One of the first Afro-Cuban songs I ever heard remains one of my favorites. In the late 1970s, I found a strange-looking double LP Et Tu Fluté in my oldest brother’s room:
The first three sides were good but Side 4 caught my attention with two cool songs, Herbie Mann’s composition The Amazon River and the standard Autumn Leaves. It was the percussion and bass that stood out for me - I loved it right away. I particularly liked Johnny Rae’s vibes and Nabil "Knobby" Totah’s long arco bass solo:
Et Tu Fluté is a compilation album released by Verve Records in 1973. Autumn Leaves was originally released in 1961 on the Herbie Mann Nonet’s Flute, Brass, Vibes, and Percussion, which featured Ray Barretto, Ray Mantilla, and Babatunde Olatunji on percussion. It would be a few more years before I’d get back on the trail of Latin music, which blossomed for me when I was in college in New York in the early 1980s.
On the weekends, I’d drive into Greenwich Village and go to “Salsa Meets Jazz” at the Village Gate, hosted by the great Tito Puente and Celia Cruz. They were awesome. At the time, I was dating a dancer and we’d also go to Studio 54 once in a while. When we didn’t feel like that, we’d go to the Roseland, which was right behind Studio 54. The Roseland had a huge dance floor and featured great, old-school Latin music. That’s where we learned to dance to Latin music - we’d watch and learn.
The original owner of the Roseland was Louis Brecker, and when he sold the building in 1981, the new owners began to schedule more and more “disco nights” and slowly gave the boot to the “Latin” crowd. But before it ended, we got to see the great Ramon Argueso’s Orchestra play. He had been playing at Roseland since 1948. Here's what his orchestra sounded like:
This was released in the early 1950s on the SMC (Spanish Music Center) Pro-Arte label in New York City but his sound hadn’t changed much in 1982.
It was during those nights at the Village Gate and the Roseland, while I was beginning my Jazz Journey, I was also getting my feet wet in the Latin music scene.
This week on the Big River called Jazz we’ll explore the world of early Afro-Cuban Jazz.
Growing up I had very little exposure to Latin music. That’s not surprising given I grew up in a town from a state that borders Canada rather than Mexico. My parents had only a few albums, mostly movie or Broadway soundtracks and they didn’t play music in the house. But we did have a TV. So the first Latin music I recall hearing, even before Mann’s Et Tu Fluté, was strangely in the Fred Astaire movies Flying Down to Rio and You Were Never Lovelier.
In particular, I remember Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth dancing to Latin music in the 1936 RKO film You Were Never Lovelier.
Astaire called the film’s tap dance number Audition Dance, “One of my best solos." It was his first solo tap routine with a Latin theme:
The film also featured Astaire and Hayworth dancing with Xavier Cugat’s Orchestra (who makes a cameo) on a number called The Shorty George, a synthesis of American Swing or Jive, and tap dancing. The title refers to a popular dance step of the time, attributed to George "Shorty" Snowden. Snowden was a black dancer at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom and some say the inventor of the Lindy Hop, perhaps more commonly known as the Jitterbug.
Hayworth surprisingly holds her own against Astaire here. But then again, she was already a dancer.
She was born in Brooklyn and given the name María Margarita del Carmen Cansino by her Sevillian father and Irish mother. Her paternal grandfather, Antonio Cansino, was a renowned classical Spanish dancer. He popularized the bolero and owned a world-famous dance school in Madrid. He gave his grandaughter her first dance lessons. In 1927, her father, Eduardo Cansino, took the family to Hollywood. He established his own dance studio, where he taught Hollywood stars like James Cagney and Jean Harlow.
Hayworth later recalled, “From the time I was three and a half ... as soon as I could stand on my own feet, I was given dance lessons. I didn't like it very much ... but I didn't have the courage to tell my father, so I began taking the lessons. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, that was my girlhood.” While dancing with her father in Tijuana, Xavier Cugat noticed her and set out to make her a star, beginning by changing her last name. She was the first woman to front Cugat’s orchestra.
Interestingly, The Shorty George was arranged by American jazz multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, and arrange Lyle "Spud" Murphy, who from 1938 to 1939 recorded for Decca and Bluebird Records and in the 1940s moved to Los Angeles to work in studios and film music. In 1955, he released the 10” album Four Saxophones in Twelve Tones:
This was the first recording utilizing Murphy's 12-tone system of composition. It also featured Frank Morgan on saxophone. You can read more about Morgan here:
Murphy is an interesting cat, and we should meet up with him again a little further down the river…
Although the location in You Were Never Lovelier is supposed to be Buenos Aires, there’s little in the film that reveals its Latin influence, besides Cugat’s music.
For example, there’s a scene in the movie where Cuban musician Miguelito Valdés is singing Bim Bam Bum in the background with the Cugat Orchestra. The song was later released on the Decca label with Valdés singing with Machito and his Afro Cubans:
Havana-born icon Miguelito Valdés was a boxing champion in his twenties before turning to music professionally.
In 1937 Valdés joined Orquesta Casino and cut some sides with RCA-Victor Records, achieving enough fame to do a big tour of Latin America in 1939. In 1940, he joined Orquesta Riverside, a highly successful Cuban big band, before moving to NYC. He soon found work with Cugat and became his star singer.
You can argue that Cugat’s band was not the greatest Latin-American band, but certainly no other Latin bandleader ever captured the fancy of the American public more than he did. In many ways, it was his popularity not only in film but on the radio that opened the door for Machito, Tito Puente, and Afro-Cuban Jazz.
Xavier Cugat’s success is so widespread that his early influence on Latin music is often overlooked.
Along with Brazilian Carmen Miranda, Cugat was the most famous name in Latin music in the 1930s and 1940s.
Born in Spain, his family moved to Cuba when he was four years old. He was a skilled violinist and played with the Havana Symphony before moving to Los Angeles in 1921. He befriended silent movie star Rudolph Valentino, who encouraged him to form a band. Following that advice, Cugat formed the band The Kings of the Tango. By 1931, Cugat and his orchestra played at the grand opening of The Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. He and his band remained its house band for decades.
It was common for top Cuban musicians newly arrived in the U.S. to spend time in Cugat’s orchestra. For example, from 1940 to 1942, Miguelito Valdés became Cugat’s star singer. He made the recording of Babalu famous before Desi Arnaz, another Cuban singer and conga player who joined Cugat’s Orchestra, adopted it as his theme song.
Although Desi Arnaz is most known as Ricky Ricardo in the TV show I Love Lucy, Arnaz was an important factor in the growth of Afro-Cuban Jazz.
A descendant of Cuban nobility, Arnaz grew up in a wealthy family. His father, Alberto Arnaz, was Santiago's youngest mayor and also served in the Cuban House of Representatives. His mother's father was Alberto de Acha, one of the three founders of Bacardi Rum. However, the Cuban Revolution of 1933 forced Arnaz and his family to lose everything. His father was jailed and all of his property was confiscated. After he was released from prison, with no money, the family fled to Miami. His son Desi’s first jobs included working at Woolworths and cleaning canary cages in Miami. After high school, he formed a band, the Siboney Septet, and began making a name for himself in the music community around Miami.
In 1936, after seeing him perform, Cugat hired Arnaz for his touring orchestra, playing the conga drum and singing. His conga solos helped introduce the instrument to American audiences. He soon became a star and left Cugat to start his own band, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra, which became a hit in New York City's club scene, including a club named La Conga, where he is credited with introducing the conga line dancing to the U.S.
Arnaz came to the attention of Rodgers and Hart who, in 1939, cast him in their Broadway musical Too Many Girls. The show was a hit and RKO Pictures bought the movie rights. Arnaz went to Hollywood the next year to film the movie version, which also starred Lucille Ball. Arnaz and Ball fell in love during the film's production and eloped on November 30, 1940.
In another odd Fred Astaire/Latin music connection, Ball also appeared in several Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers RKO musicals. Here she is as a featured model in Roberta (1935):
Ball also appeared as a flower shop clerk in Top Hat (1935), and in a brief supporting role as Kitty at the beginning of Follow the Fleet (1936).
It was through Hollywood that Latin bands were introduced to the American public and at the forefront was Xavier Cugat blending popular music with Latin rhythms; however, in general, Latin music and jazz were still separate.
In his book Afro-Cuban Jazz, Scott Yanow identifies four important events in the late 1930s and early 1940s that permanently changed that dynamic and opened the door to the merging of Afro-Cuban music and Jazz:
1.) In Cuba, Arsenio Rodríguez introduced the conjunto, an expansion of the popular septeto, that brought more fire to the more “polite” Latin dance bands.
2.) The conga became a major instrument in Latin music. Again, Rodríguez added the conga to his conjunto. When the charismatic Desi Arnaz introduced the conga to American audiences, it became a permanent spotlight in Afro-Cuban bands.
3.) In the late 1930s, Rodriquez’s conjunto and Antonio Arcaño’s charanga, a more traditional ensemble that played Cuban dance music, introduced the mambo rhythm. It was later popularized by Pérez Prado.
4.) Machito organized his orchestra the Afro-Cubans in 1940. The following year, his brother-in-law, Mario Bauzá, joined the band as musical director, arranger, and trumpeter. He convinced Machito to hire skilled jazz musicians in the horn section.
These four key events brought a well-spring of talented Cuban musicians in contact with American jazz musicians. According to Yanow:
By 1943, when Bauzá wrote what is considered to be the first Afro-Cuban Jazz Song (Tanga), Machito’s orchestra was becoming jazz oriented. The Afro Cuban rhythms were better suited to bebop than to swing, so when bebop began becoming prominent in 1945, Machito’s ensemble was leading the way in the Latin music world, inspiring both Stan Kenton and Dizzy Gillespie to expand the sounds, vocabularies, and rhythms of their orchestras.
In December 1945, Bauzá met Chano Pozo while Machito’s orchestra was visiting Cuba and encouraged him to come to New York.
He arrived in May 1946 and found work difficult. It was Miguelito Valdés who later called Bauzá to help out Pozo. Bauzá arranged for a meeting with Dizzy Gillespie, who added Pozo to his big band. On December 30, 1947, they recorded Manteca:
Manteca marks what some consider the official fusion of Afro-Cuban music and Jazz.
On December 2, 1948, a few hours after he beat up a Cuban for selling him weak marijuana, Pozo was shot and killed in the El Rio Bar at 111th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem. He was not yet 34 years old.
In 1948, by the time Cuban arranger Chico O’Farrill arrived in New York City, the fusion of Afro-Cuban music and jazz was already complete. That ground work was laid by Machito and arrangers like Rene Hernandez and Mario Bauzá. However, O’Farrill help take it even further when he started working with established swing and jazzmen Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton, and Norman Granz. On December 21, 1950, Granz produced O’Farrill’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite with Machito’s orchestra along with Charlie Parker, Flip Phillips, and Buddy Rich. Bauzá played trumpet and was the musical director.
In 1952, Charlie Parker recorded South of the Border for Granz’s Mercury label. He was backed by Bauzá on trumpet and Machito, Jose Mangual Sr., Luis Miranda, Ubaldo Nieto, on percussion.
In 1954, when Cal Tjader came to New York to see Machito’s Orchestra, he returned to the West Coast and formed the Cal Tjader Modern Mambo Quintet. As a result, by the mid-1950s, from coast-to-coast, Afro-Cuban Jazz was on its way.
Here’s one more for the road. Since it’s tax season, I thought this was appropriate:
After you pay your taxes, relax and play mambo...
Next week, on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in and explore the world roots rock of Ry Cooder.
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Until then, keep on walking….
One of the things I love about Afro Cuban jazz is that it has undergone all of the history and evolution of other musical genres, more actually because it is rooted in folkloric music that is thousands of years old. What is also cool is that some of the early free jazz was created by Afro Cuban players like Sabu Martínez. Thank you for this.