Biography
Mario Hernández musician, singer, songwriter and composer.
Mario Hernandez (June 24, 1924, Sabana Llana, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico - January 2, 2013, Río Piedras) was a Puerto Rican singer, songwriter and composer.
From a young age he was inclined to music, attracted by various instruments such as bongó, bass and guitar, also singing in some amateur programs.
Still a child, the virtuoso tresista, singer and composer, Mario Hernández, hoped that his uncle would go to work to pick up his guitar, tune it as he did, and get some chords he remembered hearing in the bohemias of the neighborhood Sabana Down of Río Piedras.
Uncle was surprised to find his guitar well tuned, because he always let loose the strings before putting it in his case. Until one day, to his surprise, he found Mario playing guitar in a band improvised by the neighborhood and there his doubts dissipated.
That, however, was not the first instrument he touched or the one that most fascinated him. He had already experimented with the bongo, but his sound did not fill it, so he switched to bass. Although he liked to play it, the only one he had available was very large and uncomfortable and he chose the guitar, which pleased him a little more.
He also had already entered as a singer in the program "Tarima del arte" by Quiñónez Vidal, where he sang two numbers and won that night the highest honors, beyond the remembered "flying quarter."
Already later he was struck by a singular sound that he heard on the WKAQ radio station, which was not bass guitar or four nor mandolin, but something other than what he knew.
He was enthralled by the sound of the CUBAN TRES Cuba national instrument that played here "Piliche" with the Sexteto Puerto Rico by Leocadio Vizcarrondo, whose sound captivated him instantly. And with him he would be enshrined and marked forever, until becoming one of its greatest interpreters and broadcasters.
At only 16 years old, he was the second voice and threeist of Conjunto Libertad.
In 1950 he founded his orchestra "Los Diablos del Caribe", with which he worked until 1956, when he moved to New York. In this city he lived for about thirty years. Los Diablos del Caribe was the first orchestra to accompany the sonero major Ismael Rivera, when he was barely 14 years old. The Diablos also performed in N.Y during the last season of the Night Club Palladium, where Mario alternated with legends of Latin music like Tito Puente and Machito.
In those times, Mario also worked with artists like La Lupe, María Luisa Landín, Panchito Riset and Daniel Santos with La Sonora Matancera.
He directed the Sexteto Borinquen from 1961. He spent his last years in Río Piedras, where he died in January of 2013 at the age of 88 years.
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