Mighty Sparrow
Calypso music enjoyed a brief period of popularity in other parts in the world during the 1950s. Trinidadian expatriate Lord Kitchener had helped popularize calypso in England, and Sparrow also found some success there. In the United States, interest in calypso was sparked largely by Harry Belafonte's 1956 album "Calypso", the first LP to sell over one million copies. In January 1958, Sparrow, along with longtime rival Lord Melody, travelled to New York City seeking access to the American music audience. Sparrow had already been recording with Balisier and Cook Records, and with Belafonte's help he also began to record for RCA Victor. He did not achieve the success he had hoped for; he said in a 2001 interview, "When nothing happened for me, I went back to England and continued on with my career."
Salsa music
Salsa emerged from New York City in the mid-1970s, then spread throughout Latin America and the Western Hemisphere. However, the music had already been going strong in the city for several decades prior to the use of the label "salsa". New York had been a center of Cuban-style dance music since the 1940s, when landmark innovations by Machito's Afro-Cubans helped usher in the mambo era. Tito Puente worked for a time in the Afro-Cubans before starting up his own successful band. By the early 1950s, there were three very popular mambo big bands in New York: Machito and his Afro-Cubans, Tito Puente, and Tito Rodríguez. There were many other working bands as well. The Palladium Ballroom was the epicenter of mambo in New York. At the height of its popularity, the Palladium attracted Hollywood and Broadway stars, especially on Wednesday nights, when a free dance lesson was offered. The mambo and its "temple", the Palladium, were racially and ethnically integrated phenomena.