Desi Arnaz: “The Best of Desi Arnaz the Mambo King” (1946-49) <i> RCA</i>

Television has a nasty habit of playing havoc with reality. Ask 100 people to identify Desi Arnaz, and 99 will describe the volcano-tempered Latin chauvinist who was constantly bailing Lucy out of hot water on “I Love Lucy.” Even though Arnaz portrayed a Cuban bandleader on the show, his real-life reputation as a popular musical innovator has been all but obscured by the phenomenal success of his comedic partnership with wife Lucille Ball.

With the Nickelodeon cable channel poised to air 25 uncut “I Love Lucy” episodes next week, it’s an ideal time to give due credit to Arnaz’s pre-TV career. RCA inexplicably waited until 1992 to make any of his catalogue available on CD. This was the first “world music” I encountered, having grown up listening to an album of Arnaz’s 78s that my parents owned. Hearing the music on this 16-track compilation for the first time in maybe two decades, I’m impressed all over again at the ferocity Arnaz captured in his percussion-driven theme song, “Babalu,” the grace his Latin big band applied to the instrumental “Brazil” and the silly fun he had with a quasi-novelty number like “Cuban Pete” (“They call me Cuban Pete / I’m the king of the rumba beat / When I play the maracas I go chick-chickee-boom chick-chickee-boom”).

He played to the stereotype of the Latin leading man to an extent by recording such pseudo-Cuban numbers as “A Rainy Night in Rio,” written for a movie by Arthur Schwartz and Leo Robin. But in his renditions of genuinely Latin material like “Guadalajara,” Arnaz created a sound bridging traditional Cuban music with American pop, a sound that helped spur the mambo craze of the ‘40s and ‘50s. So during next week’s Nickelodeon marathon, around the time Ricky Ricardo is screaming “Luuuuu-cyyyyyy!” for the 19th time, throw this on and remember how much more that voice was really capable of.