LIFE'S LITTLE SURPRISES

The renowned singer and actor—and so much more—recounts a life full of unexpected turns.

In the kinder, gentler 1970s, Blades traveled, as a singer in Ray Barretto’s famed band, to Puerto Rico, where an immigration agent asked the native of Panama for his passport. “I told him I hadn’t brought it because I didn’t think I needed it to travel to Puerto Rico,” Blades told him. “He looked me in the eye for an instant that seemed an eternity and finally let me board the plane.” Good thing, because Blades’ career would soon explode, and he became one of the best-known exponents of Latino music in the country. Along the way, he also became an actor, featured in such films as The Milagro Beanfield War (which, curiously, he mentions only in passing) and Once Upon a Time in Mexico, often, as he notes, playing cops. That’s fitting, for, as Blades writes in this ruminative memoir, he trained as a lawyer in Panama, taking a special interest in recidivism at one of the world’s last remaining prison colonies. Political repression drove him out of the country and brought him to the U.S., but he has since returned to Panama to serve as, among other things, head of the national tourism agency. This spry memoir recounts dozens of chance encounters that shaped Blades’ multifaceted life: friendship with Gabriel García Márquez, co-writing with Bob Dylan (“Bob fucking Dylan was in our house,” he exults to his wife after the first session) and Lou Reed, standing up to ripoff record executives. All of this leads up to the biggest surprise of all, expertly sprung at the very end of the book, and a payoff well worth the wait.

Elegantly written, eminently readable, and one of the best show-business autobiographies in recent memory.