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From '50s NYC clubland, a Yma Sumac-inspired version of "Babalu" by jazz/calypso singer Phyllis Branch.
Category Archives: Latin
Office Naps Middle Eastern Mix
The third installment of the Office Naps mix, and it’s all over the place. From Turkish wah-wah guitars and ’60s garage ragas to Yusef Lateef’s Mecca-wise wail, it’s Middle Eastern only in the loosest possible sense of the term. If … Continue reading
Watermelon Man
A young Herbie Hancock – all of twenty-two years old and fresh from Takin’ Off, his debut album on Blue Note Records – introduced his “Watermelon Man” (hear excerpt here) to the Cuban-born conguero and bandleader Mongo Santamaria one slow, … Continue reading
West Coast boogaloo
More this week on the Latin music scene of post-War California, a scene that I find endlessly fascinating and frustratingly undocumented. Boogaloo was a mid-‘60s phenomenon original to New York City’s Spanish Harlem, a juiced-up mash of popular Latin dance … Continue reading
West Coast Latin jazz
Latin jazz on the West Coast was something different than it was on the East. It was something that percolated its way down through California’s diffuse network of musicians, attracting its adherents from the Mexican-American and African-American communities, the scattering … Continue reading
The Naked City
The late 1950s through the mid-1970s were golden years for television, Hollywood and the crime jazz soundtrack, years when staccato piano chords lurked around every dark corner, and every chase scene was heralded with a steady gallop of bongos. This … Continue reading
Boogaloo
The boogaloo was a fascinating musical phenomenon of 1960s Spanish Harlem, an organic result of both the Puerto Rican community’s proximity to the city’s African-American neighborhoods, and the popular, pervasive influence of 1960’s soul music. Joe Cuba (“Bang Bang”), Ray … Continue reading
West Coast Latin jazz
Three different Latin jazz combos this week. They sprang from the fascinating Latin jazz world of ’50s and ’60s California (the Bay Area and Los Angeles, in this case). These were diffuse scenes. They drew their devotees from the Mexican-American … Continue reading
Bossa America
The Bossa Nova had already been maturing in Brazil for several years when, in 1959, the movie Black Orpheus first broke the sounds of Luiz Bonfa and Antonio Carlos Jobim to a larger American and European audience. The wheels were … Continue reading
