Raul Malo, the operatic vocalist and co-founder of the Grammy-winning, Latin-tinged country band the Mavericks, died Monday. He was 60. A rep for the Mavericks confirmed his death to Rolling Stone, adding that the cause of death was cancer.
“It’s with the deepest grief we share the passing of our friend, bandmate and brother Raul Malo,” the band said in a statement. “Anyone with the pleasure of being in Raul’s orbit knew that he was a force of human nature, with an infectious energy. Over a career of more than three decades entertaining millions around the globe, his towering creative contributions and unrivaled, generational talent created the kind of multicultural American music reaching far beyond America itself.”
“No one embodied life and love, joy and passion, family, friends, music, and adventure the way our beloved Raul did,” Malo’s wife Betty added. “Now he will look down on us with all that heaven will allow, lighting the way and reminding us to savor every moment.”
Malo was diagnosed with colon cancer in June 2024. In September 2025, the singer announced that he was fighting LMD, or leptomeningeal disease, a cancer that affects the brain and spinal cord.
Gifted with one of music’s most robust and dynamic voices, Malo was known as “El Maestro” among his bandmates and fans. His singing style, powerful and emotive, had the ability to both stun an audience into silence and spur them to their feet. And with world-class musicians behind him, including Malo’s co-founders in the group, bassist Robert Reynolds and drummer Paul Deakin, the Mavericks earned a reputation as the most eclectic and entertaining of performers. They could be a country band, a rock group, or a dance unit, depending on their tastes.
“If you ask 10 different people what the Mavericks mean to them, you’re going to get 10 different answers,” Malo told Rolling Stone in 2015. “And then you’re going to hear our records and hear one song, and you’re going to think this band is like this. Then you’re going to hear the next song, and go, ‘Holy shit, this band is nothing like that song that I just heard.’”
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Born Aug. 7, 1965, in Miami, Malo was the son of Cuban parents who fled their native country for the United States. “They came here to pursue the American dream — the promise that here in this country, you won’t be persecuted for your religious beliefs, skin color or ethnicity,” Malo told Rolling Stone in 2017. In 1989, Malo, Reynolds, and Deakin founded the Mavericks, a group born out of the myriad musical influences of its members and the multicultural vibes of Miami. The band mixed rock, country, and the Latin rhythms of South Florida to create an irresistibly upbeat soundtrack, even if Malo often wrote and sang about heartbreak.
The Mavericks released their self-titled debut album in 1990, followed by 1992’s From Hell to Paradise. But it was 1994’s What a Crying Shame that earned them the most acclaim to date due to the title track and singles “There Goes My Heart” and “O What a Thrill.” Malo and the group built on that success with 1995’s Music for All Occasions, which afforded them their biggest U.S. country hit. “All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down,” written by Malo and Al Anderson and featuring Tex-Mex accordion king Flaco Jiménez, hit Number 13 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and gave the Mavericks’ their signature live song. (Rolling Stone ranked it Number 159 in its list of the 200 Greatest Country Songs of All Time.)
Music for All Occasions also kickstarted the band’s consecutive CMA wins for Vocal Group of the Year, in 1995 and 1996, and supplied the group with its first Grammy win, Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal, for “Here Comes the Rain.” The mid-tempo ballad was the perfect showcase for Malo’s rich voice, as he sang about a relationship that had fallen on hard times.
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The same would soon be true for the Mavericks. The rigors of touring and internal conflicts took a toll on the band and the group split in 1999. But the break allowed Malo to launch a solo career, and in 2001 he issued his debut LP, Today. Lead single “Every Little Thing About You” was in regular rotation on Adult Album Alternative radio and showcased everything Malo did so well as a vocalist and musician (he was a deft guitarist and sometimes played bass in the Mavericks): ornate orchestration and production, hints of his Latin roots, and lyrics about unrequited love, each line delivered with gusto by “El Maestro.”
Today also found Malo throwing himself into singing in Spanish, on songs like “Ya Tu Veras” and “No Me Preguntes Tanto,” a trend he’d continue when the Mavericks reunited in 2011 (a 2003 attempt at a reunion faltered, despite the release of another self-titled album). With Eddie Perez now on lead guitar and Jerry Dale McFadden on keyboards, the Mavericks signed with Big Machine Label Group and surged. They released two albums for the Nashville label, 2013’s In Time and 2015’s Mono, and each added new staples to their set lists, helping cement the Mavericks’ status as one of the preeminent live bands. Malo relished wrapping his voice around the ebullient In Time tracks “Back in Your Arms Again” and “As Long As There’s Loving Tonight,” and lingering over devastating ballads like “Pardon Me” and “Let It Rain (on Me),” from Mono.
He and the band even put their own distinct spin on Mötley Crüe’s “Dr. Feelgood” for a 2014 tribute album to the hair-metal band, transforming the song into a brooding spaghetti Western. Far from a lark, it underscored exactly how difficult it was to pigeonhole the Mavericks. “It’s definitely an East L.A. meets Miami kind of [sound]. It’s really what the Mavericks do anyways,” Malo told RS in 2014. “We don’t really worry about what genre or where it comes from. We just kind of go with the vibe.”
Malo’s voice only improved with age. By the time the Mavericks released Brand New Day in 2017, on their own Mono Mundo Recordings, he was at his peak, belting out majestic compositions like “Brand New Day” and covering well-known gems like Freddy Fender’s “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” for a 2019 covers album. In 2020, Malo fully indulged his love of singing in Spanish with En Español, the Mavericks’ first album sung solely in the language, and, in 2023, he did the unthinkable for an artist gifted with such a stellar voice: releasing a solo instrumental album titled Say Less. It proved Malo to be as skilled a guitarist as he was a singer.
Despite Malo’s solo ventures — he often played dazzling, intimate concerts on his own tours — the Mavericks remained Malo’s heart and soul. In 2024, he revisited some unrecorded songs for Moon & Stars, the group’s 13th and final studio album. “I went to the storage unit and opened the bin and it was like Raiders of the Lost Ark: hard drives, tapes, notebooks, DAT tapes, whatever we were recording on,” he told RS in 2024, laughing at the title of a song he wrote in his thirties, titled “The Years Will Not Be Kind.” “Who’s gonna believe that the years will not be kind? You’ve got a full head of hair. Your goatee is not gray. I realized why it never got recorded,” he said. “But now, I can baritone that shit and it sounds real.”
That same year, he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer after a routine colonoscopy. Malo used the diagnosis to encourage fans to be mindful of their own health. “The only way I was going to feel good about making such a private thing public is if we turned it into a message,” Malo said.
In September 2025, he shared a sobering health update with fans and announced that the Mavericks would be canceling the remainder of their concerts. “Things have taken a turn,” he wrote. “As it goes with cancer, it’s a very unpredictable and indiscriminatory disease. I’ve developed something called LMD, which stands for ‘get this shit out of my head.’”
Prior to Malo’s LMD diagnosis, however, he continued to tour with the Mavericks throughout his treatment, which he documented in regular Instagram posts. During a headlining concert at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in December 2024, Malo was captivating onstage, alluding to the difficult year he and the band had faced and leading the crowd in sing-alongs and dance breaks. It was a startling, remarkable performance, in keeping with the Mavericks’ — and especially Malo’s — commitment that the show must go on.
“We just keep on going, man,” Malo told Rolling Stone in 2024. “And I’m glad that’s the spirit, because what else are we going to do?”
So committed were the Mavericks to the stage that the band carried on with their annual concerts at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in December, just days before Malo’s death. The shows were celebratory, deeply emotional homages to Malo and his impact on music, featuring special guests like Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle, and Maggie Rose. Malo, who received the American Eagle Award from the National Music Council of the United States, couldn’t attend but sent an acceptance letter to be read.
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“Music has been the guiding force of my entire life. It carried me from my Cuban American childhood in Miami to stages across the world. It introduced me to my brothers, the Mavericks. It gave me a home in Nashville, Tennessee. It allowed me to raise my three incredible sons, Dino, Vincent, and Max, who are my greatest pride and joy. And it connected me to you fans whose love has sustained me through every chapter of this journey,” it read in part, concluding with Malo thanking fans.
“In these past months, I’ve had to fight battles I’ve never imagined. But on the hardest of days, music remained my companion. Your letters, your stories of how a song helped you through loss, heartbreak, joy, those became our songs. You all carried me more than you know… Thank you for giving my voice a place to live, even when my body cannot be the one delivering it.”
