Bebo Valdés entered the world in Quivican, Cuba, in October 1918. From an early age the piano absorbed his attention, and he maintained a vigorous presence as performer, composer, arranger, and musical director at several Havana nightclubs across the 1940s and into the following decade. Recording dates also kept him occupied during those years. Esteemed inside Cuba’s musical community, Valdés collaborated with numerous artists, among them Mario Bauza and Ernesto Lecuona. As Afro-Cuban music spread internationally, he toured Europe and the United States. Dissatisfied with Cuba’s new political order, he departed his homeland in 1960 and settled in Stockholm, Sweden, three years later.
Although he persisted in composing and performing, and despite the growing international profile of his son Chucho Valdés, Valdés did not return to a recording studio until the late 1990s. At the urging of Paquito D’Rivera—whose father had been Valdés’s friend and who had worked with Chucho in Irakere—a session was organized in Germany. Valdés wrote the bulk of the material, much of it prepared in haste the day before, and played throughout; the results proved strikingly assured after his long absence from regular performance. Joining Valdés and D’Rivera were Juan-Pablo Torres on trombone, Diego Urcola on trumpet, Amadito Valdés on percussion, and Carlos Emilio Morales on guitar, the last an ex-Irakere member.
That album launched Valdés’s renewed recording activity. His next project was a trio date with Israel "Cachao" Lopez and Carlos "Patato" Valdés, although D’Rivera guested on several tracks. Valdés kept recording into the 2010s. He appears in the documentary Calle 54 (2000) alongside an array of Latin jazz figures that includes his son Chucho, Gato Barbieri, Eliane Elias, Chico O’Farrill, and Tito Puente. The parallel revival of interest in classic Cuban music, partly sparked by the Buena Vista Social Club albums, contributed to the success of Valdés’s later years. Still, his stature as a composer remained central to Latin American music at large and to Afro-Cuban jazz in particular. Bebo Valdés died of pneumonia on 22 March 2013 in Stockholm at the age of 94.
