Salsa Queen Celia Cruz Dies
Celia Cruz died of brain cancer yesterday at her home in Fort Lee,
New Jersey. The “Queen of Salsa” was seventy-eight.
The flamboyant and exuberant Cruz was born in Havana on October
21, 1924. She attended the country’s Conservatory of Music and by
1950 was singing in the immensely popular band, La Sonora
Matancera. Cruz sang with the group for more than a decade. She was
traveling in the United States with the ensemble during the 1959
revolution in Cuba — within a year, she became a permanent U.S.
resident. Two years later, she married La Sonora Matancera
trumpeter Pedro Knight; the couple celebrated their forty-first
anniversary on Monday.
For the next four decades Cruz dazzled audiences with her
energetic vocals, her trademark penchant for shouting “Azucar!”
(“Sugar!”) mid-song, and garish performance attire that was never
wanting for bright colors and things that sparkled. She recorded
prolifically with late percussion legend Tito Puente through the
late Sixties and early Seventies, and continued to entertain
audiences until as recently as last year.
Cruz’s legacy will live on in her recordings, which number more
than seventy, and footage of her dynamic live performances. She
also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Smithsonian
Institution and thirteen Grammy nominations (she won twice), and
Miami renamed one of its streets Celia Cruz Way.