70s Salsa (was The Fania Label 1970-1980: S/D)

Yeah, is it the trumpeter? He's definitely a ubiquitous and legendary trumpet player. I didn't know he was related to Beny Moré.

dudes, this cantante movie is absolute shit. surprise surprise

We've been anticipating it on the Rolling... thread, but maybe we should discuss it on this specially created thread

Who Will Be Playing Yomo Toro In The Soon-To-Be-Released Hector Lavoe Biopic El Cantante?

Since Fania was just sold, I'm worried that it will soon disappear from eMusic. Any recommendations for titles to download from the label are greatly appreciated.

What do you like so far?

I can't say I've spent a lot of time with them so far, but I like two Willie Colon discs: Cosa Nuestra and Siembra (the latter is with Ruben Blades).

Also, the soundscans on this compilation seem interesting. It's credited to the Emusica label, but I know that's related to Fania (or was), and I'm pretty sure I've seen the disc credited to Fania elsewhere.

Well that's not a lot to go on, so I'll just recommend some titles:

Eddie Palmieri: Azucar Pa' Ti
Cheo Feliciano: Cheo [this has a few boleros, and in general is somewhat on the smooth side]
Willie Colon/Hector Lavoe: El Juicio
Sonora Poncena: Explorando [I recommended this to unperson and he didn't like it too much, so be warned]
Willie Colon: The Good The Bad and the Ugly
Ismael Rivera: Greatest Hits [I'm just checking the tracking listing now and this has some incredible songs on it]
Pete Rodriguez: I Like it Like That [if you want some Latin soul/boogaloo]
Willie Colon: Lo Malo
Eddie Palmieri: Molasss
Eddie Palmieri: Mozambique
La Lupe: Queen of Latin Soul
Angel Canales: Sabor
Willie Colon/Mon Rivera: There Goes the Neighborhood
Orchestra Harlow: La Raza Latina: A Salsa Suite [though I haven't heard it all myself]

You might also want to pick up something representative by Ray Barretto, Roberto Roena, Bobby Valentin, and Johnny Pacheco. The La Herencia compilations for individual artists generally look good.

In my opinion, there's nothing else that really sounds like Siembra.

I know I should give reasons and so forth, but I'm feeling too lazy.

No, no: This is great! I'm going to sample the soundscans tonight. Thanks, RS.

Forgot I also have Ray Barretto's Acid. I think that's on the Fania label, too.

(Also have a late-career Eddie Palmieri disc. It isn't on Fania, but I love the jazzy feel.)

Fania has a whole series of really good two-CD single-artist compilations called A Man And His Music; I've got the ones dedicated to Willie Colón, Ruben Blades, Cheo Feliciano, Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barretto, the Fania All-Stars and Celia Cruz, and there's one for Hector Lavoe, too, of course. They're all excellent. They run about $20 a pop, but Best Buy frequently has 'em for $17.

Those compilations are actually the main reason I'm bummed that the catalog is switching owners again; I was hoping they'd do Ismael Rivera, Roberto Roena and Sonora Ponceña next (they grew on me eventually).

Not sure how important the marketing/booklet/packaging is to you, but fwiw, at least some of those A Man And His Music compilations are (at the moment) still available on eMusic.

The Amazon MP3 store has a bunch of 'em, too.

I got the Ray Barretto one at the Borders Books 50% off sale for $9. It's great

Daniel, Esq., it's just that I'm mostly talking favorites here, rather than really thinking about what you might like (but then I'm still not sure I know enough to help with that--plus there's still more of the Fania catalog that I haven't heard than I had heard). I was using cduniverse to pull out titles, but once I got time, it seemed to me that some things I had seen before weren't there. Also, some artists I just happen to know more from compilations than from albums. (Lavoe is an example of that, and I probably should have recommended more. In fact, I meant to include Hector Lavoe Strikes Back.)

unperson, check out the Fania Greatest Hits for Ismael Rivera that I mentioned. It has several of my favorite songs on it. They've done a lot of different compilations and some of the single discs ones (esp. the La Herencia series, I think) are good (but I understand wanting a larger sample than that).

Personally, I don't think this stuff is suddenly going to go out of print. I don't think there's that much reason to panic, but I wish Emusica had found a way to make this profitable enough.

I mean, I could try to recommend "important" albums, and then I would include something like Larry Harlow's Salsa, but it's not a personal favorite, mostly because I'm not big on charanga (basically that violin and flute combination you sometimes here). But even that has grown on me a bit over time.

I have four individual albums by Rivera already, and plan to pick up a couple more sometime soon.

I hear you on charanga. I got the double-disc compilation by Johnny Pacheco and didn't like much of it at all for exactly that reason. The violin and flute just got on my nerves.

The opening of Eddie Palmieri's "Viejo Scarron" (from Vamonos P'al Monte) irritates me intolerably. There's just something about the chords or something that I find torturous. I don't care too much for "Caminando" either, for similar gut-level/inexplicable reasons.

"Revolt/La Libertad Logico" and "Vamonos Pal Monte" are great; everything else on there is either grating or just okay.

I like this Andy Harlow cover of "Tin Tin Deo" (which I only just discovered was written by Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqj82JjlrNk

I'm not sure I ever should have started this thread, since I still don't know enough to do the subject justice. For example, right now I'm just listening for the first time to a Roberto Roena album from 1977 that I wasn't even aware existed, and the first track is great.

i listen to a LOT of salsa from the 70's. and i know very little. i wish you could meet this guy pablo i know. he's very cool and very knowledgeable. full of good info. he did a book on latin album covers. he bought some records from me the other night and i learned, like, at least five different things that i didn't know.

i listen to a LOT of salsa from the 70's.

You never mention it though. :( Or maybe you do, but on rolling noise board listening threads I don't normally read.

I think I have a decent mental map of what's out there, I just have still heard only a small percentage of it.

This is the Roberto Roena album:

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/66/42/bcdf793509a0df6cb7ce7110.L._SL500_AA200_.jpg

The sound is so-so, but:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N9xBdS0VBE

i love la lupe's queen of latin soul album. i have a few other fania comps. but i want singers with ballads as powerful as those on la lupes album. any tips for what to get? a lot of the comps seem to focus on the dance side of things, even the celia cruz comp i have does this.

this cover is amazing btw -

http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=2678601

http://s.dsimg.com/image/R-2678601-1296232142.jpeg

You might want to mostly go back in time for there and dig through the classic bolero singers. Most of La Lupe's ballads are specifically boleros, I think. To stick to the Fania era, how much Hector Lavoe have you heard? He definitely covers a broad emotional range and recorded a bunch of boleros. How about Cheo Feliciano's less upbeat material?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SNnVKehNyI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og2wKYwnosI

This thread is so weak. I feel like I missed an opportunity with this thread. 70s salsa deserves better, but then again, it's all there, an open secret waiting to be discovered. There's still so much of it I haven't heard, even from central artists.

To me, the pacing of this Justo Betancourt bolero has a theatrical quality closer to La Lupe's style. Maybe you would like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJT4LDBAcDo

As long as we are doing famous singers doing boleros, I love this very odd Angel Canales version of the classic "Dos Gardenias" (but I wouldn't say he spends much time doing the type of thing you're looking for):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13b052hBTtI

I don't have a very in-depth knowledge of the bolero tradition, but this 4-CD box set (which I own) is pretty nice. Though I could do without the one disc devoted to Mexican-style bolero trios.

http://www.amazon.com/Boleromania-80-Boleros-En-CDS/dp/B0007V9X78

This material is either all or mostly from before the 70s.

Helpfully "currently unavailable." I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to find one way or another.

I find Lavoe boleros a little too wrist-slitty at the moment. I just don't need to go there right now.

boleros is exactly what i want - thanks.

i think i might just buy more la lupe actually.

does anyone know anything about ray rodriguez? been listening a lot to his Ray Rodriguez Y Su Orquesta Lp and in all my basically ignorant enthusiam, loving it!

Sorry to say I'm really not familiar with Ray Rodriguez, but I once heard something by him on the radio that I liked enough to add the album it came from to my long-term to-buy list.

I never mentioned to titchy that there's a Celia Cruz collection of nothing by boleros, and I've liked what I've heard from it. I probably should own it, but don't:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BYY05M4EL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Today I was walking around and I heard this awesome salsa music coming out of a parked car but with this very 70s sounding synth in the intro. I liked it so much that I asked the dude what it was, and it was Roberto Roena. He showed me the CD, but it was just a bootleggy-looking thing like one of those CDs you get at the little Spanish record stores, so it could have been from any record.

So, anyone know of a Roberto Roena record with synths on it?

I have no idea. I'm glad this has been expanded beyond Fania, though -- I love the Fania sound but there is a lot more out there. Lots of stuff I haven't heard too!!

I'll see what I can come up with, once I'm off work. I think I've probably only heard 1/3 of Roena's output at this point, maybe less. He definitely did some "progressive" sorts of things, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so. I don't think this is the one you're looking for, but La 8Va Maravilla is great and doesn't seem to be talked about that much. Of course, it's also out of print, but it's not impossible to find otherwise.

I would guess late 70s/very early 80s, but I suppose that's not too helpful. Anything else about the song? Was it in the usual clave rhythm, or was it different? (Roena worked/works with Afro-Rican folkloric rhythms, Brazilian rhtyhms, etc. a fair amount.)

I have Roena's first 10 albums in my iPod, but don't have time to go through them right now. Will check tomorrow.

Did you buy most of those as downloads? I probably need to do more of that.

from Roena's wiki site:

Complementing the musicality of the salsa group was always the showmanship inherent in Roberto Roena. Dying his hair in new colors, playing percussion in his underwear and sporting a harness so he could “fly” around the stage of New York City's Madison Square Garden were some of the tricks that he used to stand out among the other groups in vogue. In fact, a noted journalist that followed Apollo Sound once remarked that they were “the first group in Puerto Rico with a system of psychedelic lights and go-go girls.”

Yeah, I only have about four on physical CD; the rest I got digitally. They're all killer. The first couple are pretty weird - he's got songs in English, including covers of Sly and the Family Stone's "Sing a Simple Song" and Blood, Sweat & Tears' "Spinning Wheel."

I did do a half-hearted search of the Roena I have (especially one CD I suspected in particular) but never found a song that fit that description.

Not a big Ray Barretto fan, I particularly like this song (though I haven't heard the whole album):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_-fvX6E8mI

I need to check into him further.

So I see that Will Hermes has a new book out about music in NYC from 73 to 77 called "Love Goes to Buildings on Fire" that apparently includes some writing about Fania

From New Year’s Day 1973 to New Year’s Eve 1977, the book moves panoramically from post-Dylan Greenwich Village, to the arson-scarred South Bronx barrios where salsa and hip-hop were created, to the Lower Manhattan lofts where jazz and classical music were reimagined, to ramshackle clubs like CBGBs and The Gallery, where rock and dance music were hot-wired for a new generation. As they remade the music, the musicians at the center of the book invented themselves: Willie Colón and the Fania All-Stars renting Yankee Stadium to take salsa to the masses, New Jersey locals Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith claiming the jungleland of Manhattan as their own, Grandmaster Flash transforming the turntable into a musical instrument, David Byrne and Talking Heads proving that rock music “ain’t no foolin’ around.” Will Hermes was there—venturing from his native Queens to the small dark rooms where the revolution was taking place—and in Love Goes to Buildings on Fire he captures the creativity, drive, and full-out lust for life of the great New York musicians of those years, who knew that the music they were making would change the world.

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Goes-Buildings-Fire-Changed/dp/0865479801