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Adonis looking and sounding so comfortable on stage was only natural since he had been performing since childhood. His father, Abraham Quiñones, was a second generation Puerto Rican-American with musical aspirations of his own. In the early 1960's, he had sung with a doo-wop band called The Delegates. Abraham and his group managed to get one hit on the Virginia Beach Pop radio station, but when they couldn't break into the Top 40, The Delegates turned to the traditional reggae music they heard all the time and played in dance halls. Abraham eventually gave up music to support his wife, Marcella, and their children by working for the Dow Chemical Company in Chesapeake, Virginia.
The thing is, Abraham may have given up playing music, but he never stopped loving it. He may have been going to that chemical plant every day, but he still played his guitar and the piano at night after work. Adonis would come and sit down to listen. By the time he was six years old, he was singing and playing along--and Abraham recognized his talent immediately.
As a diversion for himself, mostly, Abraham decided to soundproof the garage and form a family band. He taught Adonis's older brother, Angelo, to play bass guitar. Abraham drafted his eldest child, Adonis's older sister, Mercedes as the band's drummer--a move that Mercedes fought constantly at first, because she thought it was too weird for a band to have a girl drummer. It really wasn't a big deal to anyone, though, and we all got used to it. Especially me, as I too was playing an instrument that girls didn't normally play.
I remember one time in an interview, Adonis was asked how he felt about his sister and his wife being in his band and playing real instruments, rather than being at home and being good, obedient wives. The interviewer carried a tone as if it was an absolute abomination. Adonis's simple response was, "Hey, I'm all for women doing things to piss people, and especially old men like you, off. Especially if it's something they really want to do and it brings them joy. Who cares? Honestly if you got a problem with that, you are the problem." He finished off, sending me a cool wink and grinning at his sister.
Anyway, Abraham stuck to his mission, though, and pretty soon the family band was rehearsing for at least half an hour a day in that garage.
This hobby still wasn't enough to satisfy Abraham's creative urges entirely. When a friend told him that the town of Chesapeake needed a good Puerto Rican restaurant, he leased a space and started to serve authentic Puerto Rican food--accompanied by Adonis singing while Mercedes and Angelo played their instruments. Mercedes and Angelo were already in high school by then and were still resistant to the idea of playing traditional reggae music, especially since many of the kids they knew from school ate at their father's restaurant with their families. Adonis didn't care. He was still just a nine-year-old kid having fun.
Business went well enough at the restaurant that Abraham decided to quit his job at Dow. Then, when the recession hit, he lost everything. Abraham had no luck finding another job in Virginia Beach, so he turned to the only thing he had left: music. He named the family's band Adonis and The Delegation as an homage to his old band and took any paying gigs he could find between California and Florida: dance halls, ballrooms, skating rinks, VFW halls, you name it. Adonis had to learn how to sing in Spanish--which he didn't even speak yet. Angelo played the bass guitar and started writing and arranging the band's songs. Mercedes played drums and Abraham added in other musicians as needed.
Abraham supported the family partly by helping his younger brother Isaac run his trucking business. But, every weekend, he would load his family into a beat-up van, hook up a trailer for the equipment, and hit the road, playing any kind of show that would have them. At first they barely covered their expenses.
Gradually they started getting more shows, and Abraham was able to buy a bus--a '64 Eagle that the family dubbed "Big Bertha." The bus was in rough shape and had no heating, air-conditioning, restroom, running water, or power steering. In winter months, Adonis and his family slept near the motor to stay warm; in the summer it was almost unbearable.
But their hard work paid off. By 1984, when Adonis was barely fifteen years old, he had already recorded his first album with The Delegation on the Freddie label. Abraham was so intent on having his family make it in the music business that he put those goals before nearly everything else. He was focused on seeing Adonis's inevitable rise to stardom come to fruition.
By the time Adonis was seventeen, he had appeared on the cover of Reggae Entertainer and was earning widespread notice as that genre's youngest male vocalist. He had released a major hit single, "Dame un Beso," written by him, Angelo, and keyboardist Ricky Vela, followed in 1986 by another hit single, "A Million to One."
Despite knowing only a minimal amount of Spanish, Adonis not only sang in that language, but had appeared twice on one of the most popular shows on Spanish-language television, the Johnny Canales Show, and performed in front of thousands of people in Matamoros, the Mexican border city.
In 1987, the year before I met him, Adonis was crowned Male Entertainer of the Year at the Latin Music Awards, knocking the previous king of the scene, Michael Canales, right off his throne. His father's instinct and drive had been on the mark--Adonis and The Delegation had made six increasingly successful albums and he seemed unstoppable.
