Ralph Mercado

Ralph Mercado Jr. (September 29, 1941 – March 10, 2009) was an American businessman and music promoter. He promoted Latin American music — Latin Jazz, Latin rock, merengue and salsa — and established a network of businesses that included promoting concerts, managing artists, Ritmo Mundo Musical (RMM) a record label the most important in the Latin industry during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, as well as a film company, nightclubs and restaurants.

Early life Mercado was born on September 29, 1941, in Brooklyn, New York to a father who was a Dominican dockworker and a Puerto Rican mother who was employed by a local factory. He told an interviewer that he was able to dance the merengue as soon as he learned how to walk.

In his early teens, he was "completely blown away" after seeing the Machito Orchestra perform at the Palladium, and he left "knowing I had to be involved in this music somehow, personally involved".

Thereafter the sale of RMM, Ralph Mercado returned to promoting salsa concerts, on a global basis. On September 28, 2008, Mercado was honored by Union City, New Jersey with the key to the city and a star on the Walk of Fame at Union City's Celia Cruz Park.

Personal life Mercado had lived in Cresskill and Hackensack, New Jersey, before moving to Cliffside Park, New Jersey, with his brothers John Ayala, Richard Ayala and Jorge Sanchez, and his sister Angelica Kreiger; he lived in Cliffside Park the rest of his life, although he also kept an apartment in Manhattan.