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

Justo Bentacourt: Pa Bravo Yo (1972)

http://ring.cdandlp.com/diaspora/photo_moyenne/21486947.jpg

I have to be in the mood for this one, and I admit my opinion of it has fluctuated a lot, but it's good. It sounds like this sticks pretty closely to Cuban models, compared to some salsa. (I'm going to have to use "salsa" in a broader sense than I usually prefer to use it, in order to discuss this, but I think it was used that way more often in the 70s. Anyway, this CD, for instance, has a couple boleros on it.)

I took a salsera friend to see the Sun Ra Arkestra one New Year's Eve (back when my life was temporarily fairly interesting). Because of a joint fund-raising effort between the Painted Bride Art Center (I think, unless it was some larger umbrella organization they belong to) and AMLA (Asociación de Músicos Latino Americanos), AMLA people had a presence at the show. They were playing Latin music during the intermission. "Pa Bravo Yo" came on and my friend and I looked at each other like: "We're going to have to dance to this one, aren't we?" but then the Arkestra came on and the song was cut off, leaving me momentarily disappointed.

http://www.cdbueno.it/copertine%20cd%20salsa%20vecchia/el%20juicio.jpg

Really good varied set of songs that work together well as an album. Ironic trombones.

http://www.danzaymovimiento.de/data/images/jmax/jmax-fn000500.jpg

Pretty good, but not as good as. . .

http://www.link-age.or.jp/boca/disc/cg/022a.jpg

Willie Colon/Mon Rivera: There Goes the Neighborhood (1975)

(Only available image I can find is too small to bother with.) Siembra was from 1978, I forgot to say, and Metiendo Mano was from 1977.

Not nearly as trippy as one may expect from the title and cover but it does have the original Deeper Shade of Soul that the Urban Dance Squad expanded on so brilliantly.

Orchestra Harlow: Hommy: A Latin Opera (1973)

http://www.laconga.org/images/recomendados/hommy.gif

This has some spoken parts which aren't great fun for me as a non-speaker of Spanish, but there are some very good moments. Celia Cruz's "Gracia Divina" and Cheo Feliciano's track (I forget which one that is) are both particular stand-outs. There's a string section, but it all works out pretty well.

Johnny Pacheco: El Maestro (1975)

http://www.danzaymovimiento.com/data/images/jmax/jmax-fn000485.jpg

The album is too Cuban for me, or something. I don't really want to have to look at his ass in tight white pants either.

Ray Barretto: The Message (1972)

http://www.dustygroove.com/images/products/b/barret_ray~_message~~_101b.jpg

I don't understand why this is supposed to be so great, but I don't like Barretto (or Pacheco) all that much.

The Fania All Stars: Live at the Cheetah Vol. 1 (1974)

http://www.danzaymovimiento.com/data/images/jmax/jmax-fn000415.jpg

Good cover. I'm not really into this, despite its alleged historical importance. (I don't doubt it really.) It does have a 7:29 version of "Anacaona" sung by Cheo Feliciano, but I prefer the album version. But Cheo Feliciano is pretty much always good, especially on recordings from this era.

Orchestra Harlow: Salsa (1977)

http://www.mambo-inn.com/images/fot-sarav-21-03.jpg

I like Junior Gonzalez's vocals, and I like other things about this album. "La Cartera" has grown on me somewhat, but I'm not a big fan of charanga (an orchestration usually involving violin and flute). So it probably really is great, but I haven't got into as of yet.

Ray Barretto - Acid
Monguito Santamaria - Hey Sister
George Guzman - Introducing George Guzman
Joe Bataan - Subway Joe
Orchestra Harlow - Heavy Smookin

these are probably on the funkier/more soulful side of things being that they're in wax poetics

ray barretto - acid, hard hands
willie colon - crime pays, la gran fuga, siembra

ok, where next? which allstars albums? i am on the lookout for "latin - soul - rock". should i grab the yankee stadium discs, or "salsa" first?

recommend me some good ruben blades and larry harlow discs.

and then let's start expanding outward. my favorite track so far has been baretto's "ahora si" off of "hard hands". i guess this means my taste runs toward acoustic mid-tempo descarga (charanga?) with really busy percussion sections. celebratory, if possible, heavy jazz influence is cool, too. not so big on the latin rock angle.

(arabic / indian music still too serious and close to home for me to get into)

I don't actually know much about Blades away from Willie Colon.

You'd probably like Barretto's Rican/Struction.

(I still have to say: I think you are going about things the wrong way by eliminating non-Fania label stuff from the 70s. A lot of the best recordings were not on Fania per se.)

Larry Harlow's Live in Qaud is good. I still haven't heard a whole bunch of Harlow I'm interested in hearing. If you're sure you like charanga, check out Harlow's Salsa! though it's not my cup of tea.

I like most of the Fania All Stars' Commitment from 1980.

How about Sabor con Angel Canales? Lots of mid-tempo, stretched out stuff.

Bobby Valentin's Afuera and La Boda de Ella are both good, with some amazing material included.

I'm pretty big on Palmieri at the moment. No interest in hearing more of him?

(No wait Acid is 1972.)

If I get back into a CDR making mood, I might be willing to send some things, but I'm a little burned out on it right now. (Why did you never request any salsa mixes on the thread for that?)

and also - by all means, let's expand out past fania!!

Since we're going beyond Fania, let me recommend Cheo Feliciano's Cheo (if you don't mind some boleros). He sang with the Fania All Stars as well, of course. Also, some earlier material: Cheo Feliciano: The Best With Joe Cuba Sextet is mostly fantastic.

Hmmmm, listening to "Hard Hands" now. This has a real Latin soul/boogaloo sort of thing going on.

The only one I've heard is "Salsa" but it's really hard for me to listen to because while the music is great it gets interrupted by lots of introductions, audio interview and weird field recording bits. The sound quality is terrible too.

Eddie Palmieri? I have Harlem River Drive which is great in a funky soul jazz way. Did he do anything more salsa oriented?

Eddie Palmieri

At the moment I am especially pushing Azucar Pa' Ti, Unfinished Masterpiece, Eddie Palmieri & Cal Tjader - Bamboleate, Lucumi, Macumba, Voodoo (although it includes some weird experiments with fusion, disco, etc.), and Palo Pa' Rumba (from 1984). All the material with his band La Perfecta (the original, not the recent reincarnation) is worth checking out, although the sound is uniformly very bad.

I just downloaded "Hard Hands" so I could help out and I'm still not sure about Barretto's "Ahora Si!"

"Descarga" is more like, very open-ended, improvisation-oriented, sort of like jazz, but too far over on the Latin dance side of things to really be Latin jazz (though it's not an obvious distinction). I don't think "Hard Hands" is Latin jazz. It sort of straddles the line between salsa and Latin soul, I think.

x-post

vahid, you may simply want to stay in the 60s and early 70s if you want similar things. Hmmm, might like Azuquita's Pura Salsa which is from a bit later but retains some Latin soul/boogaloo feel.

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

The new 2CD Ismael Rivera compilation (part of Fania's "A Man And His Music" series) is fucking great. Goes all the way from the '50s to 1980. 45 songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75Mn4iI-4qw

is my jam lately

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=jpvR9q9ECM8#t=255s

entire fania all stars in africa concert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS6QB8r0vcM

I love everything about this -- johnny pacheco's crazy kids show host act, the way it's shot, the seemingly overwhelming numerosity of the band (partly an illusion), the coked-up happy vibe of it, bobby valentin's sick behind the beat basslines against on top of the beat percussion, roberto roena crazy legs dancing followed by a badass 70s five

sry, this is the complete concert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2-ZmO13_dI

thx for posting, need to watch this

there's a record of the concert too, on spotify. doesn't seem to have the whole thing, but has some neat additional bits, e.g. what sounds like a soukous band welcoming them at the airport and maybe jamming with some of the fania guys?

cross currents between african and latin american pop music post-WWII are really fascinating

like those vids. feel like they could use a few more guys up on stage, though.

yeah, kind of a threadbare lineup, very minimal

The CD (which was recently reissued as a CD/DVD set - I own it) is very weird; there's almost no music from the concert, it's all rehearsal stuff and the aforementioned recording of African musicians, etc. - it's like a Smithsonian Folkways album or something. But the DVD, which has the concert footage as well as rehearsal, backstage, footage of bandmembers just wandering around Kinshasa, etc., is killer.

want

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/arts/music/johnny-pacheco-dead.html

RIP Johnny Pacheco, co-founder of Fania, a Dominican born , NYC raised flautist, songwriter, bandleader who brought salsa & charanga to the world. Was involved with a number of Celia Cruz albums

RIP... absolute legend

https://img.discogs.com/xCHnJRHRvKFVVl5tKkzIy6goJnc=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2952899-1536074905-9015.jpeg.jpg

RIP.

I didn’t see any personal reminiscences on Friendbook. At first I thought maybe people had some beef with him but he guess he just didn’t really play with any of the Latin Jazz cats that are around now.

On twitter Willie Colon took a brief break from tweeting right-wing memes, to tweet 6 times re Pacheco.

I need to go back to the Pacheco & Cruz albums

Okay, it was pointed out to me that there was a personal recollection from the violinist Sam Bardfeld, who is a friend of friends and plays with a lot of name acts.

Ugh, don't like the way that sounds.

Been slowly digging into this scene over the last year. Don't know much Pacheco, but i stumbled on some Willie Rosario that I really liked. Justo Betancourt's Leguleya No album is my favorite so far.

Willie Colon's Twitter feed is... disappointing.

there was a period of time when the Zavvi i had access to during my lunch hour was getting in Fania cd reissues overstocks and selling them off for £1 each.
despite not being into salsa at all, i grabbed what i could when i could (about 12 albums in the end).
when the sun comes out i still put them on and enjoy them more and more each time.

A 2020 article on Alegre Records who recorded Pacheco before he later co-founded Fania

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/alegre-records-history/

Here he is with fellow legend, Queen Mother Celia Cruz and his collective Fania All Stars in Zaire in 1974. Johnny Pacheco conducting the musicians and dancing w Celia like a boss. It’s the joy.
RIP Johnny Pacheco. pic.twitter.com/NUKYlxiKgN

— Karla ~ Ovalle (@KarlaValley) February 15, 2021

that rules!!

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/arts/music/johnny-pacheco-fania-records-playlist.html

Brief bio plus 15 cuts Pacheco was involved with

https://elpais.com/babelia/2021-02-25/johnny-pacheco-del-nuevo-tumbao-al-tumbao-anejo.html?ssm=TW_CC?event_log=oklogin&prod=REGCRARTBAB&o=cerrbab

The Cuban writer Leonardo Padura published last year Los rostros de la salsa (Tusquets), a book in which the author offers an intimate portrait of the genre through conversations with its main icons, such as Rubén Blades, Willie Colón, Juan Formell and Johnny Pacheco. We reproduce in full the one that he maintained in 1995 with the latter, who died on February 16 , in which he reviews his career from his frenetic adventures in New York in the seventies to the creation of the Fania record company and its consolidation as a name indispensable of Latin music.

An interesting interview translated to English

in addition to the charanga I had an ensemble that played in the style of the Sonora Matancera, Arsenio and Chapotín, and in '64 I was left alone with this group. So I started with thatCuban tumbao , but I added a tres and instead of the timbales I included a bongo and that's where "the new Pacheco tumbao " began, which would later be known as the " tumbao ", and now as the " old tumbao ", because I've been 30 years with the same formula. Since I learned it with Cugat, I always say that if a formula works, there is no reason to change it, and with that tumbao I have had the good fortune to record many of the greats of Latin music: Daniel Santos, Julio González, Pete Conde Rodríguez, Héctor Casanova, and my divine goddess, Celia Cruz.

I have the English translation of that book, Faces Of Salsa, and it is a very good read.

I should get that book

Thursday interview 7:30 et with Cita Rodriguez , singer w/ Mambo Legends Orchestra and daughter of Pete El Conde Rodriguez , Fania artist, sponsored by the Hostos Center for Arts & Culture as part of the Conversaciones Musica series

https://www.facebook.com/1661302984112144/posts/2861425087433255/?d=n

RIP Fania label legendary pianist Larry Harlow

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/20/1029760076/larry-harlow-salsa-music-icon-dead

RIP Larry. Have been obsessed with this record for a while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y9uwafGrlM

Thanks. So many cool little elements to “Dame un Tipi”— the spoken tone of the woman vocalist, the steady driving clave backbeat via Harlow and others, the various instrumental touches thrown on top

The whole album is delicious. It's a shame it's so ridiculously expensive on Discogs!