Home » Entertainment » Juan Ramón died: the successful popular artist who fought against the nickname “mufa” and physical malformations

Juan Ramón died: the successful popular artist who fought against the nickname “mufa” and physical malformations


Juan “Corazón” Ramón died at the age of 80 Credit: Facebook official / kindness Daniel Orellano

The death of singer Juan Ramón It mourns the world of entertainment and saddens fans of a popular artist and without prejudice for being one. This July 30, at the age of 80, after fighting against weakened health, he died in the company of Isabel, his second wife, whom he had met during his seven-year stay in Peru.

The artist suffered from chronic gastritis and a notorious dehydration process that were accelerated in the last hours. Although no official statement was issued, it emerged that pneumonia would have precipitated his death in a few hours.

“Lately, he was barely able to speak. He started with a dysphonia, then his breathing worsened and, in the last few months, he avoided the phone. His lung capacity was terrifying,” he explains THE NATION the renowned announcer and music historian Hernán Rapela, who was one of the singer’s great friends. “Juan Ramón was a great person, a fighter of this medium”, defines as a memory the journalist and announcer Miguel Core, a great connoisseur and obsessive disseminator of popular music in his radio spaces.

A friend of his friends, low profile Juan Ramón maintained impeccable conduct and never strayed from his artistic interests. In the 60s and 70s he lived his most important moment, when his profile became really known. He was looking for nothing more than to entertain with his music. He did not deny the massive genres that could be performed in a good acoustic theater or under the sheds of neighborhood clubs across the country. He knew about all that.

Juan Ramón knew the great success, the transcendence that gave him that television that had space for singers and a recording industry that disseminated its artists with zeal and massified them with those old LPs, vinyl and later the compact disc. That was the universe where he developed that repertoire crossed by hits like “Cariñito”, “Tabaco y ron”, or “Macumba”, that resonate in the collective unconscious.

Despite being associated with the festive, his life was crossed by great pain. A malformation in his feet prevented him from developing a normal childhood. And, when success had knocked on his door, he had to live with a derisive and frightening nickname linked to bad luck that he himself unmasked in a television program.

A long story

He was born as Ellery Guy Rech, on January 13, 1940 in Cañada de Gómez, Santa Fe. Son of an Italian and an Argentinean, he knew from a boy that his would be to sing. That vocation led him to collect the records of his favorite artists, with a clear influence on the tastes of his European father, a railwayman who his work transferred him to the city of Campana when her little son was only 13 months old. There, in the north of the province of Buenos Aires, the family settled down and it was where Ellery carried out his primary and secondary studies there.

Those first years marked him forever. He had all the support of his family and the necessary support to cope with a congenital malformation called foot bot. His feet were inverted, the toes rearward and the heel forward. “People believed that he was paralyzed or that he had an orthopedic leg. He spent a good part of his childhood with surgical treatments until his feet were adjusted, but he never did well. That is why he walked strangely and wore strange boots,” explains Hernán Rapela.

These were times when bullying was not applied in a theoretical way, but it happened. As a child and adolescent, Ellery had to overcome discrimination and even ridicule. “This condition of a secluded kid made him a huge radio listener, he knew everything about the golden age of Argentine radio,” says Rapela.


Juan Ramón was not deprived of making movies. “Born to sing” was a shared production between Argentina and Mexico Credit: Facebook official / kindness Daniel Orellano

That initiatory passion for singing led him to become part of a prestigious chorus in Zárate and to be the voice of the band Los Casanovas, where he replaced Billy Cafaro. However, when he finished his fifth year of high school he did not lean on his true passion, but he enrolled in the legal profession. It did not last long in those cloisters. His was something else.

Surely, the influence of Italian blood challenged those first decisions as an artist. Those interpretations were linked to the versioning of Italian or French lyrics. The successes of the ’60s on the other side of the Atlantic sounded good here, with the key that Juan Ramón gave them with their own style. DNA that was germinating in those times and from which it never strayed. His tone of voice was always very similar, over the decades, there were no insurmountable differences in his performances, except for the technological variables that, when recording, provided their nuances. “Aline” by Frenchman Christophe was one of the first songs that were part of his repertoire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c7hZv35L84

“Since 1960, he achieved success after success with covers of songs that had triumphed in France and Italy. Panama, Colombia, and Peru were markets where he collected gratifying results, he even lived in Panama and Peru. Throughout his career, he toured various rhythms and melodies, not forgetting tango, and recorded more than 1,300 songs “, Miguel Core lists.

Those 1,300 records had an initial pair that became the key to success: “He went to an old studio in Ayacucho street and paid for the production, with musicians included, of the recording of two songs: ´Fuiste tu´ and ´Mira qué luna´. With this material, he went to see Horacio Malvicino, the great musician who was also the artistic manager of the Disc Jockey label. When he came across it, he gave her the album so he could listen and evaluate it. But, with a sense of smell, Malvicino asked him to sing right there for him. In the middle of the song, he stops him and invites him to record the next day. That’s how he recorded for the first time professionally. ” Rapela remembers. It was the owner of that record house who named the artist Juan Ramón. Years later, Don Antonio Barros created the nickname “Corazón” on his radio program, which would be attached to his name.

Always looking for your wishes, He did not hesitate not only to pay for his productions, although he never lacked recording houses to do so with important contracts. But the concern for the new always mobilized him to undertake. In a newly opened Sheraton Hotel, he did not hesitate to go to the brand new Retiro tower to meet the producer Roger López, of great interference in the Central American market with its Parnaso seal. The meeting took place in a very particular way: Juan arrived with a Winco and his records so that the producer knew his music right there. Audacity had a prize: López hired him. For several years, the singer settled abroad, where he was also a recognized star.

Enumerating his extensive and extensive work is a titanic task. Venice without you, The maximum, More and more, In full swing and Of love he no longer dies they are just some of the records he recorded in so many years of his career. In the ’80s, it was common to see him participate in the television programs of Canal 9 Libertad as Saturdays of Goodness The Sundays for Youth.His repertoire was crossed by the romantic song, the ballad and the tango, although, from 1990, he also dared with tropical music.

Hernán Rapela is the author of the book History of the records of Argentina. In the writing process, he met every week with Mario Kaminsky, responsible for the Microfón label, to produce that unavoidable document: “When we had a question, Mario called someone who always gave him the correct answer. One day, I was very intrigued and asked him who he communicated with. He told me he was consulting Juan Ramón, who knew everything about the world of music, “recalls the announcer.

Juan Ramón became the singer who sold the most in the country and in many of the Latin markets. He was the one who won one of the editions of the Song Festival in Buenos Aires with “Open letter to a son”. Before, the throne had been occupied by Sandro with “I want to fill you up”. And a year after Juan Ramón won this distinction, the podium would be occupied by Astor Piazzolla and Horacio Ferrer’s “Ballad for a Madman”. “He was a fighter of his art, a winner when it came to selling records, but without media recognition,” laments Miguel Core.


With Isabel, his wife, they did not deprive themselves of traveling for pleasure.  Santiago de Chile was one of the couple's favorite destinations
With Isabel, his wife, they did not deprive themselves of traveling for pleasure. Santiago de Chile was one of the couple’s favorite destinations

Another pain

In the artistic environment, harmless cabal is usually common. But also, swarm some harmful nicknames born in ignorance, envy, insecurities and outbursts of revenge.

Emulating the Evil Eye, that sharp criticism of Gregorio de Laferrere, some figures in the entertainment world are stigmatized as causing bad luck. Such an aberration exists. More than one fanatic would be horrified to find that their favorite actor or singer must deal with such abuse and offense.

It happened to Juan Ramón: “He had to fight with a stigma that accompanied him for much of his life, they branded him as jack“, Miguel Core explains. That nickname decimated his string of successes, to the point of having to leave the country due to the lack of contracts. Although his international career was transcendent, the singer always missed his homeland.

In 2013, he was invited to a Chiche Gelblung program and did not hesitate to spread the cloak of that secret out loud behind the scenes of the artistic medium: “In those ’60s, if they wanted to offend you, they told you that you were jack or fagot, “he explained to Gelblung. In that talk, the possibility of creating the stigma was attributed to Ben Molar.” I misbehaved with Ben Molar, “acknowledged the singer before the eyes of his interlocutor. The truth is that that broadcast allowed Juan Ramón to break with a taboo subject. “Ben Molar translated the great European successes that Juan recorded, with that dynamic they scored goals. At a certain moment, Juan goes to Europe and when he returns he is called by the RCA Víctor to sign a contract. He arranged without telling Ben Molar, because he suspected some financial differences. They fought for life. So Ben gave him the nickname, “explains Rapela.

He had two stable partners. A daughter, who lives in the United States, gave her a granddaughter. In recent years, Oscar Navarro, an admirer and patron, accompanied his career and his life. Navarro hired him to perform a show at his wedding and never again separated from him. He lived modestly on Calle Soler, in the Palermo neighborhood.

“His person was humble and his conditions humble. He spoke of Leo Dan as a hero. He was very rare, he did not compete with anyone. He was impoverished, completely limited,” laments Rapela. At the age of 80, Juan Ramón left a large musical work and several films in which the hobby of acting emerged. He earned fortunes and his name shone across an entire continent. But, tragic event of destiny, his last years were overshadowing him. “Its end could be defined as sad and lonely,” acknowledges Miguel Core.

With the departure of Juan Ramón, an exponent of a whole litter of successful musicians who had the favor of the public and the prejudices of the elites.

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