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From '50s NYC clubland, a Yma Sumac-inspired version of "Babalu" by jazz/calypso singer Phyllis Branch.
Category Archives: Latin
Señor Blues
It’s impossible to talk about jazz pianist Horace Silver without regurgitating the same plaudits that, in reality, are entirely accurate. To begin with, Silver is a consistent and prolific composer with an enviable body of original material to his name. … Continue reading
Vibraphones, flutes and California Latin jazz
I’ve posted extensively about Afro-Latin music in California (here, here, here and here). The subject fascinates me, so I’ll try not to belabor the point too much. Latin jazz in the post-War Bay Area and Los Angeles was a diffuse, … Continue reading
Naked City Latino
Few of Tinseltown’s directors, writers, cinematographers or creative minds – and certainly none of its soundtrack and television composers – turned a blind eye to opportunism in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Each location or genre came with its familiar set … Continue reading
West Coast boogaloo, part two
(Ed. Note: More this week on West Coast versions of the quintessential ‘60s Spanish Harlem musical phenomenon, the boogaloo, that fusion of black R&B; aesthetic with Latin rhythms and orchestration. Broadly speaking, the boogaloo’s West Coast cousins tended to be … Continue reading
Bossa America, part two
(Ed. Note: This is essentially a continuation of an earlier Office Naps installment on American versions of the Bossa Nova. That first post can be found here.) It’d started in the mid-‘50s with sophisticated young Rio musicians hooked on American … Continue reading
Cinema funky
Just as its antecedents in the mid-‘60s had their sitar interludes and fuzztone atmospherics, the hipper cinema of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s oozed with wah-wah guitars, jazz basslines and funky backbeats. And why not? Whatever Tinseltown’s machinations, film … Continue reading
2007/09/24
Posted in Exotica/Space-Age, Jazz Obscura, Latin, Miscellaneous Flotsam, Now Sound, Soul
7 Comments
Roscoe Weathers, pt. 2
(Ed. note: This is part two of a post about the great ‘60s West Coast jazz and Latin jazz musician Roscoe Weathers. Weathers is a recurring source of fascination for me. Various bits, sub-factoids and dead end details have trickled … Continue reading
Latin funk
Funk and salsa, as musical forms, were both ascendant in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. They were forms that were nourished within culturally aware, politically mobilized communities. According to the tradition that America will always co-opt its most disenfranchised, … Continue reading
