Abelardo Barroso Dargeles was born on September 21, 1905, in room 7 of the Solar* El Tetuan in Centro Havana, the eldest child of Claxita Dargeles a black mother and Guillermo Barroso a Cuban tobacco worker of Spanish origin. He grew up with his six sisters in conditions of extreme poverty and combined school with work as a shoeshine boy and at the railroad. An enthusiastic amateur boxer and baseball player, his real passion was for the music that enveloped his neighbourhood, a district impregnated by the rumba - the Afro-Cuban religious music and dance. His home was visited by trovadors such as the great Manuel Corona and his schoolmates included Ernesto Muñoz and Andres Laferte, both of whom would go on to lead successful orchestras with Barroso as their star vocalist.

In the 1920s Havana was in thrall to the sexteto guitar groups that were refining the Cuban son style that had recently arrived from Santiago at the eastern tip of the Island. By 1925 Barroso was working as a driver for the most celebrated of these groups, the Sexteto Habanero. The story goes that on the way back from an engagement, the group were singing in the back of the car when their chauffeur joined in. He made such an impression that he was asked to join the band and by the end of the year he was featured as their lead vocalist on the first electronic recordings to be made in Cuba (for the RCA Victor label). As the Cuban music historian Cristóbal Díaz Ayala said “The son won over Havana and with the magic of records, it soon began to win over the rest of the Caribbean” and beyond.

Barroso's reputation grew rapidly and the following year he was travelling to New York to record as lead singer with Alfredo Bolona’s mythical Sexteto Bolona. In a legendary two day recording blitz they waxed the sixteen tracks for the Brunswick label that made up their entire recorded output, an oeuvre that places them amongst the very finest son bands of the era. In 1928 Barroso completed the extraordinary feat of singing with all three of the era’s leading son groups (and major record companies) when he guested with the newly formed Septeto Nacional de Ignacio Piñiero on their Columbia Records session. Also in 1928 Barroso formed his own sextet, Agabama with the singer Frank Grillo, who later found fame as Machito.
Link -- https://www.abelardobarroso.com/about?prodtitle=about
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