Pérez Prado
In the late 1940s Dámaso Pérez Prado popularized the mambo, a genre which had been by that time, evolving for a decade. Pérez Prado moved to Mexico City in 1948 and started his own band, where he composed and recorded his most famous mambos. While in Mexico, Pérez Prado earned the title "El Rey del Mambo" ('King of the Mambo'), and he appeared in several Mexican films. Pérez Prado's recordings were meant for the Latin American and U.S. Latino markets, but some of his most celebrated mambos, such as "Mambo No. 5" quickly "crossed-over" in the United States. A "mambo craze" swept North America in the 1950s.