[2] The three original DeCastro Sisters — Peggy, Cherie and Babette — were raised in Havana, Cuba,[1] in a family mansion that was seized by Fidel Castro during the Cuban revolution and is now used as the Chinese Embassy.
Their mother, Babette Buchanan, was a Chicago-born Ziegfeld Follies showgirl who married the wealthy Cuban aristocrat Juan Fernandez de Castro, owner of a large sugar plantation in the Dominican Republic, where first daughter Peggy was born.
They emigrated to Miami in 1942, where they were seen by an agent from General Artists Corporation (now ICM) and booked into the Copacabana in New York with the Will Mastin Trio featuring Sammy Davis Jr. [citation needed] As their careers progressed their act became more flamboyant,[1] and they worked across the country, including at the Palladium in Hollywood, where they sang with Tito Puente's band and made their first recordings.
They appeared on screen with Carmen Miranda and Groucho Marx in the 1947 film Copacabana, the same year that they joined Bob Hope and Cecil B. DeMille on the live premiere broadcast special launching KTLA in Los Angeles, the first telecast west of the Mississippi.
[3] In 1954, the more Americanized DeCastro Sisters were signed by a small country label, Abbott Records, and their first release featured "It's Love" as the A-side, backed by a Sammy Cahn-Gene DePaul song, "Teach Me Tonight",[1] which had been suggested at the last minute by their bass player.
[1] Now major headliners, they shared the bill with Noël Coward when he made his Las Vegas debut at the Desert Inn in 1954, which had one of the most star-studded and publicized opening nights of any show in the town's history.
They were part of another historic engagement in 1959, when they joined the Las Vegas debuts of George Burns as a solo act and a young singer named Bobby Darin at the Sahara.
At various times Peggy and Babette took leave from the act and were replaced by a cousin Olgita, so Cherie was the only sister who was part of every appearance and recording that the group ever made.