Frankie Ruiz, 1958-1998

Frankie Ruiz, 1958-1998

The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)

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August 21, 1998 | Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, Globe Staff | Copyright

I guess it's no surprise to me that salsa singer Frankie Ruiz died last week at the age of 40, of liver cirrhosis. Anyone who followed Ruiz's career -- his stints in jail, his fistfights with flight attendants, his record company's publicity campaign about his supposed drug and alcohol rehabilitation -- could have seen it coming.

"We knew this was going to happen," said Carrie Sanchez, who had been Mr. Ruiz's booking agent for the past eight years, in a phone interview from her New York office this week. "He'd been sick on and off for a year and eight months."

I'm remembering the one time I ended up backstage at a concert of Mr. Ruiz's, at Vincent's nightclub in Randolph in 1995. …

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