(FORTUNE Magazine) – "Un Nombre de Mujer" by Los Zafiros, from Bossa Cubana (World Circuit/Nonesuch)

Sometime in the early '60s, on a government-sanctioned tour from their native Cuba, the Zafiros sang to adoring crowds in Paris. The Beatles, in town, sought them out. "John Lennon talked a lot with me," Chino Hernandez once recalled. "He touched my hair. I touched his hair."

The Zafiros took traditional Cuban music and incorporated bolero, rumba, calypso, bossa nova, and most important of all, doo-wop. "Mi Oracion," their version of the Platters' "My Prayer," is more intense, more beautiful, and sung in an even higher register than the original. But "Un Nombre de Mujer" is a doo-wop number right off the streets of Brooklyn. Frankie Lyman would have been jealous. And it's the only rock song I know dedicated to a girl named Ophelia.

--GREGORY CURTIS