In this period he wrote songs in the style that became known as mambo.
Mambo became popular around the world in the 1940s when Cuban band leader and composer Damaso Perez Prado - known as the King of Mambo - came up with a special dance for the music and it began to be treated as a separate genre.
Cachao and his brother Orestes won Grammy record awards in 1995 and 2005, as well as a Latino Grammy in 2003.
Cachao died early on Saturday from to kidney failure, spokesman Nelson Albareda told local media.
British actor Paul Scofield, who won an Oscar for his role in A Man For All Seasons and was one of his country's greatest Shakespearean actors, has died at the age of 86, his agent said on Thursday.
Scofield died peacefully in a hospital near his home in the county of Sussex in southeast England, where he was being treated for leukemia.
Considered one of the leading classical actors of a generation that included Richard Burton and Laurence Olivier, he won an Oscar in 1966 for portraying the Roman Catholic statesman Sir Thomas More in the film of Robert Bolt's play.
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