page_title: Benny Moré
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Benny Moré / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Statue of Benny More in Cienfuegos, Cuba.Français&#160;: Statue du musicien Benny More dans sa ville natale de Cienfuegos à Cuba.
context_page_description: Bartolomé Maximiliano Moré, better known as Benny Moré, was a Cuban singer, bandleader and songwriter. Due to his fluid tenor voice and his great expressivity, he was known variously as El Bárbaro del Ritmo and El Sonero Mayor. Moré was a master of the soneo, the art of vocal improvisation in Cuban son, and many of his tunes developed this way. He often took part in controversias with other singers like Cheo Marquetti and Joseíto Fernández. Apart from son cubano, Moré was a popular singer of guarachas, cha cha cha, mambo, son montuno, and boleros.
  Moré started his career with the Conjunto Matamoros in the 1940s and after a tour in Mexico he decided to stay in the country. Both Moré and dancer Ninón Sevilla made their cinematic debut on 1946's Carita de cielo, but Moré focused on his music career. In the late 1940s, he sang guaracha-mambos with Pérez Prado, achieving great success. Moré returned to Cuba in 1952 and worked with Bebo Valdés and Ernesto Duarte. In 1953, he formed the Banda Gigante, which became one of the leading Cuban big bands of the 1950s. He suffered from alcoholism and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1963 at age 43.
context_section_description: The eldest of 18 children, Moré was born in the town of Santa Isabel de las Lajas in the former Santa Clara Province, current Cienfuegos Province, in central Cuba. His parents were Virginia Moré and Silvestre Gutiérrez. His maternal great-great grandfather, Ta Ramón Gundo Paredes (later changed to Ta Ramón Gundo Moré), was said to be the son of the king of a tribe in the Kingdom of Kongo who was captured by slave traders and sold to a Cuban plantation owner named Ramon Paredes and subsequently to another Cuban landowner named Conde Moré (Paredes/Moré was later liberated and died as a freeman at age 94). As a child, Moré learned to play the guitar, making his first instrument at age six, according to his mother, from "a stick and a sardine can that served as the sound box." In 1936, at age seventeen, he left Las Lajas for Havana, where he lived by selling bruised and damaged fruits and vegetables and medicinal herbs. Six months later, he returned to Las Lajas and went to cut cane for a season with his brother Teodoro. With the money he earned and Teodoro's savings, he bought his first guitar in Morón, Cuba.
caption: Bronze statue of Moré in Cienfuegos' Prado street
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