Cuban songwriter whose Contigo en la Distancia (In the Distance, With You) became a huge hit
In 1946 a housepainter and amateur songwriter named César Portillo de la Luz, who has died aged 90, came up with the romantic song Contigo en la Distancia (In the Distance, With You). Heartfelt and passionate, the lyrics ("There can't be a beautiful melody, unless you're in it/ and I don't want to hear it, unless you're listening too") poured out rapidly like all the young man's compositions.
Within a few years the song would be recognised as the first great hit of a new genre of Cuban romantic song called filin (derived from "feeling"), and its composer became one of the style's greatest stars. Filin came out of two Cuban musical styles: trova, a form of guitar-accompanied Creole ballad played by itinerant artists called trovadores, and the more rhythmic and melodramatic bolero. A coterie of Havana musicians transformed these ingredients into filin by adding a light jazz influence, a simple non-melodramatic delivery and modern, direct lyrics.
The son of a cigar-roller, Portillo taught himself the guitar in his teens while devouring North American jazz on the radio and coveting the Ella Fitzgerald and Glenn Miller records brought over by the crews on American ships stopping at Havana docks. His introduction to filin came after Angel Díaz, son of the famous trovador Tirso Díaz, heard Portillo singing through an open window one day. Angel promptly invited him to his house in central Havana, where singer-songwriters such as José Antonio Méndez, Rosendo Ruiz and Elena Burke would meet.
Filin encountered some resistance from the commercial Cuban entertainment industry, partly perhaps due to the leftwing sympathies of most of the first filinistas, and it was the prominent socialist radio station Mil Diez that gave Portillo his first important break, a weekly programme slot, Canciones del Mañana (Songs of the Morning).
In 1947 his rise to stardom began seriously, when Contigo en la Distancia was recorded by the top singer Andy Russell and featured in the hit movie Callejera (1949). The song went on to be recorded by hundreds of international acts, including Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Plácido Domingo and the London Symphony Orchestra. Its success was repeated by Portillo's other great romantic numbers, such as Tú, Mi Delirio (You, My Madness), Perdido Amor (Lost Love), Vuelve a Vivir (Live Again) and Noche Cubana (Cuban Night).
From the late 50s onwards, Portillo led a quintet which played at Havana cabarets such as the Sans Souci, the Pico Blanco nightclub at the St John hotel, and the Gato Tuerto jazz club near the Hotel Nacional.
After the 1959 revolution, of which the filin stars were mainly enthusiatic supporters, and in return benefited from state posts and sponsorship, Portillo's repertoire acquired a new propagandist strand, with numbers such as Oh, Valeroso Vietnam (Oh, Brave Vietnam), and he continued to perform and address symposiums through the disastrous years after the collapse of Soviet economic support.
In 1999, when the El Gato Tuerto (The One-Eyed Cat) reopened to cater for the new tourist boom which in large measure rescued the Cuban economy, Portillo was one of its first regular performers. The king of filin's 90th birthday last year was celebrated by a big televised national tribute concert. Male romantic singers much in his image still feature at the big glitzy cabaret variety shows that pack in coachloads of Havana tourists today.
• César Portillo de la Luz, songwriter and musician, born 31 October 1922; died 4 May 2013