Biography

The following is a letter written by Orlando Pinho to a Portuguese local paper called the Concelho da Murtosa on October 26, 2006 which was placed into an article featuring Orlando Pinho. 

I arrived in the United States in November of 1961. I played saxophone and clarinet in various "luso-american" bands which did not have singers. 

Since I already had a singer in my local band in Murtosa, Portugal, I was not satisfied with just playing in a band and I set out to be a band leader of an orchestra similar to my first band, Radar which would have a singer. 

In 1963, I founded my first band in the United States which was called the "Sport Club Portuguese-Newark" because it played primarily at the Portuguese Club by that name. 

The band was a great success with musicians from different nationalities. The band lasted exactly one year. At the of the year, the portuguese musicians in the band suggested that we form a Portuguese only band and so the Sports Club band disbanded and a new band formed taking my name. 

The band moved from the Sport Club Portuguese to the Fraternal Luso-Americano Association (now extinct) and the "Orlando Pinho Orchestra" was formed. 

It was 1964 and with this radical change, the band was a great success, the band was much better than any of my other bands. For fifteen consecutive years it was the best Portuguese-American dance band in the United States.
 

Between 1978 and 1980, there was in influx of new immigrants, from various races and with this diversity, new bands, bars, clubs, restaurants.
 

There were also new Portuguese-American bands like: Estrela do Vouga, Sinfonia 5, Iberia, Lisbon 70, Os 4 Rosas, Trio Litoral. My popular band began to fail because it was stagnant.
 

The public demanded more diversity and modern music and I decided to make radical changes to the band: I eliminated my name from the band, I let a couple band member go, I hired new musicians recruiting them from American music schools. I stopped playing the saxophone and clarinet and started playing the electric bass guitar. The band went from a brass band to a modern electric instrument band. A suave band was transformed into a loud band.
 

This new band was called "The Deltas" and because of the quality of my new band members, when we on occasion I improvised (all music can be improvised) my bass guitar sounded more like a saxophone and my new musicians would say, "Mister Pinho (as they used to refer to me as) You at times make the "Fender Bass" sound like a saxophone." I would simply respond that "Sorry about that, there are times I forget I'm playng a Bass Guitar."
 

The melodies that followed were always slow songs, Blue Songs, full of unison, where nobody missed a note, except on a rare occasion, because the musician knew I was a professional musician with a document to provide it on saxophone and a band leader who did not like anything out of tune.
 

For ten years, "The Deltas" competed with all the bands previously mentioned. The Band moved for the Portuguese Fraternal Association to the Portuguese Instructive Social Club from Elizabeth, New Jersey and continued our success as "The Deltas".
 

In 1990, still in the height of our successful revamping, I decided to retire, leaving the band and music forever.
 

The Deltas continued for a number of years competing with the previously mentioned bands. Ultimately, The Deltas disbanded.