Osvaldo Farrés Rodríguez

One of the Latin American popular composers whose work is most widely known internationally: Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps; A Whole Lifetime; Come Closer to Me and Three Words are considered bolero classics.

He was born in the town of Quemado de Güines, former province of Las Villas. From a very young age he moved to La Habana where he held modest jobs: messenger, decorator, warehouse worker and briefly, bank employee.

He worked several years in advertising companies for which he created drawings and graphic designs, wrote slogans and commercial advertisements with lyrics and music that quickly gained popularity. Farrés had no formal musical training, although he played piano by ear. "I only know how to play piano to compose" –he said on more than one occasion.

In the 1930s he created some musical pieces that began to be performed by Cuban trios and singers, but which did not achieve great distribution at that time. These were, for the most part, lively numbers, such as guarachas and sones montunos. The piece titled Nuestro son, which he made in collaboration with Ramiro Gómez Kemp, has been noted as the first one he composed.

Although for many years Osvaldo Farrés has been considered one of the most important bolero creators of all time, the first piece of his to achieve success was a guajira-son: My Five Sons, which he composed in 1937 based on a joke played on him by a announcer from the CMQ station where he was rehearsing a jingle for Polar beer with five young women: "There's Farrés with his five daughters," he said, to which Farrés responded "I'm going to make a little guaracha with that title," and began writing it on the spot: he converted the young women to men and placed the anecdote of the number in a rural setting.

Apparently the first recording of My Five Sons was made by the Trío Habana (García, Arcos, Urquiza) in 1939, although the greatest popularity this piece achieved, both inside and outside Cuba, was through the recording made on March 25, 1940 by Miguelito Valdés with the Orquesta Casino de la Playa for RCA Victor and through a musical short film. In June of that same year, Miguelito recorded My Five Sons again in New York with Xavier Cugat's orchestra, the most highly regarded Latin American ensemble in the United States.

Also in 1940 and in New York, the Caney quartet led by Cuban Fernando Storch, with Machito singing, recorded another Farrés guaracha that is a kind of continuation of the previous one: My Five Sons Got Married, a number that in Cuba was popularized –and recorded– by Servando Díaz's trio.

In the fourth decade of the twentieth century a large part of Farrés's original works were commercially recorded in Cuba and Mexico by some of the most widely distributed singers and groups: Tell Me If You're Leaving with Her, Plea for Love, You're Wrong, and Tonight or Never (Pedro Vargas); Caress Me (Ana María González); Think Well About What You're Telling Me (Los Panchos); Perhaps You'll Arrive, I Don't Know What I'm Going to Do (René Cabell); You, You and You (Myrta Silva); Let Yourself Be Loved Heart (Bobby Capó); Walking, Walking (Conjunto Casino); No, No and No (Toña la Negra); Tell Me If You're Coming with Me (Hermanas Ávila); And What About Us (Hermanos Rigual); I'm Jealous (Leo Marini); The Song of the Day (Dúo Primavera) and What's Up (Olga Guillot), are just a sample of the reach his work achieved in just ten years.

In 1942, Walt Disney hired him for the music of his film Saludos amigos (Make mine Music), to which belongs his bolero-song Three Words (Without You, in its English version, which in the original soundtrack was sung by Andy Williams, and in the Spanish version, Chucho Martínez Gil, both renowned Mexican singers).

In 1946 his weekly program "Osvaldo Farrés's Melodic Bar" began broadcasting –first on the Cadena Azul station, later on CMQ Radio– in which prominent Cuban and foreign artists who performed on the island were presented.

With the arrival of television "The Melodic Bar..." moved to broadcasting on CMQ-TV station. That same year his bolero Come Closer to Me was included –in the interpretation of Colombian baritone Carlos Ramírez– in Edward Buzzell's film Easy to Wed, starring Esther Williams and Van Johnson.

In 1941 Bing Crosby recorded A Whole Lifetime –premiered in Cuba by Mexican Pedro Vargas– and a decade later Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps which Doris Day would later record among many other American interpreters. Crosby's version of this number produced the greatest royalties Farrés received as an author.

In 1948 he wrote a conga –The Steamroller– for Carlos Prío's electoral campaign for the presidency of the Republic, and his bolero Don't Deceive Me achieved popularity in the interpretation of Jack Sagué, first, and later by Benny Moré, among many other vocalists who included it in their repertoire.

In 1954 he composed Little Mother, a song that since then has been linked to the celebration of the second Sunday of May, the date dedicated to mothers in Cuba. In Spain this song was popularized by Antonio Machín, who kept it in his repertoire until the end of his artistic career.

Instrumental versions of his best-known works were recorded by orchestras led by Henri Mancini, Stanley Black, Roberto Inglez, Randy Brooks, Carmen Cavallaro, André Kostelanetz, Franck Porcell, Bob Everly, Henry King, José Norman, Hugo Winterhalter, Jeffrey, Victor Young, Edmundo Ros, and the BBC of London.

Some films with music by Farrés are Antillean Spell (Juan Orol, 1947); Seven Deaths on Schedule (Manolo Alonso, 1950), Long Live Youth! (Fernando Cortez, 1956); Acapulqueña (Ramón Pereda, 1958); Up and Down/The Elevator Operator (1958) –in these last two, the first with María Antonieta Pons, the second with Cantinflas, the cha-cha-cha In the Sea is included, which the Conjunto Sonora Matancera introduced in 1956 with Carlos Argentino. Sara Montiel sang Farrés's music in six of her films.

For thirteen years his program "Osvaldo Farrés's Melodic Bar" remained on the air (first on radio, then on television), which featured, among other famous figures of the time, Maurice Chevalier, Josephine Baker, Nila Pizzi, Enzio Pinza, Lucho Gatica, Katyna Ranieri and Nat King Cole. In 1957 he directed from that television space a national tribute to Rita Montaner that became a marathon of several hours in which the most important musicians, singers and actors of the nation participated.

Farrés composed, in addition to boleros and songs, guarachas (A Candy for Margot, Teresa, That's All); sones (The Little Piece, Casilda, The Little Movement), waltzes (Shadow of Love, Love in Spring), to mention just a few titles from which several recordings were made.

Among other honors, he received the Order Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y del Castillo, granted by the Congress of the Republic in the 1950s for the international reach of his work.

In his Spanish-language recordings (1958-1961) Nat King Cole sang, by Farrés, Come Closer to Me; Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps and Three Words. Other figures of great international prominence, such as Charles Aznavour, included his works in their repertoire starting in the 1960s. His composition See, That's What I Think achieved popularity in those years in the voice of Olga Guillot, and Celeste Mendoza and Rolando Laserie made successful versions of his boleros So You Can Suffer and You're Wrong, with the orchestra of Ernesto Duarte.

Osvaldo Farrés decided to move to the United States in 1962. He did not stop his musical production. Among the numbers he wrote during that period is Selfishness, which Celia Cruz recorded in 1966.

He died in New Jersey, New York, on December 22, 1985.

He is possibly, after Ernesto Lecuona, the Cuban musical composer with the greatest volume of recorded work inside and outside his country. In an interview for Bohemia magazine he stated: "I never thought of becoming a composer. Neither song nor music entered into my plans, and much less had I imagined that I could make a living from them."