Pedro Knight

Gerónimo Pedro Knight Caraballo (September 30, 1921 – February 3, 2007) was a Cuban trumpeter, famously the husband and manager of singer Celia Cruz, married from 1962 until her death in 2003.

Career Pedro Knight Caraballo was born in Cuba, on Friday, September 30, 1921. He was a trained trumpeter, and a "powerfully expressive" musician, according to Sue Stewart of The Guardian. At age 23, he joined the Havana-based, Afro-Cuban conjunto band, La Sonora Matancera ("the sound of Matanzas", a port with a large black population), that produced, highly rhythmic dance music rooted in traditional, Africa-based styles of son and guaracha, as revived decades later by the Buena Vista Social Club. The key to the band's sound relied on trumpets, percussion, Cuban guitar, double bass, voices, and piano. At the time, Havana was emerging as one of the world's most popular musical nightspots. By the 1950s the band's sophisticated arrangements and live radio performances had become part of the golden age of Cuban music, having appeared alongside American singers such as Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan. He worked on a biography and CD releases, but complications from years of diabetes began to take their toll on Knight, beginning with a mild stroke and then another more serious seizure in February 2006, the effects of which were exacerbated by family feuding over Cruz's fortune, though the lawsuits would be withdrawn due to Knight's dementia. He has been buried with Cruz in the mausoleum he built for them in 2003.