For many years hit songs were made on Broadway, and until April 26, 1930, this precluded Latin music. However, that all changed when the curtain rose to a full house at New York's Palace Theater on that April evening. This was not for a Broadway show in the traditional sense. This was the first Broadway appearance of Don Azpiazú's Havana Casino Orchestra. For the first time ever, American audiences heard genuine Cuban dance music. Mama Inez and her Cuban dance team strutted to Azpiazú's “El Manicero,” better known as “The Peanut Vendor.”
The critical reception was mixed. Walter Winchell, years later, thought it was a knock-off of Ravel's “Bolero.” Guy Lombardo contended “El Manicero” would never become a hit. Its rhythms were too difficult even for band leaders and their orchestras, and he was right. The American bands were slow to figure out what came naturally for the Cuban musicians.
“El Manicero” might be regarded the first salsa to be danced on Broadway. It became an exhibition rumba and soon even American orchestras got the swing of “The Peanut Vendor.” More importantly, American composers for the Broadway houses began to find an occasional space for a Latin number in their shows.
Rumba reigned in the early 1930s, both in the dancehalls and the Broadway theaters. Herman Hupfeld's show, The Third Little Show had a novelty number, “When Yuba Plays the Rumba on His Tuba.” This was a huge hit, but not a song the audience would be singing as they left the theater. Listen and you'll know why.
Although Rudy Valee was not the singer to introduce the song, he was the one who made it into a hit single. By the way, for my tuba player friends: the best guess as to who the tuba player is turns up Joe Tarto, a well-known NYC studio man in the ‘30s.
You won't find “El Manicero” or “When Yuba Plays the Rumba” mentioned in Alec Wilder's essays on American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, but you do find Cole Porter's “Begin the Beguine.” Though some object that this wasn't a true beguine, but rather a bolero, “Begin the Beguine” reigns, according to Wilder, as the longest popular song ever written, coming in at 108 measures in length. Wilder points out that “Begin the Beguine,” which had its premiere in Porter's 1935 show Jubilee, was not a hit until Artie Shaw and his orchestra recorded it, without vocals.
Somehow, I miss the Cole Porter lyrics:
When they begin the beguine / It brings back the sound of music so tender / It brings back a night of tropical splendor.
Let's take a leap in this last minute for a few words about Lin-Manuel Miranda, just about universally regarded the successor to Stephen Sondheim. He grew up in a bilingual atmosphere and his first major work, written when he was still attending Wesleyan University, is In the Heights. The song “Breathe” is a beautiful song in which English and Spanish are interlaced sometimes even within a sentence. I just love it.
