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Lou Bega music biography continued...

Bega was the son of a Sicilian mother and Ugandan father whose schooling had brought them to Europe. Bega was raised in West Germany and started a rap group there at age 13, but it wasn't until he took a trip to Miami, Florida as an 18-year old that his passion for music blossomed. Fascinated with the songs of the Mambo Kings of the 30s and 40s, Bega returned to Germany and created his own version of the music. The result was the single Mambo No. 5, which went double platinum in Germany in the summer of 1999 and soon became a global hit. In July, 1999 he released the album A Little Bit of Mambo. It peaked at #3 in the US. In Germany, Bega's native country, it also peaked at #3. In the UK the album peaked only at #50. A Little Bit of Mambo peaked at #1 in the album charts of Austria, Canada, Finland, Hungary, the Middle East, Portugal, and Switzerland. .Bega's second studio album Ladies and Gentlemen was released in May, 2001. Neither, the album nor the singles attained the great commercial success of A Little Bit of Mambo. "Baby Keep Smiling" is on this album, a duet with Compay Segundo from Buena Vista Social Club. Bega went on to cover also the famous song "Just a Gigolo / I Ain't Got Nobody" on 2001's Ladies and Gentlemen, which was a minor hit, and he came out with the album Lounatic in 2005, which did not really catch on on the charts. It's quite possible that Bega's most popular song will always be Mambo No. 5, but it's quite clear that each new generation of ladies will thrill to Bega's amazing "joie de vivre."