Desi Arnaz

To the general audience Desi Arnaz remains fixed in memory as the hot-tempered yet endearing Ricky Ricardo, Lucille Ball’s spouse both onscreen and off, throughout the long run of I Love Lucy, one of television’s most durable hits of the 1950s. Inside the business he is remembered chiefly as a driving force at Desilu Productions. Long before those achievements, however, he had already earned recognition strictly as a musician rather than an actor or studio executive. No one did more to embed the conga in American popular culture; fronting an ensemble that fused Latin-Cuban rhythms with big-band swing, Arnaz delivered the hybrid through his own effusively theatrical yet unfailingly genial singing. Although critics have accorded him less respect than they gave Machito, the late-’40s Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, or his early mentor Xavier Cugat, his discs still radiate an unexpected, kinetic energy.

Born in Santiago, Cuba, Arnaz relocated to Miami during adolescence and began working as a conga drummer, vocalist, and guitarist. After a six-month stint in Xavier Cugat’s orchestra he left to organize his own group. Around 1940 the La Conga Orchestra cut its first sides under his direction; engagements in New York generated sufficient attention to secure him a part in the Richard Rodgers–Lorenz Hart musical Too Many Girls in 1939. He reprised the role in the subsequent film adaptation, which opened the door to a Hollywood contract and ultimately to his marriage to comedienne Lucille Ball.

Following wartime service in the Army, Arnaz devoted the remainder of the 1940s to music, producing a string of buoyant Victor recordings between 1946 and 1949. While his heavily accented spoken routines occasionally veered into cliché, the band could also generate explosive momentum, as it did on “Babalu” and “El Cumbanchero.” His explicit aim was to merge Machito’s rhythmic drive with the melodic lushness of Andre Kostelanetz. After completing his final Victor session in 1949, Arnaz turned his energies toward film and television; once I Love Lucy made him one of the medium’s earliest superstars, his recording career was set aside for good.