The Cuban musicologist Radamés Giro offers this date of Vallejo: Arroyo Naranjo, Havana, April 30, 1919-Miami, EE.EE. January 20, 1981.
Orlando Vallejo is for many the most excellent bolerista, the most melodic, the voice of velvet and friendly. «Vallejo sang with a lot of tenderness - recalls the musician Senén Suárez-, he pronounced well and with excellent tuning, very sentimental with his harmonic voice. It had a rhythmic and smooth rhythm, with a tone of voice that sometimes reminded PablitoQuevedo. Besides being bolerista, he interpreted versions of American standard songs and their guarachitas with Ernesto Grenet ».
Vallejo lived a good time in the municipality of Santiago de Las Vegas, quite near Arroyo Naranjo, and there he started in the theater singing tangos that were very fashionable at that time. He was accompanied by the Ritmo Alegre orchestra. He then went to SextetoProgreso. He subsequently appeared in the Paulín Quintana orchestra, Melody Boys, Havana Casino, Kubavana and El Casino.
In 1942, in the studios of the station El Progreso Cubano, in Prado and San José, he sang there with Paulín'scharanga. The voice of that skinny young man who was taking his first steps in the song was already impressive.
Two years later RembertoBeker enrolls Vallejo for some sections of recordings, with the Puerto Rican label Ideal. The Beker quartet was made up of Elías Castillo, Carlos Querol and Pedro Hernández, who was left out of the agreement.
In 1946 Senén finished his work with LuisitoPlá, then Tony Tejera and Gerardo Pedroso, make up the Caonabo trio, to perform at the Esquire club, at Prado e / Virtudes and Neptuno.
With ÑicoSaquitoSenén stayed a year until in 1948 he met again with Vallejo who seemed to pursue him. The meeting was in the whole of Ernesto Grenet that enlivened the dances of the Tropicana cabaret.
"With the group of Ernesto Grenet," Senén continues, "we traveled to Maracaibo, there we worked endless hours in front of the sea and we all stayed difonic, except Vallejo. Back to Cuba, Vallejo leaves the group and then begins to sing for different groups ».
In the 1950s the great moment of Orlando Vallejocomes, he is presented with the sets: Casino, Luis Santí, Colonial Nelo Sosa and Roberto Faz. He also does it with the charanga of Fajardo and his Estrellas and with the band of Bebo Valdés, who wrote him many arrangements and accompanied him with a large orchestra of violins in special recordings.
The repertoire was very varied: boleros, tangos, guajiras, American melodies. His catalog, according to Jorge Calderón (The music behind the counter), was very abundant. It is said that, in its first stage, Orlando Contreras imitated Vallejo.
Senén reveals very interesting data from Vallejo:
Vallejo was a good companion, very communicative, disciplined, but there were very mysterious details of his life that he never mentioned, he did not like to talk about it. In the middle of the year 1950 the direction of the record company Panartcommunicated me that put me in contact with Vallejo to record an LD disc. I went to his house on Calle Cristina and Arroyo, behind the dairy company. There I met the friend of so many years. He was not in love, he looked like a tuberculous, he lived with a very old lady, from whom he never separated. It was like an Oedipus complex, perhaps he had it as a kind of mother who took care of him. This dependence caused Vallejo a kind of abandonment in his dress, in his teeth and in his disheveled presence, not at all presumptuous -something rare in the artists- He never cared about his bearing and that caused him many inconveniences. However, I must say that Orlando was very punctual in his work. We never knew where that gift of singing so refined came from. After becoming famous, he began to drink alcoholic beverages, along with the addition of the cigar.
The director of the Casino group, Roberto Espí, told me at his residence in the Casino division that many did not trust Vallejo's voice for the group, nor did the record company Panart want to record records with the Casino.
The entrepreneur of the Panart said that Vallejo had sung with many groups and nothing happened with his voice. I had tried the Vallejo songs in the classrooms and they had a lot of acceptance, I mean the songs: Cielo y sol, Dudas de mí, Mirando; Then I told the management of the Panart that if they did not record Vallejo, he would break the contract with them. To such insistence the label accepted and Vallejo ended up being a record success. In the Casino it was maintained from April 1951 to June 1953.
Later, after his return from Venezuela, the director of the Panart proposes that he become a soloist and becomes a figure of that famous label, with which he had a wide catalog, according to Jorge Calderón.
The most well-known songs recorded by Vallejo: "When you do not love me anymore" (CuatesCastilla), "La alborada" (Celia Romero), "A love that was not love", and "No longer light up your star", (MiguelitoValdés ); "Damn me", and "Let me believe" (René Touzet). Accompanied by the Fajardo orchestra: "The early riser", "Que murmuren", "As Martí dreamed" (Juan Arrondo, success of 1959).
He was accompanied by Yoyo Casteleiro, according to Manuel Villar. Unquestionably, these are true anthological recordings that must be included in the history of the Cuban romantic song.
In the middle of the 1960s, on a lovely morning, in a cane field, on a Sony radio, the voice of Orlando Vallejo, which was no longer broadcasting in Cuba, was heard faintly from a foreign station. For the moment, I said to myself: "That's Vallejo." I felt a strange nostalgia, it was a voice that had filled memorable moments in the audience of the victrolas and the Cuban radio. It was Orlando Vallejo: The melodic voice of Cuba, the unforgettable voice of another skinny golden of the Cuban song.
