The 'First Lady of Afro-Cuban Jazz' Graciela Dead at 94

One of the most prominent, trailblazing voices of Afro-Cuban music, Graciela Peréz-Gutierrez, known simply as Graciela, died on Wednesday in Manhattan, where she lived. She was 94. The cause of death was renal and pulmonary failure.

Graciela paved the way for artists such as Celia Cruz and La Lupe, and more contemporary singers of Afro-Cuban music like Albita and Xiomara Laugart. Her professional career began in Cuba as a singer and bass player for the all-female Orquesta Anacaona and then with El Trio Garcia. Later in 1943 she joined her foster brother, the legendary Machito, in New York City, and became the first woman to front a major tropical orchestra. For 32 years Graciela sang and played claves for Machito and his Afro-Cubans. Machito, who had left Havana for New York in 1937, formed the Afro-Cubans in 1940 and tapped his brother-in-law, renowned trumpeter Mario Bauzá, known as the 'founding father of Latin jazz,' as musical director. One of the first bands to fuse Afro-Cuban rhythms with jazz improvisation, the Afro-Cubans was a pivotal group in the globalization of mambo and Latin jazz. Throughout Afro-Cuban jazz's golden age, the band was a mainstay at the Palladium, Town Hall, the Apollo, the 52nd Street jazz clubs, the Concord Hotel in the Catskills and the Crescendo nightclub in Hollywood, among other places.

Graciela's signature alto made records such as 'Que Me Falta,' 'Vive Como Yo,' 'Ay José,' and 'Si Si No No' all the more memorable. She left the Afro-Cubans in 1975 but reunited with Bauzá in his own band, first in 1976 on 'La Botanica' and then again during the 1990s.

Graciela was never married and had no immediate surviving family members. According to friend and assistant Mappy Torres, the Grammy-nominated singer had her claves in hand when she died.