Jan 1: Spanish violinist and band leader Xavier Cugat was born on this date in 1900...

... he died on October 27, 1990.

Xavier Cugat's full name was Francesc d'Asís Xavier Cugat Mingall de Bru i Deulofeu from Girona , Spain. A Catalan-American bandleader who spent his formative years in Havana, Cuba. A trained violinist and arranger, he was a key personality in the spread of Latin music in United States popular music. He was also a cartoonist and a successful businessman.

Cugat was born as His family emigrated to Cuba when Xavier was five. He was trained as a classical violinist and played with the Orchestra of the Teatro Nacional in Havana. On 6 July 1915, Cugat and his family arrived in New York as immigrant passengers on board the S.S. Havana.

He started his musical career with a band called The Gigolos during the tango craze. Later, he went to work for the Los Angeles Times as a cartoonist. Cugat's caricatures were later nationally syndicated. His older brother, Francis, was an artist of some note, having painted the famous cover art for F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby.

In the late 1920s, as sound began to be used in films, he put together another tango band that had some success in early short musical films. By the early 1930s, he began appearing with his group in feature films. He took his band to New York for the 1931 opening of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and he eventually replaced Jack Denny as the leader of the hotel's resident band.

One of his trademarks was to hold a Chihuahua while he waved his baton with the other arm.

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For 16 years Cugat lead the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel's orchestra. He shuttled between New York and Los Angeles for most of the next 30 years, alternating hotel and radio dates with movie appearances in You Were Never Lovelier (1942), Bathing Beauty (1944), Week-End at the Waldorf (1945), On an Island with You (1948), and Neptune's Daughter (1949), among others.

Abbe Lane

Cugat followed trends closely, making records for the conga, the mambo, the cha-cha-cha, and the twist when each was in fashion. Several of the songs he recorded, including "Perfidia", were used in the Wong Kar-wai films Days of Being Wild and 2046. In 1943, "Brazil" was a big hit, reaching #17 in the Billboard Top 100.





Cugat recorded on Columbia Records, RCA Victor , Mercury Records and Decca Records. Dinah Shore made her first recordings as a vocalist with Cugat in 1939 and 1940.   In 1940, his recording of "Perfidia" became a big hit.

Charo - "Coochie, Coochie!!"

Cugat was married five times. His first marriage was to Rita Montaner,  his second to Carmen Castillo,  his third to Lorraine Allen, his fourth to singer Abbe Lane, and his fifth to Spanish guitarist and comic actress Charo.

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Jan 1: Joe McDonald of 1960s psychedelic rock group Country Joe & the Fish is 69 today.

Joseph Allen McDonald was born in Washington, D.C. in 1942.  At the age of 17, he enlisted in the United States Navy. After his enlistment, he attended the Los Angeles City College for a year. In the early 1960s, he began busking on Berkeley, California's famous Telegraph Avenue.

Berkeley String Quartet-Joe is 2nd from Right

McDonald has recorded 33 albums and has written hundreds of songs over a career spanning 40 years. He and Barry Melton co-founded Country Joe & the Fish which became a pioneer psychedelic rock band with their eclectic performances at The Avalon Ballroom, The Fillmore, Monterey Pop Festival and both the original and the reunion Woodstock Festivals.

Their best known song is his "The "Fish" Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag," a black comedy novelty song about the Vietnam War, whose familiar chorus ("One, two, three, what are we fighting for?") is well known to the Woodstock generation and Vietnam Veterans of the 1960s and 1970s.

 

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The "Fish Cheer" was the band performing a call-and-response with the audience, spelling the word "fish," followed by Country Joe yelling, "What's that spell?" twice, with the audience responding, and then, the third time, "What's that smell?" followed immediately by the song. The "Fish Cheer" evolved into the "F*ck Cheer" after the Berkeley free speech movement.

The cheer was on the original recording of the I-Feel-Like-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag, being played right before the song on the LP of the same name. The cheer became popular and the crowd would spell out F-I-S-H when the band performed live.

During the summer of 1968 the band played on the Schaefer Beer Music Festival tour. Gary "Chicken" Hirsh suggested before one of the shows to spell the word "f*ck" instead of "fish."

Although the crowd loved it, the management of the Schaefer Festival did not and kicked the band off the tour for life. The Ed Sullivan Show then canceled a previously scheduled appearance by the band, telling them to keep the money they had already been paid in exchange for never playing on the show. The modified cheer continued at most of the band's live shows throughout the years, including Woodstock and the Isle of Wight Festival. In Massachusetts, McDonald was fined $500 for uttering "f*ck" in public.

Photo Courtesy of Bob Sanderson

In 2003 McDonald was sued for copyright infringement over his signature song, specifically the "One, two, three, what are we fighting for?" chorus part, as derived from the 1926 early jazz classic "Muskrat Ramble," co-written by Kid Ory.

The suit was brought by Ory's daughter Babette, who held the copyright at the time. Since decades had already passed from the time McDonald composed his song in 1965, Ory based her suit on a new version of it recorded by McDonald in 1999. The court however upheld McDonald's laches defense, noting that Ory and her father were aware of the original version of the song, with the same questionable section, for some three decades without bringing a suit.

In 2004, Country Joe regrouped with some of the original members of Country Joe and The Fish as the Country Joe Band – Bruce Barthol, David Bennett Cohen, and Gary "Chicken" Hirsh. The band toured the U.S. and U.K.

When the Bevis Frond met Country Joe McDonald in San Francisco in 1998 Country Joe had been one of their biggest musical heroes of the 60s. So, when Joe asked them to join him on stage at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall they readily agreed. Their joint performace was so successful, they did it again a few months later at His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen. An album of the performance is available in vinyl.

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