40 Year Itch: That Latin Thing

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If Latin music was ever going to crack the mainstream, 1974 was the year it would happen. And Fania, the most important label in New York, was probably going to release it. That fact it never happened is our loss. We settled for whitewashed disco from the likes of KC and the Sunshine Band and the Miami-based Bee Gees instead.

     Among the albums we--as a Nation-- missed out on are Fania All Stars's Latin-Soul-Rock, released a year after 45-thousand fans packed Yankee Stadium. The album features some of the tunes played that night including the precursor to a myriad of 70's disco tunes : "Smoke".

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   Fania co-founder Johnny Pacheco provides the grooves for  the legendary "La Guarachera de Cuba" Celia Cruz for a straightforward set featuring the brassy Afro-rumba hit, "Quimbara". This is where your Celia Cruz infatuation should start.

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     A tribute to the hard driving tipica sounds of 1950's Cuba, Larry Harlow's Salsa was a big hit on Latin dance floors thanks to high energy horn charts played by some of Fania's best musicians. Harlow studied old 78's to get the 'authentico' sound.  "No Quiero" is sung by Junior Gonzalez. who gave Harlow the nickname "The Jewish Marvel". Harlow--no longer an outsider on the Salsa scene-- would soon put a kid he met in the mailroom a chance to sing with his band. The kid's name is Rueben Blades.

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      Recorded at Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios, The Sun of Latin Music fuses Latin dance music with acid rock. The standout cut is the 14 minute "Un Dia Bonito" which begins with a dramatic 5 minute free-jazz piano solo, transitions into a horror film soundtrack, and then launches into a swinging dance number featuring a 16 year old vocalist named Lalo Rodriguez . The Sun of Latin Music is the first salsa album to win a Grammy.

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   From Puerto Rico, timbale master Rafael Cortijo along with some young musicians from the University of Puerto Rico play traditional bomba and plena rhythms in support of experimental jazz fusion . According to 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die author Tom Moon, "the result is one of the most imaginative cross-genre eruptions in Latin music history".

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1973 In Salsa

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New York salsa was fusion music; you could hear urbane Havana son and country Puerto Rican jibaro styles, jazzy horn and flute solos, Santana-style rock guitar, wah wah keyboards, long percussion jams that drew on funk and African music while mixing in various Caribbean and South American rhythms. It was integrated, like the city it came from.
  Will Hermes, Love Goes to Buildings On Fire: Five Years in New York That Changes Music Forever.

  As much as I enjoyed the sections of this book that focused on New York's punk and art rock scene of the 70's, I got the most pleasure from learning about the city's red hot salsa scene. In 1973 nobody could top the combination of bandleader Willie Colon and troubled singer Hector Lavoe for high energy dance music. A great place to start.

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This is the other classic salsa album from 1973. Conga player and bandleader Barretto lives up to his Superman cover, hitting up virtually every form of Afro-Latin rhythm in this heart pounding album. Timeless! (If you like this, the next stop is Acid from 1967)

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Palmieri's classic is 1971's jazzy Harlem River Drive but this album contains the pianist's anthemic "Puerto Rico". Though it's not apparent on that track, with Sentido Palmieri and producer Harvey Averne began mining the psychedelic rock vein where Santana found gold.

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Afro Filipino ex-con Joe Bataan combined booogloo and doo wop in his 1960's band. The smooth tenor coined the term "salsoul" with this album in 1973 and paved the way for the inescapable Latin influenced disco sound. "Latin Strut" is a reworking of Deodato's "Super Strut".

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