Life’s Little Surprises: A Memoir

The life and times of a living legend, the most successful and influential singer/songwriter of the past fifty years throughout the Spanish-speaking world, who also happens to be an acclaimed Hollywood and Broadway actor, a Harvard Law School graduate with a Master’s degree in international law, and a political activist who ran for president in his native Panama.

Blades has lived a life in full, and he tells of it with infectious brio, honesty, and wit:

He writes about his mother, a Cuban child prodigy musician and radio drama actress, and his father, who was born in Colombia and was a percussionist and officer of the secret police. He also writes about his arrival in New York City from Panama in the 1970s and his rise as a leading light among the Fania-All Stars in salsa’s glory years.

Blades writes about his initially productive and ultimately fraught collaborations with the great trombonist/singer Willie Col³n, which resulted in the release of  Siembra, the best-selling salsa album of all time. It sold millions of copies, and every track became a hit throughout Latin America and the Spanish speaking world, including “Pedro Navaja,” his best-known song, which was inspired by Kurt Weil’s “Mack the Knife.” He talks about his refusal to allow his music to be pigeonholed, which set the stage for his inventive and eclectic 1983 solo breakout, Buscando América, one of the great albums of that decade.

He writes about his embrace of other popular musical genres and his collaborations with Linda Ronstadt, Sting, Elvis Costello, and Wynton Marsalis. He discusses his acting career and his appearances in films such as  Predator 2, Color of Night, Safe House, and Hands of Stone, and about his performances in The Josephine Baker Story, Crazy from the Heart, and The Maldonado Miracle, for which he received Emmy nominations.

Finally, Blades writes about his own political activism: his stance against American imperialism, which is most evident in his 1981 song “Tibur³n” (Spanish for “shark”), his denunciation by anti-Castro Cubans in Florida, and his creation of a progressive political party in Panama under whose banner he made a run for president, in which he came in third place with 20% of votes.