New York and the International Sound of Latin Music, 1940-1990 by Benjamin Lapidus

Author:Benjamin Lapidus [Lapidus, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: music, Genres & Styles, Latin
ISBN: 9781496831286
Google: XkmKzQEACAAJ
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2021-11-15T23:49:35.494813+00:00

PUERTO RICAN MUSICIANS AND THE PURSUIT OF JAZZ

As I detail in chapter 1, musicians who played Latin music sought lessons in orchestration, harmony, and basic instrumental technique at local music schools and through private instruction. Pianist Gilberto “Pulpo” Colón Jr. connected with his teacher, the Panamanian jazz pianist Nicolás Rodríguez. At the same time, Colón studied solfeo with Alberto Socarrás. Like his Puerto Rican contemporaries, Socarrás had made a name for himself as a jazz flautist despite being Cuban. This combination of formal and calle (street) study gave players like “Pulpo” Colón a personal sound that was sought out by bandleaders such as Ray Barretto and Hector Lavoe. In fact, Ray Barretto complimented Colón’s sound, because he wasn’t only a great technician but his chords and solos sounded like “he had dirt under his fingernails,” thus personifying this balance between school and street.65

Bobby Valentín is a well-known salsa bandleader, arranger, and bassist who began his career aspiring to be a great jazz trumpeter. Born in Puerto Rico, Valentín moved to New York City in 1956. In an interview with George Rivera, Valentín recalls:

I was 15 going on 16. I went to New York and studied at George Washington H.S. in Washington Heights. I had some good teachers there and I continued studying the trumpet and music. I was also studying trumpet with Carmine Caruso privately. I also studied with Clyde Resinger. I don’t know if you remember him. He’s an old-timer. I use to practice on forty-eighth Street near Manny’s. There was a rehearsal studio there. I use to pay just twenty-five cents an hour. That was when I started with Joe Quijano. We had started a group with Chu Hernandez that we named Los Satelites. It was just a local band. Professionally I started with Joe Quijano. At the studio I mentioned before I would practice with Art Farmer, Clyde Resinger, and this classical trumpet player by the name of Louie Mucci. We would form trumpet trios and quartets. I learned a lot from those guys. I would ask them a lot of questions and they would teach me many things. That was how I learned most of the music theory I know. From the street and books. I started playing professionally in 1958 with Joe Quijano. I then went on to Willie Rosario’s orchestra afterwards. I started arranging while with Willie’s band.66

On the 1965 album Young Man with a Horn, Valentín is pictured on the cover with a flugelhorn, like Farmer. Although the album focused on boogaloo, there is a heavy jazz influence reflected in the material, specifically in the song selection, the horn voicings (heard on “Que pollito”), and the influence of bebop phrasing on the solo improvisations (“The Gate” and “Óyeme bien”). Valentín can be clearly heard playing an idiomatic jazz trumpet solo on Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father” (1:40–2:26).67 Valentín’s next album, El mensajero, featured many tunes categorized on the back of the album as mambo-jazz.68

Johnny Colón and Joe Torres are two other important contemporaries of Valentín’s.

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