PanArt Records   (Pre-Castro Cuban Jazz)
(Now Playing - Chico's Cha Cha Cha)

Panart Records, the first Cuban record label, was founded in 1943 by Ramon S. Sabat, a musician and engineer who set up his business in a refurbished colonial house bordering Havana's downtown shopping district. Offices were at San Miguel 410, between Campanario and Lealtad in Havana, with the factory outside of the city. He christened his new label Panart - short for Pan-American Art.

"The best catalogue of Cuban music was on Panart," asserts Pedro Alvarez Cepero, owner of Casino Records, a Latin music store. "No one has produced popular Cuban music like Panart did."

Luis Diaz Sola, who had an advertising agency in Havana, says "Ramon Sabat called me and asked me if I would dare to try and do a record cover". The color separation process was not yet available in Havana, so Diaz Sola found a printer who could do it in Miami. Then he and New York-based photographer Charlie Varon set out to evoke the tropical allure of Havana's pulsating nightlife.

In those days no place symbolized the seductions of a weekend in Havana better than the Tropicana Club. It was the obligatory place to go in Havana.  Diaz Sola hired Tropicana showgirls as models for his covers and staged most of the shoots on the club's lush grounds.

Seen today, the Panart covers are campy studies in tropical sophistication: palm trees and black tie, congas and martinis, and, always, beautiful girls in brief costumes. One such cover is on the Chico O'Farrill album "Chico's Cha Cha Cha" recorded in Cuba between 1955 -1957.

In the early Sixties the Panart parade of hits became the stuff of memories. Those sounds of that period ended when the Cuban revolution began. Fidel Castro's government claimed possession of the label's master tapes and then took over the studio.