Moliendo Café

Nightfall on a Venezuelan coffee plantation, a farmhand grinding the day's beans — that's the whole scene of ‘Moliendo Café,’ written in 1958 and destined...

Nightfall on a Venezuelan coffee plantation, a farmhand grinding the day's beans — that's the whole scene of ‘Moliendo Café,’ written in 1958 and destined to become one of the most-recorded Latin songs on earth. Its authorship is a family feud: the teenage Hugo Blanco said he wrote it and had his uncle José Manzo Perroni register it for him, then Manzo claimed it as his own and won the lawsuit — so the credit reads Manzo while the world hums Blanco. Mario Suárez cut it first; Blanco's 1961 arpa-llanera instrumental sent it to No. 1 in Argentina and around the globe; and from there it belongs to everyone — Cortijo and Ismael Rivera's Puerto Rican combo, Pérez Prado's mambo brass, Julio Iglesias's croon, the Fort Apache Band's Bronx Latin jazz. A little llanero waltz that just keeps grinding.

Composer

José Manzo Perroni

Year

1958

Lineage

Venezuelan song → global standard