Gato Pérez

Xavier Patricio Pérez Álvarez (April 11, 1951 – October 18, 1990), known as Gato Pérez, was a musician of Argentine origin who settled in Catalonia. He stood out in the musical genre of the Catalan rumba, which he merged with salsa and an original style. He was a singer, composer and bass guitarist. Although he was born in Buenos Aires, he came from Spanish families who had emigrated after the civil war. His paternal grandparents were from Asturias and La Rioja; and his maternal grandparents were from León and Burgos. In Madrid his paternal grandfather owned a fleet of cabs for the diplomatic corps. At the beginning of the war, he fled to Barcelona, where he worked in an aeronautical factory run by Russians and went to the refugee camps in the south of France. After falling ill with tuberculosis he returned to his family in Barcelona, a right-wing family. In 1948, his father decided to emigrate to Buenos Aires, where he met El Gato's mother, who was a pianist.Gato Pérez was born in Buenos Aires via a caesarean birth. He grew up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood and was educated in a bilingual school attended by the children of the industrial and financial bourgeoisie of Buenos Aires, whom he detested. His first contact with music was with his grandfather; they listened together to the radio and the serials of the sixties. It was the radio that introduced him to the rock and roll of Bill Haley and His Comets, which was a complete epiphany for Pérez. His first performance was at the English school prom playing "Claudette" and "Wake Up Little Susie" by the Everly Brothers. Rock and roll had arrived much earlier in Argentina, and the Argentine musicians learned to play much earlier and also burned stages earlier than the Spaniards, which would be decisive for the fact that it was the same Argentines who introduced a fresh and Hispanic rock in the Spain of the Transition. Before arriving in Spain, he was part of a pampera music group, Los Baguales, and upon arriving in Barcelona he followed the rock group Los Salvajes and Los Cheyennes.