Compay Segundo could have easily lived out his life in the relative obscurity that had characterized most of his more than seven decades as a professional musician. Fate, however, decreed otherwise.

Compay Segundo, the wiry, cigar-smoking musician who was nearing 90 when he soared from obscurity to worldwide fame with the ” Buena Vista Social Club, ” has died in Havana. He was 95. Mr. Compay, who ...

With his ubiquitous cigar carefully poised between muscular fingers, or stemming from his gap-toothed smile – the smoke wafting wistfully from his mouth, ever upward like a halo – the “daddy of ...