Latin pop singer Gloria Estefan was born Gloria Fajardo on September 1, 1957 in Havana. Her family fled to Miami two years later to escape Fidel Castro's communist government; Estefan's father returned in 1961 as part of the Bay of Pigs invasion, only to be captured and imprisoned for several years. Estefan had a hard life growing up. After her father was released from prison in Cuba, he joined the U.S. Army only to be exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam and suffer chemical-induced multiple sclerosis. Despite the family's poverty, Estefan learned guitar as a teenager, singing along with Top 40 hits. One fateful day in 1975 she sang some songs at a friend's wedding, impressing the band, the Miami Latin Boys. The bandleader, Emilio Estefan, recruited Gloria for his band, renamed the Miami Sound Machine. After turning 21 in September 1978, Gloria married Emilio, giving birth to a son two years later. Meanwhile the Miami Sound Machine became an increasingly popular band among Latinos and Latin Americans, releasing several Spanish-language pop albums for CBS International.
By 1984 Miami Sound Machine was doing so well that Epic released an album in English, Eyes of Innocence, as an attempt to cross over into the mainstream U.S. and U.K. pop markets. The group gained a growing Anglo following, thanks to dance songs like "Dr. Beat" and later "Conga!," from their 1985 platinum-selling album Primitive Love. With 1988's Let It Loose,Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine, as the group was now called, burst into the mainstream thanks to Top 10 hits like "1-2-3" and "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You."
In 1989 Gloria Estefan formally launched her solo career (with Miami Sound Machine backing her up) with Cuts Both Ways, a Top 10 platinum debut which featured the No. 1 pop hit "Don't Wanna Lose You." In March 1990, while touring in support of the album, Estefan's tour bus was struck by a semi-trailer on a Pennsylvania highway. Estefan was critically injured, requiring 400 stitches to close her wounds and titanium rods to fix her broken back. Miraculously, less than a year later she was performing again, releasing Into the Light in 1991. Now more of an adult contemporary performer, Estefan released two Spanish-only albums, 1993's Mi Tierra and 1995's Abriendo Puertas, taking a break in 1994 to give birth to her second child, a daughter. Estefan briefly made the news in 1995 when a jet skier slammed into her yacht and died.
Her latest album, Gloria!, was released June 1998 on Epic Records.
