Search - Freddy :: Ella Cantaba Boleros

The only cd of a legendary cuban singer

João Carlos Rodrigues | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil | 11/19/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In Cabrera Infantes's very good romance "Tres tristes tigres" she is called Estrella Rodrigues - an enormously fat black woman with an ugly face and a strange personality. Her real name was Fredesvinda Garcia, or Freddy. After sometime as an rebel and amateur torch songs' singer in Havana's last years before Fidel Castro, she finally recorded this unique album and died in Mexico one year after, in 1961. That's why she's so unknown in our days. The arrangements are commercial and cheap, but her contralto voice magnificent, a mixture of Big Mamma Thornton, Elvira Rios and Virginia Rodrigues. So are the songs. A cult singer for connaisseurs. Bravo!"