Tavín Pumarejo

Tavin Pumarejo died September 12, 2016, at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico after a long illness.

Pumarejo was usually backed by his longtime musical combo, the Río Cañas Sound Machine (a spoof of the Miami Sound Machine). In 1985, Pumarejo scored a Christmas music chart-topper, with his song "La Finquita" ("The Little Farm"), this time backed by the Conjunto Quisqueya, a very successful merengue band of mostly Dominican expatriates living in Puerto Rico. It was a number one hit in Puerto Rican radio for about eight consecutive weeks, and the album was also one of the year's best selling Christmas album in Puerto Rico, along with Tony Croatto's, which contained the famous song, "Se Llama Jesús".

During the 1970s, Pumarejo also advertised Texaco on Puerto Rican television, alongside a popular Puerto Rican girl group of the time named Las Caribelles.

Octavio Ramos Pumarejo (October 12, 1932 – September 12, 2016), known professionally as Tavín Pumarejo, was a Puerto Rican jíbaro singer and comedian. While better known for his work as a comedy actor on Puerto Rican television, Pumarejo released 16 albums of Puerto Rican music, with some of them becoming major hits in the island.

Ramos Pumarejo was born on October 12, 1932, in Río Cañas, a barrio in Caguas, Puerto Rico, located closer to the mountain area of Caguas than from downtown San Juan. Having grown up in the mountains, Pumarejo identified himself with the Puerto Rican country people (known as jíbaro) more than with the metropolitan people who are always associated with San Juan.