Manitas de Plata, Superstar of the Flamenco Guitar, Is Dead at 93

Manitas de Plata, a celebrity of flamenco guitar who sold millions of records, befriended Salvador Dalí and Brigitte Bardot, performed for raucous crowds at Carnegie Hall, made and spent fortunes and generally lived a life of fulfilled appetites, all after growing up poor and illiterate, died on Thursday in Montpellier, France. He was 93.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Françoise Mariaux, one of his many children. (News reports said he may have had more than two dozen.)

A descendant of a Romany family from Spain that settled in France, Manitas de Plata — the name, which he took when he began performing, means “little hands of silver” in Spanish — was born Ricardo Baliardo in Cette (now known as Sète), a town on the French Mediterranean, on Aug. 7, 1921, and grew up in a Gypsy caravan in the region. Untutored in the guitar and unable to read either words or music, he was said to have picked up the instrument at age 9 and begun emulating practitioners of the wailing, forcefully rhythmic and melodically dramatic folk music of Andalusian peasants known as flamenco.

He grew to become a swift-fingered virtuoso and an audience-pleasing performer, though not a technician or an observer of the music’s formal ritual traditions. (He had his detractors among flamenco purists.) Still, Manitas de Plata was a phenomenon early on.

He made his name as a young man playing in the cafes and festivals of Provence, where he became a favorite among many in the European intelligentsia — “the rage of the Riviera” he was called, according to The New York Times. Jean Cocteau was a fan, as was Picasso. His career was promoted by a friend, Lucien Clergue, later a well-known photographer, who steered him toward recording.

He often performed with the singer José Reyes, whose sons are part of the popular flamenco group the Gipsy Kings. Three other members of that group are from the Baliardo family, distant cousins of his. He made dozens of albums; Agence France-Presse and other news outlets reported that he sold nearly 100 million records around the world.

Reportedly frightened of flying, he did not come to the United States until the 1960s. He made the first of many appearances at Carnegie Hall in 1965, to an enthusiastic response.

“Manitas de Plata, the Gypsy guitarist who works with the bravura of a matador, took over the Carnegie Hall bull ring at midnight Saturday and won 2,600 pairs of ears,” Robert Shelton wrote in The Times in 1967, adding, “He is an Actors Studio flamenquista, who throws generous kisses to an adulating gallery and who savors the act of taunting the bull of attention with his cape of virtuosity and ego.”

Reviewing another Carnegie Hall performance a decade later, Robert Palmer of The Times focused more on the music, which he wrote “sounded something like a cross between the syncopated shuffle of New Orleans jazz and the darting rhythms of Mauritanian lute music.” But he too took note of Manitas de Plata’s showmanship, observing that he “does not seem to feel constrained by concert-hall settings.”

Known as a spendthrift who loved expensive cars and the company of women, Manitas de Plata made millions from his recordings and concerts but died without much money, having spent his earnings on “cars and casinos” and in support of an extensive family, his agent, Bernard Biglione, said in an interview on Thursday.

“He wanted to see people happy and to play the guitar,” Mr. Biglione said.

Manitas de Plata was married once, to a woman with whom he had nine children. His daughter Françoise said in an interview that he also had liaisons with many other women, including her mother, Claudette Mariaux. News reports in France said that he had legally recognized at least 13 children but that the total was 24 to 28 — and that he was unsure of the number himself.

He was “a man with one hell of a personality, with lots of kindness,” his daughter said, adding, “He knew how to make the most out of life.”