Sabú, born Héctor Jorge Ruiz Saccomano on September 12, 1951, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was an Argentine singer and actor who broke through at the end of the 1960s after moving from modeling into music. His first major success came with “Toda mía la ciudad” in 1969, and he quickly built on that start with early-1970s releases such as El mundo que inventamos, Sabú, and Vuelvo a vivir... vuelvo a cantar, while also expanding into film with starring roles in Vuelvo a vivir... vuelvo a cantar in 1971 and El mundo que inventamos in 1973. During that decade he became one of the best-known romantic pop voices in Latin America, recording in several languages and scoring enduring songs such as “Él o yo,” “He tratado de olvidarte,” “Quizás sí, quizás no,” and “Pequeña y Frágil,” the latter becoming one of the signature recordings of his career through the 1976 album Pequeña y Frágil. After his strongest Argentine chart years, he continued working across Latin America, the United States, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, signed with Melody in 1980, and later stepped back from performing in 1984 to launch Sabú Producciones, focusing for a period on artist development and production work. He returned to the stage in the early 1990s after a strong audience response at a Colombian festival, which led to a renewed run of concerts and compilation releases. Sabú gave his final performance in Ecuador in 2005 and died later that year, on October 16, 2005, in Mexico City, leaving behind a career that joined teen-idol pop, romantic balladry, film work, and a long transnational presence across the Spanish-speaking world.
