Pedro "Piquito" Marcano Collection

Collection — Box: 1

Identifier: MSS 61

Staff Only

Pedro "Piquito" Marcano - Digital Collections

Scope and Contents

An inventory of items appears at the beginning of each album. Frame numbers repeat for each album and in some cases may be off by a frame or two.

Reel 1 contains Albums 1-3. Reel 2 contains Album 4.

Dates

1920-1972

Creator

Marcano, Pedro "Piquito" (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Open to researchers without restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Biographical / Historical

Pedro “Piquito” Marcano (1902-1966) was one of the foremost Puerto Rican bandleaders, composers, and vocalists of the 1930s and '40s in New York City. He is most remembered as the founder and director of the Cuarteto Marcano, one of the most popular bands of this time in the bolero style: soulful ballads dealing with the universal theme of love. Marcano also worked closely with other major musical performers, such as Pedro Ortíz Dávila, Bobby Capó and Tito Rodríguez. Although Marcano returned to Puerto Rico in the late 1940s, he returned to New York frequently during the 1950s and took part in the jibaro revival of those years.

Extent

0.12 Cubic Feet (1 box, 2 microfilm reels)

Language of Materials

English

Spanish; Castilian

Metadata Rights Declarations

License: This record is made available under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Creative Commons license.

Additional Description

Abstract

Pedro “Piquito” Marcano was one of the foremost Puerto Rican bandleaders, composers, and vocalists of the 1930s and 1940s in New York City. He is most remembered as the founder and director of the Cuarteto Marcano. The collection consists of 0.12 cubic feet of documents such as flyers and newspaper clippings, as well as photographs of the musical figure, but also including other artists, and spans the dates from 1920-1972. The collection includes some original photographs and other ephemeral materials. Additionally, four family albums were microfilmed by Centro with Grego Marcano’s permission.

Arrangement

The collection is arranged into three series:

I: Photographs and Other Ephemeral Materials

II: Albums (microfilm)

III: Documents of Pedro “Piquito” Marcano from Jaime Jaramillo

Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements

Majority of the collection is available on microfilm. Selected documents from the collection were microfilmed with permission from Grego Marcano. Some duplicates of original documents were donated to Centro as well.

Existence and Location of Originals

Besides fifteen original photographs and ephemeral material within the collection, the remainder of the collection is comprised of duplicates with the original material retained by donor Grego Marcano.

Subjects

Boleros (Music) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
Capó, Bobby
Clippings (Books, newspapers, etc.) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
Cuarteto Marcano
Ferrer, Claudio
Fliers (printed matter) Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
Flores, Pedro
Hispanic American musicians Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
Hispanic Americans --Music Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
Martinez, Leocadio “Lalo”
Mercado, Vitín
Microfilms Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
Musicians -- Puerto Rico Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
Ortíz Dávila, Pedro
Photographs Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
Promotional materials Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
Puerto Ricans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Music Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
Rodríguez, Tito
Singers Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings