Florencio Morales Ramos - Musical Career

Musical Career

Ten years later, in 1942, he inaugurated the WIAC radio station, a station with national reach. He also sang in the inaugural broadcast of WKJB-AM in Mayagüez, in 1948. Later he animated the radio show "La Hora del Volante", from Bayamón. His affable stage presence and reputation as a fast improviser and bright lyricist earned him a large following in Puerto Rico and growing communities of Puerto Rican migrants to the northeastern United States.

"Ramito" was featured in the short musical film "Truya" (1950), along the most reputed Puerto Rican jíbaro singers and musicians of the time, including Jesús Sánchez Erazo "Chuíto El De Bayamón", Ernestina Reyes, "La Calandria", Maso Rivera and others. He also appeared on television multiple times and he released a wide number of trova albums, of which many were best sellers in Puerto Rico and other Latin American countries.

Between 1960 and 1972 he nominally moved to New York, where he worked on the radio show "La Montaña Canta" on the WHOM station. He maintained a constant presence in Puerto Rico, however, virtually living between both places.

"Ramito" became an icon to fans of trova music in Puerto Rico, specially those in the mountainside areas of that island. He toured intensely in Latin America and the United States, and had a particularly strong following among the Puerto Rican community in Hawaii, which he visited twice. He also visited Okinawa, where he entertained Puerto Rican troops of the United States military who were stationed there. He sang for president John F. Kennedy at the White House on November 1961, in a showcase of Puerto Rican musical talent that complemented a visit by then governor Luis Muñoz Marín to Washington.