Cucurrucucú paloma

Tomás Méndez wrote the words and music in 1954. It is a huapango whose title copies the call of the mourning dove, and its lyric is about mal de amores, the sickness of love. Beltrán cut it for Peerless that year as a 78, number 4426, credited with the Hermanos Michel and accompanied by the Mariachi Guadalajara, with La piedra on the other side. It then opened her first album.

It became her best-known song. She recorded it again for GAS on La grande de la canción ranchera (1974) and for RCA on Lola la Grande (1976), sang it at Bellas Artes in 1976, at the Olympia and at her 1990 Bellas Artes gala, and played Paloma Méndez in the 1965 film named after it. Her daughter and the tenor Arturo Chacón both named it their favourite of her songs.

Covers

Pedro Infante sang it on screen in Escuela de vagabundos (1955), and Harry Belafonte recorded it in 1956. Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, Nana Mouskouri, Joan Baez, Julio Iglesias, Rocío Dúrcal, Luis Miguel, Lila Downs and Natalia Lafourcade are among many others who have sung it, and Caetano Veloso performs it in Almodóvar's Hable con ella (2002). The upload in the hypersongs web is the official video on her VEVO channel.