Raul Malo, the Grammy Award-winning frontman of The Mavericks, whose arresting voice captivated a sold-out crowd at the Jane Pickens Theater in March 2024, has died. He was 60.
The band announced his death on Tuesday morning, confirming that Malo passed away on December 8, 2025, following a battle with Stage 4 colon cancer that had progressed to leptomeningeal disease, a rare condition where cancer cells spread to the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord.
“Anyone with the pleasure of being in Raul’s orbit knew that he was a force of human nature, with an infectious energy,” the band wrote. “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.”
A memorable night in Newport
Newport audiences experienced Malo’s singular talent firsthand on March 24, 2024, when he performed a solo show at the Jane Pickens Theater as part of a Showcase Live Production. The intimate performance, the second stop on a dozen-city tour, showcased the artist at his most personal.
Working from a binder of printed material, Malo chose songs depending on the mood, telling the crowd he was open to requests but offering no guarantees. When audience members shouted suggestions, he joked that all he heard was, “Raul, you’re awesome! Play whatever you want”—a refrain that became the running exchange of the evening.
That night, he performed many of the songs he was best known for, including “Back In Your Arms Again” and “Here Comes the Rain,” the latter written on the Takamine gut string guitar he played during the show. His eldest son, Dino—who survives him—joined him on percussion for a rendition of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.” But it was his closing number, Hoagy Carmichael’s 1927 standard “Stardust,” that left the audience spellbound.
Speaking with What’sUpNewp after the performance, Malo discussed his then-upcoming album “Moon & Stars”—which would prove to be The Mavericks’ final studio album. He spoke passionately about the song “And We Dance,” inspired by a newscast he’d seen shortly after the bombing of Ukraine. The story featured an elderly woman whose husband had died in the attack, pointing to her living room and saying, “Here is where we would dance.”
“I bawled,” Malo recalled, calling her “a testament to strength, resilience and resistance.”
The conversation that night turned to politics—perhaps inevitable in that moment. Malo, a first-generation immigrant whose Cuban parents had fled to Miami, offered a memorable observation about the border debate: “Instead of a wall, we build a mirror so that we can see what we have become.”
Raul Malo: His arresting voice captivates sold-out Jane Pickens Theater
A genre-defying legacy
Born Raul Francisco MartÃnez-Malo Jr. in Miami on August 7, 1965, to Cuban parents, Malo co-founded The Mavericks in 1989. The band defied easy categorization, blending country, rock, Latin, Tejano, and swing into a sound entirely their own—driven always by Malo’s expansive guitar style and his extraordinary vocal range, from velvety baritone to operatic high notes.
The Mavericks earned multiple Grammy, ACM, and CMA awards over their three-decade run. In 2020, Malo made history with the first album ever to debut at the top of both the Latin Pop and Folk-Americana charts. He was honored with the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the National Music Council’s American Eagle Award for his commitment to preserving the multilingual American musical repertoire and championing music education.
Final days
Malo announced his cancer diagnosis in June 2024 and continued performing as his health allowed. In September 2025, he revealed the disease had progressed to leptomeningeal disease and canceled his remaining tour dates.
Just this past weekend, The Mavericks staged a two-night tribute at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. Malo, hospitalized and unable to attend, watched from his hospital bed as fellow musicians performed in his honor. His bandmates gathered at his bedside to sing “Moon & Stars” to him. He passed away the following evening.
“Though his earthly body may have passed, Raul’s spirit will live on forever in heaven, and here on earth through the music, joy, and light he brought forth,” the band wrote.
Malo is survived by his wife of 34 years, Betty; sons Dino, Victor, and Max; mother Norma; sister Carol; and Mavericks bandmates Paul Deakin, Eddie Perez, and Jerry Dale McFadden.
All photos of Raul Malo’s March 2024 performance by Jack Casey/What’sUpNewp.
