Eusebio Delfín Figueroa

Cuban composer, guitarist and singer. Author of memorable songs and boleros. Author of the emblematic song And what have you done (In the trunk of a tree)

Eusebio Delfín Figueroa was born in Palmira, Las Villas (current province of Cienfuegos). As a child he settled in Cienfuegos, where he studied until graduating as an accountant from the Hermanos Maristas school. He learned guitar from professors Barrios and Gelabert, and singing from Valencian Vicente Sánchez Torralba. He studied violin and flute.

He sang publicly for the first time in 1916 at the Terry theater in Cienfuegos accompanying himself on guitar. He began composing from a very young age, always using lyrics by poets, written on commission, or taken directly from books and other publications.

In March 1923, in a portable studio that the Victor company brought from the United States, he recorded as a duet with Rita Montaner his song To Love, That's All and Thought, by Rafael Gómez "Teofilito"; also the song The Cherry (with text by Spanish poet Pedro Mata), the bolero Far From You, both of his authorship, and several compositions by Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes, with whom he had organized concerts of Cuban popular music in 1922 at the Nacional theaters (now the Grand Theater of Havana) and the Terry, in his native city.

He formed occasional duets with Esteban Sansirena, Luisa María Morales and with Ángel Portuondo "Moncholo", but he spent most of his artistic career as a soloist.

During the visit to Cuba of the great tenor Tito Schipa in 1924, Delfín accompanied him on guitar in two of his songs: The Cherry and Blonde Little Head (with verses by Arévalo Martínez).

He came from a wealthy family and always had to share his artistic career with his banking responsibilities. In addition to his position as director of a Cuban bank, Delfín was married to a daughter of rum magnate Emilio Bacardí, who in turn was the son of Facundo Bacardí, founder of the Bacardí Liquor Company.

Eusebio Delfín organized and participated in musical activities to raise funds for public benefit works in Cienfuegos. He managed to contribute approximately 200,000 pesos. In 1925 he moved permanently to Havana as he was called by the capital's artistic environment.

At the 1929 Iberoamerican Exhibition in Seville, he was awarded the gold medal for his outstanding work as a composer. By then he had already written some of his most famous creations, among them Past Sweethearts (lyrics by Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera); That Mouth (lyrics by Rogelio Sopo Barreto), With Broken Wings (lyrics by Mariano Albadalejo) and his most widespread composition And You, What Have You Done?, whose verses he found on the page of an almanac and forgot to note the author's name. This bolero, written by Delfín in 1921, is known by the opening line of its lyrics: In the trunk of a tree.

In the 1930s he composed Crazy Longings (lyrics by Rogelio Sopo Barreto) and Crumbs of Love (lyrics by Gustavo Sánchez Galarraga), two of his most popular boleros.

Between 1925 and 1930 he made about twenty phonographic recordings for RCA Victor, mostly songs and boleros of his own authorship, although the group also includes works by Ernesto Lecuona, José Mauri and Alberto Villalón.

In the 1930s he frequently appeared on radio programs as a performer. Cuban music historian Cristóbal Díaz Ayala recounts that before each episode of the radio series Chan Li Po, which had an enormous audience on RHC Cadena Azul, Delfín could be heard performing The Pearls of Your Mouth, by Eliseo Grenet, a song that served to advertise a toothpaste brand (Ispana dental cream).

Although he was not a prominent guitarist, he stood out for changing the style of bolero accompaniment by replacing guitar strumming with a semi-arpeggiated rhythm; another of his contributions to accompaniment was distributing the rhythm over one and a half measures, leaving silent the weak part of the second measure when making harmony changes.

In 1942 Delfín visited Mexico City where, on an extensive tour, he made his works known, although some of them, such as his And You, What Have You Done?, Crazy Longings and That Mouth had been performed for years by Mexican singers, especially Yucatecan ones.

He remained artistically active until 1956, to the extent that his banking and philanthropic activities allowed him to do so, because, according to his biographers, much of what he earned as a composer and singer he donated for improvements in hospitals and parks where he performed.

At the end of that decade, Delfín advised on an album dedicated to him by Irene Farach and Jesús Cabrisas—singers and guitarists who formed the duo Cabrisas-Farach, specialized in performing traditional Cuban music—with twelve of his best songs and boleros. This production from the Cuban label Panart also featured the orchestra of Osvaldo Estivill and guitarist Ángel Moncholo Portuondo, an old friend and music companion of the composer.

Eusebio Delfín died in Havana on April 28, 1965.

Source: EnCaribe.org