Ralph Mercado
| Ralph Mercado | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Ralph Mercado Jr. |
| Born |
September 29, 1941 Brooklyn, New York |
| Died | March 10, 2009 (aged 67) Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack |
| Occupation(s) | promoter of Latin music |
| Website | Claudia Brant Office Website (in English and Spanish) |
Ralph Mercado Jr. (September 29, 1941 – March 10, 2009) was a promoter of Latin American music — Latin Jazz, Latin rock, merengue and salsa — who established a network of businesses that included promoting concerts, managing artists, Ritmo Mundo Musical (RMM) a record label the most important in the Latin industry during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, as well as a film company, nightclubs and restaurants.
Mercado was born on September 29, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York to a father who was a Dominican dockworker and a Puerto Rican mother who was employed by a local factory. He told an interviewer that he was able to dance the merengue as soon as he learned how to walk.
In his early teens, he was "completely blown away" after seeing the Machito Orchestra perform at the Palladium, and he left "knowing I had to be involved in this music somehow, personally involved". Lacking any musical skill as a singer or performer, he started promoting "waistline parties", live music events in apartment building basements in which women were charged in proportion to their waist size, with thinner women charged less, and Mercado measuring at the door.
Shifting across the East River from his Brooklyn roots, Mercado started promoting Latin jazz at Manhattan clubs such as The Village Gate. These expanded into concerts at major venues with stars such as James Brown, who appeared with Latin acts such as Mongo Santamaría. He turned to managing performers, founding RMM Management in 1972, where his clients included Celia Cruz and Tito Puente, achieving acclaim as the biggest salsa manager in the United States by the 1970s. He developed new talent, such as La India and Marc Anthony, presenting salsa concerts at major venues across the country, from Madison Square Garden to the Hollywood Bowl.
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