One December night in 1948, a boy in the Bronx fell in love with a song. He was 14 and new to New York, and as he walked by a music store on Prospect Avenue, the strains of a Los Romanceros holiday tune, "Aires de Navidad," drew him inside. It reminded him of home, in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. So he took the 78 r.p.m. record for a test spin in a listening booth in the corner.
Fifty-seven years later, he has never really left. Miguel Angel Amadeo, who bought the record - his first, for 75 cents - returned in November 1969 and bought the store. Over the years, he transformed Casa Amadeo from record shop to cultural institution, establishing the tiny store at 786 Prospect Avenue in the South Bronx as the place to go for hard-to-find albums, for history lessons on Latin music and for simple conversation.
