North America / USA / New York
En mi barrio el empedrao
Parroquia Santa Lucia
Había una barbería
Que era muy populachera
Te lavaban en ponchera
La silla se reclinaba
Y Luis el perro pelaba
Al son de una periquera
This is the sound of the tasty gaita performed by the group Sabor Gaitero and Los Gaiteros de Pillopo. It refers to a barbershop in a picturesque neighbourhood of Maracaibo in the Venezuelan state of Zulia. It was in this popular neighbourhood of Maracaibo, El Empedrao, that Felipe Antonio Pirela Morón was born in 1941. It was probably in this popular barbershop that he got his first haircut, and it was certainly in some corner of the neighbourhood that he took his first steps as a singer, perhaps interpreting gaitas or some other popular genre. The young Felipe was far from imagining that he would become “El Bolerista de América” (The Bolero of America).
The son of a bricklayer, Felipe Pirela Monsalve, and a housewife – an artist at heart – Lucia Morón de Pirela, the boy began his musical career as a child, supported by his mother, in small radio singing competitions. Incredibly, at the age of 13, together with some boys from the neighbourhood and his two brothers, he founded the group Los Happy Boys, which performed in various venues in Maracaibo, without even imagining that he would later become the main star of Billo’s Caracas Boys, a group that, upon arriving in Venezuela, debuted under the same name, Billo’s Happy Boys, directed by the Dominican maestro Billo Frometa.
At the beginning of his singing career, Felipe specialized as a bolerista, performing songs by prominent singers such as the Chilean Lucho Gatica, the Cuban bolerista Olga Gillot and Venezuela’s favorite tenor Alfredo Sadel.
Radio Caracas Television had the honor of making Felipe’s image public for the first time in 1957, through an amateur program in which Felipe placed third. Unfortunately, there were no video recording systems in those days, so there is no record of this historic achievement. Later, the now defunct and legendary Venezuelan regional television station from Maracaibo, Ondas del Lago, served as a springboard for Felipe, who was one of its founding artists.
These performances allowed him to sign a contract with the station in 1958, after which he moved to Caracas, where he performed on Radio Caracas and in various nightclubs.
Shortly thereafter, he returned to Maracaibo to join the orchestra Los Peniques, with whom he recorded his first album in 1960 and began his professional career.
Like most of the artists, baseball players and boxers from Maracaibo, Felipe was a man of humble origins, pobre del pobre, with limited economic resources, who for a time missed opportunities to be noticed despite his immense talent.
Fortune smiled on him when Maestro Billo Frometa heard him sing, at a time when the arranger, director and musician from Quisqueyano was preparing to restructure his band, Billo’s Caracas Boys, and at the same time hired another singer from Maracaibo, the remarkable José “Cheo” García. This hiring gave an enormous boost to the already famous Billo’s Caracas Boys; the band acquired great international prestige, performing throughout America and Europe, popularizing the immortal mosaics that for many years enlivened the parties and were the favorites of the Venezuelan public.
Not for nothing, Billo’s Caracas Boys Orchestra has been called the most popular in Venezuela, the Caracas and Venezuelan clubs, Latin American countries and even the European continent (Tenerife, Spain) showed full houses during the band’s performances. In these performances, the acclaim for Felipe Pirela was total. Huge demonstrations of support, full houses and legions of fans followed the “crooner” on his tours.
When Venezuela’s favorite tenor, Alfredo Sadel, left the popular genre and his country to devote himself to opera, Pirela almost immediately replaced him in the favorite place of Venezuelans.
In 1961, “El Bolerista de América” recorded with a string orchestra conducted by Billo, the long playing Canciones de Ayer, including old songs and songs of that time, a recording that marked his resignation and departure to Mexico, where he also had memorable successes.
In 1964 he married Mariela Montiel, a marriage that resulted in the birth of a daughter, Lennys, and in which La Retirada was quickly marked by the fact that Amor se Escribe con Llanto (Love is Written with Crying) and that it probably does not last a lifetime.
Canada and Mexico witnessed his successes in ’67 and his return to Venezuela. Successful performances in Miami that same year motivated him to reside in the United States, where he tried to structure his own record company, a project that came to nothing and he was deeply disillusioned and returned to Venezuela, later residing in Puerto Rico, where he was taking La Última Copa when he was tragically assassinated in 1972.
For some, his career was marked by Sombras Nada Más, but for the vast majority, “El Bolerista de America” remains in the memory as one of the most unique stars of Latin American music of all time.
For Mario Cabrera Bello
