Daniel Santos (singer)

Daniel Santos (June 6, 1916 – November 27, 1992) was a Puerto Rican singer and composer of boleros, and an overall performer of multiple Caribbean music genres, including guaracha, plena and rumba.

Over the course of his career he adopted several names created by the public and became known as "El Jefe" and "El Inquieto Anacobero".

Santos (birth name: Daniel Santos Betancourt ) was born and raised with his three sisters, Sara, Rosa Lydia and Luz América in Trastalleres, a poor section of Santurce, Puerto Rico.

He attended Las Palmitas Elementary School.

In 1924, his family moved to New York City looking for a better way of life.

When his parents, Rosendo and María enrolled him in school, he had to start from the first grade again because he did not know enough English.

Santos joined his high school's choir, but he dropped out of high school in his second year and moved out of his parents' apartment.

When he was fifteen years old he began looking for work in Manhattan.

Santos moved into a small apartment, where, one day, he started to sing "Te Quiero, Dijiste" (You said 'I Love You').

A member of the Trío Lírico was passing by and heard him sing.

He then knocked on Santos' door.

The trio member invited Daniel to join the trio and he accepted.

Santos debuted with them on September 13, 1930; he sang in various social events and was paid a dollar for every song that he sang.

He returned to Puerto Rico only to return once more to Manhattan after he unsuccessfully tried to acquire a job as a singer at WKAQ, which was one of the island's main radio stations.

In late 1933 and 1934, Santos performed in a nightclub named Los Chilenos located near Broadway and was paid twenty dollars per weekend.

Personally, Santos led a life of excesses, including maintaining several romantic relationships at once.

In 1938, Santos was working at the Cuban Casino Cabaret in Manhattan, which was normally visited by Puerto Ricans and other Latinos.

His chores included singing, waiting on tables and on occasions he was the master of ceremonies for which he was paid a salary of thirty dollars.

On one occasion, he was singing "Amor Perdido" (Lost Love), without knowing that the composer of the song Pedro Flores was in the audience.

Flores liked what he heard and invited Santos to join his group "El Cuarteto Flores" which also included Myrta Silva, and would in the future also include Pedro Ortiz Dávila (also known by his stage name "Davilita").

Santos recorded many songs with the Cuarteto Flores and started to gain fame.

Among the songs he recorded were: "Perdon"; "Amor"; "El Ultimo Adios" "Si Yo Fuera Millonario" by singer/composer Miguel Poventud and ''Borracho no Vale'.

In the early 1940s, many young Puerto Rican men were drafted for World War II, among them Santos.

Santos recorded "Despedida" (My Good-bye), a farewell song written by Flores from the viewpoint of an Army recruit who had to leave behind his girlfriend and his ailing mother, which became a hit.

Santos recalled in an interview once that he had to hold back tears while recording the song, since his draft papers had just arrived and he would soon have to live a situation similar to what the song's lyrics described, but that a friend started mocking him at the control booth, to which he decided to curse him on the spot, trading the word mama'o (an extremely vulgar term in Puerto Rican Spanish) for mamá (mother).

This incident produced two mannerisms that Santos eventually adopted in his singing style: chopped delivery (almost syllable by syllable, as suggested by Flores) and stretched last vowel in the last verse of each stanza, in almost every song he recorded afterwards.

He was sent to Maui Island, after completing his basic military training in Kentucky.

In Maui, he was assigned to a US Army infantry unit which was used to replenish casualties in the Pacific theatre.

Santos would joke that he escaped the "replenishment levies" because of his guitar playing skills.

Nevertheless, he was sent to Okinawa towards the end of the war.

While in the military Santos teamed up with Juanito Jiménez as a part of a duo dubbed Los Cumbancheros.

After the war concluded Santos returned to New York, where he received a tribute upon his arrival.

There he recorded "Linda", written specially for him by Flores for one of Santos' old girlfriends.

Santos became active in the Puerto Rican Independence Movement and identified himself with the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and its president Pedro Albizu Campos after he was discharged from the military because of the prejudice which he experienced within the Army.

His devotion for Albizu lasted throughout his life, to the point of commissioning, later in his life, a bronze bust of Albizu for his estate in Puerto Rico.

With Davilita, he recorded "Patriotas" ("Patriots") and "La Lucha por la Independencia de Puerto Rico" ("The Fight for Puerto Rico's Independence"), which was adopted from one of Juan Antonio Corretjer's poems.

In March 1946, Santos inaugurated a bar and restaurant named Borinquen, and administrated the establishment for some weeks.

Two months later he began singing Mexican music and boleros at Greenwich Village.

Later that year he visited the Dominican Republic, where he had legal problems and was jailed briefly.

By this time Santos' fame had grown and he decided to travel to Cuba, establishing a residence in Havana in 1946.