Big band, a very big life

Benny More, the most admired Cuban music figure of all time, has been dead for four decades, yet fans still love telling stories about his dazzling talent and tragically bohemian ways.

The singer’s weakness for saoco, his favorite drink (made with rum and coconut milk), led to his premature death from cirrhosis at age 43. He was also chronically irresponsible, causing near-riots when he’d forget to show up for concerts, or sleep right through them.

But when More sang, with that soaring range, sweet intimacy and inspired improvisations, all was forgiven. Those traits earned the singer-songwriter a preeminent place in the very competitive pantheon of Cuban pop music, a stature finally recognized with a comprehensive new boxed set of the singer’s work as a bandleader.

During one tour to Venezuela in 1956 at the peak of his career, More’s talents also earned him his freedom. On that trip, the lanky black bandleader was jailed after punching a promoter who had failed to pay his band. With charges still pending for the assault, More made an appearance at a luxury hotel, improvising verses about his brush with the law. In the audience that night was the Venezuelan president, who was so amused by the singer’s improvisations that he had all charges dropped.

Saved by his musical wit, the colorful Cuban, who wore snazzy zoot suits and conducted his band with a cane, then flew on to Hollywood for a performance at the Academy Awards ceremony.

“Benny was simply extraordinary,” says Miami-based trombonist and arranger Juan Pablo Torres, who once shared the stage with More in Cuba. “He made dance music, but people would go just to hear him and see him perform. So many things came together in this one man -- the descarga [jam session], the arrangements, the singing, the improvisation -- that he remains a vital reference point to this day, and forever.”

The story of More’s Venezuelan escapade is contained in the liner notes to the exceptional new compilation titled “Benny More y Su Banda Gigante: Grabaciones Completas 1953-1960.” The four-disc boxed set includes 91 songs spanning More’s career as bandleader and includes a 124-page book with a biography in three languages, complete song lyrics and a collection of photos, many published for the first time.

This is a major historical release from Tumbao Cuban Classics, the Barcelona-based label that specializes in the meticulous repackaging of old Cuban music. It is the most comprehensive collection of More’s big-band sessions for RCA Victor, arranged chronologically with songs grouped by the date they were recorded.

Over the years, there have been many compilations by the star known as “El Barbaro del Ritmo,” roughly meaning the “tremendous” or “awesome” man of rhythm. More launched his career as a vocalist with other bands, including Perez Prado’s, almost a decade before this collection begins. But by focusing on his later work as a bandleader, this set spotlights the artist’s distinct style and sound that dominated a decade of explosive creativity.

The Banda Gigante borrowed jazz stylings from American big bands of the 1940s. More could be cool and skilled like Sinatra, soulful and caressing like Nat King Cole, rhythmic and inventive like Ella Fitzgerald. But he remained quintessentially Cuban.

Emerging as a star during a decade of political turmoil, More embodied what it meant to be Cuban. Steeped in both European and African traditions, he appealed to blacks and whites, to sophisticated capital dwellers and to country guajiros.

He was the undisputed master of the bolero, the romantic genre that became his singular forte, but he could sing well in any of Cuba’s many popular song styles, notes Ned Sublette, record producer and author of the upcoming book “Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo.”

“As a boy in his hometown of Santa Isabel de las Lajas, he was a welcome guest at the local Casino [club] de los Congos, where his great-grandfather had been the first king,” says Sublette. “He was thus bathed from a very early age in traditional Congo styles [yuka and makuta] that were in the process of disappearing. At the same time, he was a natural improvising poet who could make up Spanish-style decimas [10-line stanzas] all night.”

In the four decades since More’s death, no singer has managed to take his place. He was revered by peers such as the late Celia Cruz and Tito Puente, who collaborated on popular More tribute albums in the late 1970s. And he continues to influence successive generations of musicians, from Ismael Miranda to Los Van Van.

Yet due to the recent success of the Buena Vista Social Club, Americans are more familiar with some of More’s less-talented contemporaries, such as Ibrahim Ferrer, who once sang backup with More’s band.

“People here don’t realize it,” says Jacques Hubert of Bolevard Distribution in Gardena, the compilation’s U.S. distributor, “but Benny was the Elvis Presley of Cuba.”

Born in 1919, Bartolome Maximiliano More was the direct descendant of a tribal Congo king whose son was sold into slavery. The eldest of 20 siblings, he inherited his surname from a former slave owner.

More was raised with an obvious knack for music but no formal training. As a child, he fashioned a rudimentary guitar from a board and a spool of thread, and he played percussion on empty cans of condensed milk.

As a teenager, he cut sugar cane at various plantations until he contracted malaria in 1939. The following year, at 21, More moved to Havana, where he worked as a street vendor by day and wandering troubadour by night. It would take him five years to get his first big break, as a singer with the legendary son group of Miguel Matamoros.

In 1945, the group went on tour to Mexico, where More fell in love and decided to stay. He soon joined the brash band of Damaso Perez Prado, finding himself at the center of the mambo craze of the 1950s.

It was here that he adopted the nickname Benny, made his first recordings and had his first hits, notably “Bonito y Sabroso” and “Pachito Eche.” Upon his return to Havana in 1952, More joined the orchestras of Bebo Valdes, father of Irakere founder Chucho Valdes, and sang with the famed Orquesta Aragon.

But the lingering racism of Cuban society would motivate him to strike out on his own. More learned that bandleader Ernesto Duarte, with whom he recorded the classic bolero “Como Fue,” had excluded him from weekend gigs because he was black. The racial snub so infuriated the singer that he refused to work with Duarte again.

On Aug. 1, 1953, More debuted his Banda Gigante, composed primarily of black musicians, whom he affectionately called “the tribe.” The band in various incarnations included figures who went on to enjoy future fame of their own, such as trumpeter Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros, singer-percussionist Rolando Laserie and trombonist Generoso “El Tojo” Jimenez, who arranged many More tunes.

The Tumbao boxed set encompasses an astonishing array of hits, including 1957’s “Que Bueno Baila Usted,” created spontaneously to fill time during a live telecast in Venezuela. Two years later, More was diagnosed with cirrhosis. He stopped drinking, but it was too late.

More kept performing to the eve of his death in Havana on Feb. 19, 1963. It came just months after the Cuban missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction. But although all eyes were on Cuba, U.S. media virtually ignored More’s death and funeral, which drew 100,000 mourners to his hometown.

For anybody who saw More perform, the experience was unforgettable, and can’t be captured on a CD. He was a dynamic showman, inventing dance steps as easily as he did verses and using dramatic body language and verbal cues to prompt his musicians to new heights.

“Although Benny could not notate music, he would often give his arrangers ideas and monas [figures], so a lot of the arrangements reflect Benny’s own musical concepts,” recalls pianist-arranger Sonny Bravo, who played on the Puente tribute album. “What a pity he drank himself into oblivion. Our loss!”