Bebo Valdés was born Dionisio Ramón Emilio Valdés Amaro on October 9, 1918, in the village of Quivicán, near Havana. He studied at Havana's municipal conservatory and began working as a pianist in the city's nightclubs in the 1940s. In Julio Cueva's band he took over the piano and arranging chair from René Hernández, and in October 1946 that band recorded "Rareza del siglo," one of his best-known mambos. He also directed the house band at the Havana radio station Mil Diez.

From 1948 to 1957 he worked at the Tropicana cabaret, first as pianist and arranger for the vedette Rita Montaner and then as a bandleader whose orchestra alternated with Armando Romeu's, backing singers such as Benny Moré and Pío Leyva. He helped carry the mambo from the charanga into the big-band format and, to compete with Pérez Prado's version of it, devised a rhythm of his own, the batanga, which premiered at the Tropicana in 1952 and was soon overtaken by the chachachá. He was just as much a figure of Havana's early Afro-Cuban jazz scene: in 1952 he took part in sessions commissioned by the American producer Norman Granz that yielded the improvised piece "Con poco coco," a forerunner of the descarga jam-session records Panart issued later in the decade.

In 1957 he left the Tropicana and formed his own big band, Sabor de Cuba, which recorded with singers such as Rolando Laserie as well as instrumentally. His son Jesús, later known as Chucho, began his career at sixteen as the pianist in that band. In 1958 Valdés took part in the Havana recording of Cole Español by Nat King Cole, and in 1959 he cut a series of descarga sessions for Gema and the album Cuban Dance Party, an early stereo record by a Cuban ensemble. In 1960 he left Cuba for Mexico with Laserie, leaving behind his wife, Pilar, and their five children. He briefly lived in the United States, worked in Spain as arranger and conductor for singers including Lucho Gatica and Monna Bell, and toured Europe with the Lecuona Cuban Boys. On that tour he stopped in Stockholm in 1963, met Rose Marie Pehrson, married her the same year and settled in Sweden.

The next three decades were quiet ones. Valdés played piano in Swedish hotels and on cruise ships and spread Cuban music and Latin jazz technique among local musicians, while his name faded outside Cuban circles. When Chucho Valdés and Irakere played Carnegie Hall in 1977, he crossed the Atlantic to see his son, the start of a reconciliation that led to later joint work. His return to recording came after a phone call on November 25, 1994, from the saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, who invited him to record in Germany. The result, Bebo Rides Again (Messidor, 1995), was made when he was 76 and led to a late career in his own name.

The revival was documented on film and disc. Fernando Trueba's documentary Calle 54 (2000) put him on screen at the piano with the double bassist Israel López "Cachao," in a performance of "Lágrimas negras," and with his son Chucho in "La Comparsa." In March 2000 he recorded El Arte del Sabor in New York with Cachao and the conguero Carlos "Patato" Valdés, a trio session of Cuban boleros, sones, congas and guarachas with Paquito D'Rivera as guest on three tracks. It won the Latin Grammy for Best Traditional Tropical Album in 2002 and the Grammy for Best Traditional Tropical Latin Album at the 45th Grammy Awards in 2003. Produced by Trueba and Javier Limón, Lágrimas Negras (2003) paired him with the flamenco singer Diego El Cigala; it won the Latin Grammy for Best Traditional Tropical Album in 2004 and, by the end of that year, had reportedly sold more than 700,000 copies. Bebo de Cuba (2004) won the 2005 Latin Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album and the 2006 Grammy for Best Traditional Tropical Latin Album, and Juntos para siempre (2008), a two-piano album with Chucho, won the Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album at the 52nd Grammy Awards in January 2010 as well as a Latin Grammy. Public-radio obituaries counted three Grammys and six Latin Grammys across his career.

Other late projects included the 2007 trio album Live at the Village Vanguard with the bassist Javier Colina, Carlos Carcas's documentary Old Man Bebo (2008), which had its North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, and the original score for Trueba's animated film Chico & Rita (2010), which ends with a dedication to him. Berklee College of Music awarded him an honorary doctorate in May 2011. After living in Stockholm until 2007 he spent his last years in Benalmádena, near Málaga, Spain, and returned to Stockholm a few weeks before his death. Bebo Valdés passed away there on March 22, 2013, at the age of 94, after several years of treatment for Alzheimer's disease. His wife Rose Marie had died in 2012.

Most of Valdés's career was spent in Afro-Cuban dance music, not in the jazz trade, and that is the right way to hear him: a conservatory-trained arranger of mambo, chachachá and bolero for cabaret orchestras, a long stretch of hotel and cruise-ship piano in Sweden, and in old age a singer's accompanist on a flamenco and bolero record that sold far beyond the jazz audience. His jazz credentials are nonetheless specific and documented: the 1952 Havana descarga session with Norman Granz's circle, his Sabor de Cuba orchestra's jam-session recordings for Gema, the trio and duo albums of his later years, a Village Vanguard engagement recorded live, and a run of Latin jazz awards. He named Fats Waller, Art Tatum and Bill Evans among his influences. He is also credited with bringing Afro-Cuban sacred rhythms into popular dance music, and his arrangements sit behind the descarga tradition that Cuban jazz musicians built on. His son Chucho, the leading Cuban jazz pianist of the following generation, learned the piano from him.