The Peanut Vendor (El Manisero)

"El Manisero" ("The Peanut Vendor") is a Cuban son-pregón by Moisés Simons, written in the late 1920s on the cry of a street seller of roasted peanuts. This page has the The Peanut Vendor (El Manisero) chords and a backing track you can slow down, speed up and transpose.

Who wrote "The Peanut Vendor (El Manisero)"

Moisés Simons wrote the music and the Spanish words; the English words are by Marion Sunshine and L. Wolfe Gilbert. Its 1930 recording in the United States started the American craze for Cuban music, known there as the rumba.

Recordings that made it a standard

• Don Azpiazú and His Havana Casino Orchestra (Victor, 1930) — the first big hit of Cuban music in the United States.
• Louis Armstrong (1930) — an early jazz version.
• Stan Kenton (1947) — a big-band arrangement with Latin percussion.