocals by Miguelito Valdez

Guaracha: Bim Bam Bum

Bolero: Nightingale

Samba: Good, Good, Good

Habanera: I'll Never Love Again - Vocals by Dinah Shore

Mexican Hat Dance: Jarabe Tapatio