Real name: Augusto Santos

Effective period / Period of releases: 1978

Augusto Santos was born on September 5th, 1945, in Los Cacaos, a small country town outside of San Francisco de Macoris. Like many musicians of his generation, he began his career in childhood, following local groups around and jumping at opportunities to play the güira or the maracas or sing the choruses. At the age of 16 he was able to buy a cheap guitar from a neighbor, and he began learning on his own, watching older musicians and imitating them. These were the very early days of bachata, and he picked up everything that was being played on the radio—the first song he remembers learning was “Cariñito de mi vida” by Luis Segura. By the age of 20, Santos was an accomplished guitarist, and he felt that the music scene in Macoris had little left to offer him. Groups were unstable, changing from one gig to the next, and no one was recording any original material. After three years of making the rounds in the city, he hitched a ride to the capital, Santo Domingo, hoping for a chance to put his talent to greater use. As it turned out, he was very fortunate indeed. At the time of Santos’ arrival in the capital, Cuco Valoy and his brother Martin Valoy, the principle members of the popular guitar duo Los Ahijados, had recently parted ways. Cuco was impressed by Augusto Santos’ talent as a singer and guitarist and so he reformed Los Aihjados with Santos taking the place of Martin. Valoy taught Augusto to play the “quinto”, a double-stringed guitar similar to a Cuban tres, and Augusto became almost immediately a principle member of one of the best known groups of the era. Not only was Santos the lead instrumentalist and second voice for Los Ahijados, but he became the de facto studio guitarist for Valoy’s CMV label. The first two records Santos played on, in 1966, were his own “Con el amor no se juega” and Felix Quintana’s “Ladrona”—both of which were hits and have become classics of the bachata repertoire. From that time on he recorded the lead guitar and choruses on countless songs.