Orlando Vallejo: the unsung bolero

Quiet —more than quiet, hermetic—, solitary, poorly dressed, with generally wrinkled clothes, dull shoes and neglected teeth, Orlando Vallejo thus found barriers that seemed insurmountable to succeed as a bolero performer.

He, who debuted in the 30s of the last century, had his first opportunity to record as a soloist 20 years later, in 1951, when he joined a dance music group that would become one of the most important in the genre towards the second half of the century in Cuba: the Casino Complex.

Before, he had collaborated with various ensembles in whose acetates his voice can be heard from the choirs. Then, only then, came some solos. And it is that for most of the directors of musical groups and record producers, Vallejo had a limited voice, of little power, totally inadequate for the bolero. But suddenly Roberto Espí —director of the nascent Ensemble— tried it out in dance halls and the response from the public was warm and enthusiastic; which led him to propose to Panart, the group's record company, that Vallejo's voice should do the solos for two numbers: sky and sun, and Doubt me, both very applauded in the dances.

But the Panart businessman did not accept Vallejo's voice. He claimed that the singer had gone from set to set and nothing ever happened with him. Faced with the refusal, Espí specified it: if Vallejo did not record those numbers, he would break his contract with the record company. And that was how, finally, the songs were recorded in Orlando's voice, becoming two resounding winning numbers. From that moment on, the singer was a frequent visitor to radio and television spaces, his albums achieved high levels of sales and he joined the hosts of well-priced guitar players.

In little more than a year of that episode, between 1951 and the end of 1952, he recorded some 30 sides, both from 78 and 45 rpm records. Immediately after, it was time to empower oneself in the Cuban bolero tradition. The first accolade came with I'm sad, recorded May 28, 1952, and lost love, by César Portillo de la Luz, whose acetate appeared in September of that same year. Immediately both recordings were high on the radio charts.

Along this path, the personality of the hitherto unknown bolero cultist acquired very well defined contours, offering him the opportunity to leave groups and musical groups, and thus embark on a solo career.

But let's go back to before, because Vallejo —who was born in Arroyo Naranjo, a peripheral neighborhood of the Cuban capital— had a marathon race when, being very young, he settled in Santiago de las Vegas. There he sang tangos with the Ritmo Alegre orchestra —it is somewhat contradictory that a group that defines itself, from its name, with this quality interprets a genre as weepy as tango. Later he was heard in the Sexteto Progreso, the Paulín Quintana orchestra, Melody Boys, Havana Casino, Kubavana, Remberto Becker's quartet and Ernesto Grenet's. His career is, effectively, a watercolor in which traditional Cuban music and other very international modalities come together, prioritizing the North American ones. That path, in the beginning, took him away from fame, but it gave him a truly enviable job.

About those times, the guitarist, composer and musical chronicler Senén Suárez provides an interesting testimony: “Vallejo sang with great tenderness, he pronounced well and with excellent intonation, very sentimental with his harmonic voice. He had a rhythmic and soft rhythm, with a tone of voice that sometimes reminded Pablito Quevedo. In addition to being a bolero player, he performed versions of standard American songs and their guarachitas with Ernesto Grenet”. ^[1]

At another point, Senén recalls: “Vallejo was a good colleague, very communicative, disciplined, but there were very mysterious facts about his life that he never mentioned, he didn't like to talk about it. He was not in love, he seemed to have tuberculosis, he lived with an old lady, from whom he never separated... His demeanor never bothered him and that caused him many inconveniences. However, I must say that Orlando was very punctual in his work. We never knew where that refined gift of singing came from.

But one of those highlights in the singer's career was linked to the interpretation of the song of his authorship, A friend of mine. With a topic much appreciated by lovers of spiteful bolero —the typical love triangle formed by a woman, her husband and her lover, a friend, in turn, of the latter—, the single reached the highest peaks of popularity in its moment. Unexpectedly, another Orlando —Contreras—, an excellent bolero player as well, came out into the ring with an answer: friend of what.

An old tradition in the Cuban songbook was reborn and the Victrolas played the original and the replica over and over again, which became, in turn, hits. The affair of the “traitor friend” increased the fame of this bolero singer who needed more than 20 years to find his place of preference in the complex bolero and vitrolero world.

The case of Orlando Vallejo is extremely interesting. He did not have a typical voice in the evolution of the Cuban popular song and, particularly, of the bolero. He also moved away from the tension and overreaction used by most of his predecessors. With this, Vallejo gave way to more sedate bolero players such as Wilfredo Mendi, Ñico Membiela and, above all, Lino Borges, three interpreters who stripped the bolero of those extreme expressions of feeling that accompanied Panchito Riset, Vicentico Valdés, José Tejedor and even Orlando Contreras. And if Lino Borges was the most lyrical of them, both Mendi, Membiela and Vallejo himself were a little closer to the crooner, most of the time narrating with his interpretation the stories that weaved the lyrics of his boleros and not living them intensely.

In the 1960s, Vallejo traveled first to Mexico and then to the United States, where he settled in South Florida. It then became a sip of nostalgia for those who left the Island with the revolutionary triumph. He spent his last days there, very affected by the alcohol addiction that had brought him fame in Havana.

The bolero player died in Miami, on January 20, 1981, at the age of 61; and surely in his refuge of loneliness and remembrance some bolero was forgotten that he never performed. You know for what reasons.

The disheveled singer, caretaker of his privacy, did not leave this world to look for the friend who sullied the one he led to the altar one day, but rather followed in the footsteps of the bolero that he never sang and that, at the same time, he never forgot . And whose title he would never reveal because he —king of melancholic restraint— was jealous, more than of his intimacy, of his mysteries, those that most of us humans do not bring to light so that they do not lose the strength of the enigma.

^[1] The testimonies of Senén Suárez were taken from Lam, Rafael: The masters of pleasure. Orlando Vallejo, available in .