Olga Guillot dies at 87; Cuban singer was ‘queen of the bolero’
Cuban singer Olga Guillot, who was hailed as “the queen of the bolero” and became the first Latin artist to perform at New York’s Carnegie Hall, has died. She was 87.
She died Monday at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Fla. A family spokeswoman said Guillot had a heart attack.
Her biggest hit was “Mienteme” ( “Lie to Me”), recorded in 1954. It was popular across Latin America and earned her three consecutive awards in Cuba as her homeland’s best female singer.
In the U.S., she first gained recognition in 1946 for her Spanish version of “Stormy Weather,” one of her early recordings as a soloist.
Guillot had turned down repeated offers to record in English because “I think and feel in Spanish,” she told the Associated Press in 2007.
She left Cuba in the early 1960s after the communist revolution and made Mexico her primary home. She also kept an apartment in Miami.
On Oct. 31, 1964, Guillot made history as the first Latin artist to perform at Carnegie Hall, according to the All Music online database.
Throughout her career, she “melted Cuba, Mexico and the rest of Latin America with “rip-your-heart-out melodrama,” the Miami Herald reported in 2001.
“The bolero is romantic, jealous, loving, intense, playful, grumpy,” she told the Miami Herald. “Just like me.”
She was born Oct. 9, 1922, in Santiago, Cuba, into a musical family and moved to Havana as a child. Her father was a tailor and her mother a seamstress.
As a teenager, Guillot formed a singing duo with her sister and broke into the music business after placing second in a singing contest.
At 20, Guillot performed with French singer Edith Piaf.
In the 1940s, Guillot joined Siboney, then a popular vocal quartet, and debuted as a solo artist at Havana’s Zombie Club.
Over the years, she appeared in about 20 films, often as herself.
Of her personal life, Guillot once said, “Everybody knows I’ve had five marriages. I have loved a lot.”
She is survived by her daughter, Olga.
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