Raul Malo, frontman of the Mavericks, dies at 60

Raul Malo, the Mavericks frontman, performs at a festival in Indio, Calif. on May 5, 2007. Malo, a lush-voiced singer whose expansive, Latin-inflected sound breathed new life into country music in the 1990s, died on Monday, Dec. 8, 2025 after a battle with colon cancer. He was 60. (Heidi Schumann/The New York Times)

By BILL FRISKICS-WARREN

Raul Malo, the big-voiced singer and principal songwriter for the Mavericks, a Grammy Award-winning band whose Latin-inflected sound helped broaden the boundaries of country music in the 1990s, died Monday. He was 60.

His publicist, Michelle Steele, said that the cause was cancer. She did not say where he died. Malo announced in June that he had Stage 4 colon cancer. Several months later, he said he learned that he also had leptomeningeal disease, a condition in which cancer cells attack membranes around the brain and spinal cord.

Best known for Top 20 country hits including “There Goes My Heart” and “O What a Thrill,” the quartet that eventually became the Mavericks first came together in Miami in the late 1980s as a bar band called the Basics. More rock than country, the group featured Robert Reynolds on lead vocals and guitar, Malo on background vocals and bass, Paul Deakin on the drums and Ben Peeler on lead guitar.

It was not until 1989, after Malo and Reynolds switched roles, that Malo’s sonorous, vibrato-rich baritone came to the fore and helped create the Mavericks’ trademark blend of country, rock ’n’ roll and Latin music.

In addition to being the group’s frontman, singing with what critics described as formidable range and versatility akin to that of George Jones or Frank Sinatra, Malo also became its main producer and songwriter. He wrote all but two songs on the Mavericks’ first two albums, including the title track on the 1992 album “From Hell to Paradise” about his aunt’s travails as a Cuban emigre to the United States:

This 90 mile trip has taken

30 years to make

They tried to keep forever

what was never theirs to take

Malo broadened the band’s sonic palette to embrace an array of styles, from Mariachi horns and traditional Afro-Cuban modalities to bel canto crooning and dramatic, Roy Orbison-style balladry. His musical syncretism, he said, came from his parents.

“They were young enough to turn me on to some really great music,” Malo told NPR’s “Weekend Edition” in 2024. “My dad, for example, was a huge country fan. My mom was a rock ’n’ roll, big band, swing opera fan.”

“I remember when I first heard Elvis’ ‘It’s Now or Never,’” he added. “I thought that was the greatest rock ’n’ roll record in my life, and I loved the way that he blended Italian aria into this rock ’n’ roll song.”

The Mavericks’ creative peak coincided with their greatest commercial success. Their third album, “What a Crying Shame” (1994), yielded five singles and was certified platinum for sales of 1 million copies.

The Grammy Award-nominated “Music for All Occasions” (1995) placed three more singles on the country chart, among them “All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down” (No. 13), a collaboration with Tejano accordionist Flaco Jiménez, who died in July. “Here Comes the Rain” (No. 22), a twanging ode to heartbreak, won a Grammy in 1996 for best country performance by a duo or group with vocal.

“Music for All Occasions” also found the Mavericks incorporating elements of lounge music into their sound. With their cover of Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s 1967 pop smash “Somethin’ Stupid,” Malo and his bandmates, including his duet partner on the recording, Trisha Yearwood, seemed determined to prove how elastic commercial country music could be.

At times, critics dismissed the Mavericks’ genre-fluid approach as kitsch, but Malo insisted that the group’s approach was not ironic or condescending but performed with sincere commitment to its audience.

“I think that culturally we, and not just in country music, but culturally in general, we try to dumb it down so much, from television to movies to just about anything,” he said in a 2010 interview with the now-defunct alternative newspaper OC Weekly.

“Go to Hank Williams,” he went on. “That was country, but that wasn’t dumb, you know? Even songs like ‘My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It,’ that’s hillbilly poetry and it’s done cleverly and it’s about as country as you can get, but it’s not dumb, you know?”

Raul Francisco Martínez-Malo was born Aug. 7, 1965, in Miami, the elder of two children of Raul and Norma (Martínez) Malo, Cuban exiles who fled their homeland soon after the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power.

Music was always playing on the radio or hi-fi in the Malo home in the Little Havana neighborhood. At 12, Raul formed his first band, playing bass at quinceañeras and other social gatherings. Instead of working purely in Cuban idioms, he absorbed honky-tonk, jazz, blues and other musical genres.

The Mavericks broke up and reunited twice in the 2000s, releasing albums with various lineups, the one constant being the force of Malo’s voice and musical imagination. Malo also released solo recordings over the last two decades, from “You’re Only Lonely” (2006), a set of pop standards, to “Say Less” (2023), a collection of instrumentals. As with his work with the Mavericks, his solo projects steadfastly pushed at the edges of country music.

“I’m not in the mainstream country music game anymore,” he told OC Weekly. “I can experiment a little, you know, and try different things. I’m sure my accountant would have wished that I’d stuck to the same thing that I’ve been doing, you know, over and over and over and over again, but that just wasn’t for me.”

Malo sang with Los Super Seven, the Grammy-winning Latin American collective that included singers Rick Trevino and Ruben Ramos as well as members of the roots-rock band Los Lobos.

He is survived by his wife of 34 years, Betty Fernandez Malo; three sons, Max, Victor and Dino; his mother; and a sister.