barry rogers

7/29/2019 Barry Rogers

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07/12/99

Profile: Barry RogersA profile of the much respected,

highly innovative and dearly missedtrombone player.

Barry Rogers:Salsero, Searcher,World Musician

by David Carp [email protected]

In 1990, trumpeter Ray Vega madetrombonist/ethnomusicologist Christopher Washburneaware of Eddie Palmieri's "Pginas de Mujer,"introducing it with the words, "This is your bible,study it hard." The specific bit of chapter and versereferred to was a 24 measure trombone solo playedby Barry Rogers. It's not just brass players who feelthis way, as evidenced by a recent statement bypianist Oscar Hernndez. "I knew all of Barry's solosby heart, I could sing them all. I could say that Barryis probably the instrumentalist other than pianiststhat had the biggest influence on me." In a 1967Saturday Reviewarticle, the art historian andmambophile Robert Farris Thompson predicted thescope of the Rogers influence. "The chief proponentsof this music [salsa] , a new solution to the problemof Afro-Latin form, are two intelligent New Yorkersnamed Eddie Palmieri and Barry Rogers.... I do not
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think that it is an exaggeration to suggest that theEddie Palmieri ensemble is artistically the mostpromising dance band now performing in the UnitedStates." The promise sensed by Thompson more thanthirty years ago was fulfilled; salsa became one of

the world's major dance musics. Eddie Palmieri's rolein this development has been acknowledged, at leastin part. The same can hardly be said for his chiefcollaborator.

True enough, it was evident to 1960's habitus of thePalladium Ballroom or the Palm Gardens that the tall,skinny blanquito with long hair taking the trombonesolos wasn't Cuban or Puerto Rican. It was equallyevident that this didn't matter, and it was even moreevident that everyone danced their toochises offwhenever he played. For thirty years it's been quietlyacknowledged that the trombone presence in thesound of salsa was ushered in by un otro judomaravilloso. What hasn't been acknowledged is howthis same man blurred distinctions between culturaloutsiderdom and insiderdom as few have ever done.What isn't known is how this same person broughtthe white heat of salsa into the musical smeltingfoundry known by the mid 1970's as fusion. What'srarely mentioned is his flair for directing musicians in

a studio setting, and his uncanny sense of how totransform raw tape into finished product. It's hard tobelieve how one individual could express himself withas much competence and as much passion and havemoved and inspired as many fellow humans as didBarry Rogers. Critical assessment is long overdue;hopefully, this article will help narrow, if ever soslightly, this gap between achievement andappreciation.

Bronx roots and beginningsBarron W. Rogers (a name that he cordially detested)was born in the Bronx on May 22, 1935. Descendedfrom Polish Jews who came to New York via London,the Rogers family (original name: Rogenstein)possessed abundant musicality. As youngsters livingin East Harlem, Barry's father William and several ofhis uncles sang in the choir of Joseph Rosenblatt, one


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of the great cantors of the twentieth century. Thenatural beauty of their voices was matched byimprovisational gifts; family legend also maintainsthat William Rogers showed enough ability as asculptor to have been offered an apprenticeship to Sir

Jacob Epstein. The only member of this generation topursue the arts professionally was Barry's uncleMilton, who maintained an active career as a pianist,composer, educator and bandleader (and whomBarry credited as a major role model.) The realities ofthe Great Depression guided William Rogers in adifferent direction. Also a gifted student of thenatural sciences, he opted for a job teaching highschool biology in the New York City schools. Hischarisma and personal charm had an unforgettableimpact on several generations of young Bronxites;the Rogers family recalls numerous former pupils whokept in touch with him long after their graduationfrom public school. This was equally true of Barry'smother Phyllis Lacompte Taylor, a brilliant zoologistwho also taught public school science. A woman ofmixed WASP and French roots whose ancestors cameto the United States during the eighteenth century,she was a perfect candidate for DAR membershipother than her leftist political orientation. A fiercelyindependent spirit long before women's liberation

officially existed, Phyllis Rogers's teaching careercoexisted with a considerable amount of fieldresearch in Mexico, the Caribbean basin, and Africa.These trips inspired her to study the traditionalmusics she encountered from an anthropologicalperspective, which was accomplished largely throughcollecting field recordings and commercially issueddiscs. As a child and young adolescent, Barry wasexposed to both folkloric and popular music fromWest Africa, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Family

members and friends believe that records of late1940's New York mambo music were also broughthome by Mrs. Rogers. In an interview with RobertFarris Thompson, Barry made it clear that hearingTito Puente's "Babarabatiri" was his equivalent of St.Paul viewing Damascus; there would be no turningback. Given his listening experiences and hismaternal influences, it's hardly surprising that during


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his teen years Barry became passionate about Afro-Cuban music in all of its manifestations. His wifeLouise Rogers remembers one very unique and long-lasting expression of this addiction. "One thing hereallydid well and always amazed me, he could do

this sort of old man coro singing. He sounded like oneof those little wizened guys in La Sonora Matancera.He would screw his face up and the trombone wouldhang on his arm and this funny voice would come outof his mouth and it never came out at any othertime." Barry was one of the few New Yorkers whoactively collected African records during the 1950's.This was one of many interests he shared over theyears with percussionist Ernest Philip "Phil" Newsum,who offered the following observation: "Either itdidn't turn him on or it was great music, but nothingwas ever strange to him. It seems like everything heheard he could understand right away. It madesense, it was comprehensible. Sometimes he wouldscare me because he could catch on to things sofast." Much of Barry's demonstrated ability toassimilate sounds from other cultures is readilyexplainable in light of the music he heard both beforeand during the onset of puberty.

By age thirteen, another obsession had entered Barry

Rogers' life - cars. One result was a spectacular lossof interest in school, accompanying an equallyprecipitous drop in grades. After a brief period atEvander Childs High School, Barry transferred toBronx Vocational, a school attended by few Bronxitesof his ethnicity and family background. One of Barry'sfriends from this period, a drummer named LennySeed, observed: "You'd go to his house and there'dbe engine parts all over the place. He could fix carsand he was into hot-rodding when I first met him.

He'd hang around with all these hot rod guys in theBronx, not musicians. Black leather jacket guys, youknow? There was a funny thing at his memorialservice, when Mike Brecker spoke he said, 'BarryRogers was the first Jewish guy I ever met that knewhow to fix a car'." By the time he arrived at BronxVocational, Barry already had a year or so oftrombone playing under his belt (it is not known


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exactly how old Barry was when he began playing,his son Chris thinks that he may have started at agesixteen.) One of Barry's extracurricular activities atBronx Vocational was playing in a small mixed Latincombo of students that included a Dominican

saxophone and clarinet player named JohnnyPacheco. It wasn't long before Barry was introducedto percussionist Benny Bonilla, pianists RupertBranker and Arthur Jenkins, and other Bronx Latinmusic performers. It must be pointed out that non-Latin residents of Harlem, Morrisania, and Bedford-Stuyvesant had easy access to Latin music throughlocal record stores, black-oriented radio stations andlive venues. In fact, it was not unheard of for African-American teenaged musicians to be hooked on Latinbefore becoming jazz players. It was in this particularmilieu that Barry Rogers obtained his first significantexperience in playing Latin music, rather than in acontext of playing in all-Latin bands for strictly Latinaudiences.

Chicken and booze

By the early 1950's Barry was playing Latin musicwith groups of Latinos, black Americans and whiteethnics in lounges, dance halls, and nightclubs all

over Harlem and the Bronx. He had also discoveredjazz and began frequenting Branker's, Count Basie's,and any clubs that held jam sessions. The spring of1956 marked the beginning of his most significantpre-Palmieri musical experience, a band led by anAfrican American tenor saxophonist named HugoDickens. The bread and butter of Hugo's work (andthat of competitors such as David Preudhomme "JoePanama," Alfred Du Mire "Al La Paris," and Henry"Pucho" Brown) was dances thrown by the African

American social clubs of Harlem, a thriving sceneduring the 1950's. Although a soft-spokengentleman, Hugo always had the ability to relate wellto club members and promoters; in his heyday (ca.1955 to 1960) he was able to provide regular (if nothigh paying) employment. The work consisted offashion shows, afternoon cocktail sips, and "chickenand booze" dances (audience members reserved


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tables and broughttheir own brown bagsand bottles.) Theseaffairs took place atHarlem venues such

as the SavoyBallroom, DawnCasino, AudubonBallroom, RocklandPalace, BroadwayCasino, Royal Manor,

Renaissance Ballroom, and the Celebrity Club. It wastaken for granted that a musician working the"chicken and booze" circuit would be able to playjazz, rhythm and blues, calypso, and Latin. This wasparticularly true of Hugo's various units, consideringthe caliber of many of his musicians (Marty Sheller,Bobby Porcelli, Bobby Capers, Peter Sims "Pete LaRoca," Eddie Diehl, Hubert Laws, Ted Curson, andRodgers Grant are only a few of Hugo's better knownside musicians.) Barry's arrival in the Dickensorganization more or less coincided with Hugo'sdecision to reduce the size of the group. A long timeDickens-ite, Phil Newsum recalls the transition."Before Barry came into it the band was really chart-bound. But when Hugo put the big band aside and we

started going out with the three horn front line, Barryreally took over how it was organized. Hugo handledthe business but Barry would say, hey, you do thisand I'll do this and you do that. We weren't usingcharts, it was all head arrangements. And thefreedom that it gave everybody made all the guysreally happy because not being bound by the charts,everybody who had this kind of jazz dispositionanyway, they felt like they had unlimited freedom tobe creative, which they did. And the band kind of

took off and everybody's morale went up, we werejust one happy bunch of dudes. A lot of that I believewas due to Barry."

This freewheeling atmosphere was an ideal settingfor developing the concept of playing "hard bop" a laArt Blakey or Horace Silver with the underpinning ofauthentic Afro-Cuban rhythm. A key point of origin


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for this approach can be found in the early 1950'sconjunto recordings of Tito Rodrguez, many of whichwere very popular in Harlem. Phil Newsum citesRodrguez's version of "Sun Sun Babae" in thiscontext. "The break in 'Sun Sun Babae,' the one with

the repeated rhythmic figure - it wasn't alwaysexactly the same but Rodrguez incorporated asimilar type of thing in one tune after another. Eventhe later ones like 'Ol' Man River,' they had threebreaks in the middle and then the rhythm wouldcome in, there would be a piano break and therhythm would come in. He incorporated ostinatofigures in the middle of a lot of his mambos and thenhaving the rhythm come in behind in furious - it wasvery effective, it was wonderful. But all of the stuffthat those conjuntos recorded was very rhythmicallyoriented and really appealed to the black communityof Harlem. They really identified with it because itminimized the amount of Spanish and maximized therhythm, so that the language didn't mean much." Allof Hugo's sidemen and numerous audience membersspeak fondly of Dickens' "Ol' Man River Mambo."Other numbers frequently recalled are "Speak Low,""Nica's Dream," "Old Devil Moon" and "SpontaneousCombustion"; typical Cuban tunes in the bookincluded cha chas such as "Chanchullo" and "Los

Marcianos" and the danzn "Almendra." Whetherbased on the changes of a 32 bar song or on themore open form characteristic of a montuno, solosfrom alto player Bobby Porcelli, trumpeter MartySheller, and Barry Rogers were common.

Not much recorded evidence of African Americanexperiments with Latin music characteristic of thelater '50's has survived. There are no knowncommercial recordings of any of Hugo Dickens'

groups; the best existing documentation consists of 8millimeter films taken by Barry (unfortunately thereare no soundtracks.) One of the most frustratingexamples of this situation is the lack of anyrecordings of Hugo's experimentation with multipletrombones. An eyewitness for this trend is SteveBerros, Junior, who by 1961 was playing bothtrumpet and percussion with Latin-oriented uptown


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groups. He remembers the presence of twotrombones in some of Hugo's interpretations of "Ol'Man River," "Work Song," "Chanchullo," "Nica'sDream" and "Saint Thomas"; other trombonistsbesides Barry included Steve Pulliam, John Gordon

and Jack Hitchcock. Steve Berros and otherinformants remember that one trombone would playrepeated riff figures and the other one would respondto these figures by soloing in a call-and-responsestyle. It's experiences such as this that Barry recalledin a 1977 WBAI-FM interview with Pablo "Yoruba"Guzmn. "It was a school for us all, that's where Iwas really first exposed to Latin music. And boy, did Ilearn a few things about the world and life and music,that was my first experience with really heavyplaying. And when I came out of that I ran into Eddieand I just threw in there what I had learned in thepast three or four years with Hugo's group." It's noaccident that all of the surviving participants in theSab Martnez and his Jazz Espagnole recording areHugo Dickens alumnae. The importance of MongoSantamara's post-charanga groups to the emergingLatin jazz of the 1960's is undisputed; key Mongosidemen such as Bobby Capers, Rodgers Grant,Hubert Laws, Bobby Porcelli, and Marty Sheller are allgraduates of the Hugo Dickens Academy. Perhaps the

most far-reaching importance of the uptown Latin-oriented scene is that this is clearly where BarryRogers developed a personal interpretation ofAfrican-based music that was to reach its full fruitionwith Eddie Palmieri's La Perfecta. For this reason,Hugo Dickens and his colleagues can lay claim to nosmall portion of salsa's patrimony.

Perfecting La Perfecta

One of salsa's most influential figures began as abandleader in 1960, when the use of this word as amagnificently effective catch-all phrase was verymuch a thing of the future. Active at first frontingtrios for weddings, bar mitzvahs and hotelengagements, Eddie Palmieri longed for a vehicle toplay the rugged Cuban music so dear to his heart.The key to reaching this goal became considerably
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clearer after avisit to a socialclub called theTritons, locatedabove Loew's

Spooner Theatrein the Hunts Pointsector of theBronx. This iswhere Eddieheard Barryjamming with thelikes of Johnny

Pacheco and the rest was history - this, at least, ishow Eddie usually tells the story. Trumpet player Joede Mare remembers leading a Louis Prima-styleshuffle band that included both Barry and Eddie; deMare claims that Barry was aware of Eddie's rhythmicgenius from the get go. Not surprisingly, one of theearliest instrumentations that Eddie used to expresshis musical vision was a conjunto. Here's Barry's firstmemory of the next stage. "We started with onetrombone and a rhythm section and a singer and thatwas the group. 'Cause when we got together andjammed it just blew everything away. So he got ridof the trumpets and we just worked as a quintet for

some time. Then we added George Castro on fluteand the last thing to come in was the secondtrombone, that was at least a year after we startedthe group."

The first regular second trombonist with La Perfectawas Mark Weinstein. Although he can be seen in thephotograph on the cover of the Alegre album EddiePalmieri: La Perfecta, the second trombone parts areactually played by a Brazilian named Joao Donato.

After approximately one year Mark moved to Europeand was replaced by Joe Orange, another excellentjazz trombonist. During the year of Joe's tenure thealbum El Molestoso was recorded (Mark Weinsteincame back for the bolero "Contento estoy," whichuses three trombones.) By the appearance ofLo QueTraigo Es Sabroso the second trombonist was JosRodrgues, a Dominican who had resided in Brazil for
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a number of years, and who stayed with Palmieriuntil 1974. Eddie Palmieri recalled what is consideredby all (including Weinstein and Orange) to be hismost successful trombone section. "Barry Rogers andJos Rodrgues were so opposite in what they

individually could do and we worked it that way. Forexample, Barry was involved in singing coro so whenwe'd play a mambo the first part would be given toJos or the highest notes would be given to him,anything that would make it easier for Barry, whoalways had problems with his lip. Fever sores, thatwas a problem. He taught himself to play thetrombone in the unorthodox way of learning and puttoo much pressure and that took a lot out of him.And even Jos Rodrgues told me once, 'If he keepsplaying the way he plays he's gonna die.' thatinstrument takes so much out of you and the way heplays! Just the recordings told you that, imagine live!Those trombones, when they used to get into a riffbehind the flute they don't stop and then Barry justtakes off and keeps going and we just kept pushingand pushing. That instrument is not an instrument tobe able to do that and they did it. And unfortunatelyit cost them dearly because they both passed away,they were both young."

La Perfecta's flute and two trombone lineup drewimmediate comparison with the instrumentation ofcharanga, which was still hot in New York; in fact,Charlie Palmieri baptized the group with the nametrombanga. But the model for Eddie's music wascertainly not charanga, at least in regard to musicalform. For Mark Weinstein, the model that inspiredEddie and Barry was Chapottn. "If you know enoughabout Cuban 78's from the '40's and early '50's youhear a lot of Eddie's arrangements. But think of the

Chapottn album that has a very sort of abstract,almost cartoon-y cover with Miguelito Cun. That'sthe best Chapottn, with 'Quimbomb' on it. And thatwas the model, there were a couple of otherconjuntos. But it wasn't really a matter of stealing.Because Eddie's band, bizarrely, was Cubanrevivalist, and the model of the tromboneimprovisation came from the way Chapottn, the
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soloist, would play against the trumpets. Then Barryextended that, but that was the model." One clearexample of the kind of "borrowing" described by Markis "La Gioconda" as recorded by Orquesta Aragn ontheir album Danzones de Hoy y Ayer. The uptempo

final section of the Aragn version opens the versionof this tune recorded by La Perfecta on El Molestosoalmost note for note. The main differences is thesubstitution of two trombones for violins and loweringthe key from E minor to C minor, which makes iteasily playable in its new instrumentation. Weinsteindescribes the "road map" for a representativePalmieri/Rogers chart. "You play down the head andthere'd be the first montuno, in the first montunoBarry would always be singing coro. And while thesinger was improvising Barry'd turn around andduring the four bars of the singer's improvisation hewould play something for me to play, picking it upeither out of the air or from something the singer hadsung or whatever. I then had to get it from him inthat interval and then if I didn't get it the first timehe'd do it again, if I didn't get it the second time hewas angry at me. Then I'd start playing that lick,Barry would join in playing the lick with me in unison,then in harmony and then the shit would happen.Barry would then start slowly, almost the way a sitar

player develops a solo, he would start to very slowlymove that lick into not quite a solo but into asequence of ever increasing sophistication. Weoutswung Tito's band with all of his fuckin' cymbals,with all of his triplets, with all of his sticks over hishead. Because when Barry would get the pots onthere was nothing in the world that was moreexciting, nothing, nothing! Not all of the high notes,not all of the screaming trumpets and thesaxophones. When Barry would start to move

through a sequence of improvisations there wasnothing in the world that was more exciting and thedancers loved Barry Rogers."

I'm reminded by the end of this last quote of a greatmambo dancer named Luis Flores, better known as"Luis Mquina." In a 1993 interview he told me, "TheSpanish salsa people are not listeners, we are


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dancers." The truth of this assertion can never beoverstressed when considering the music of LaPerfecta, or of any great dance orchestra; it's thedancers who are the quintessential consumers of theproduct. This is rarely discussed on any level other

than the most superficial in most print coverage ofLatin music. Considering the record collectingmindset that drives much writing on the subject, thisis hardly surprising. One of the few writers who hasconsistently put equal emphasis on dance and musicis Robert Farris Thompson. An early chronicler ofPalladium history, Thompson had ample opportunityto see La Perfecta in this setting. The Palladiumclosed its doors in 1966; two years later, he invitedBarry Rogers to lecture at Yale. It wasn't until thenthat he realized the depth of Barry's connection tomovement. "I had films from the Palladium with nosound, Barry looked at the screen and from the feetreconstructed the sound and played off the line of themusic. Now these little innocent Yale students hadnever heard Palladium-type intensity, I mean theyhad never heard a trombone that loud! Butremember, in the Palladium if it isn't all-out intensityyou're going lose your audience. Well, he wasPalladium trained so he had learned to pick up notesoff of the heels and toes of the people, he saw them

as eighth notes and whatever. Barry's genius was tohave such a highly defined inner pulse control in theAfrican sense, that if you look at the feet of the guysin the movie boom!, he was able to reconstruct whatkind of mambo they were dancing to, that it was afast batiri or a slow kain. He made me see the dancefloor as sheet music." One thing that Thompsonalways noticed about Palladium musicians in generalwas their athleticism. "I remember interviewingAlfred Levy, aka Alfredito, and asked him, 'Why didn't

you play the Palladium more?' He said, 'Well, thereason I don't play at the Palladium, man, thePalladium's a laundry!' I'll never forget that, thePalladium's a laundry, you've got to workand then Irealized, yeah! And I watched Barry play, sweatpouring down from his hair, his thick, athletic neck.The same thing with Gilbert Lpez, allthose guys, itwas like the Superbowl. That's another part of him, it


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may be that the strain of producing all out mambosounds at Palladium intensity may have weakened hisheart." When I asked Thompson if Barry Rogersparticipated in sports avocationally, he maintainedthat Barry's athletics were on the bandstand. "There's

an article about some people who overeat and remainthin, the study shows they fidget it off. Most of thesalseros are always fidgeting left to right. The Africanstyle is that you don'tplayan instrument, you danceit, and man, was he into that! He danced thetrombone as intensely as Johnny Pacheco danced hisflute." For anyone who remembers Pacheco in hisprime, that's saying a lot. By expressing themselveswith this kind of abandon, Pacheco and Rogers wentfar beyond putting on a great show. They bondedwith their audience to a very rare degree.

La Perfecta's initial audience was heavily PuertoRican, the majority ethnic group that patronizedBronx venues such as the Tritons and the CaravanaClub (Eddie's early '60's audiences at Brooklyn'schurch dances probably contained a strong Italianand Jewish element.) The crowd that Eddie won atthe Palladium was the African Americans. Someinsight into this process can be gained by listening toAfrican American low brass groups that play gospel-

inflected call and response patterns in Central Parkand other New York public spaces. Mark Weinsteindescribes the first time he heard the FabulousHummingbirds, a band of five trombones and a tuba."When I heard them I fell down because the leadtrombone player was doing exactly what Barry did!Now Barry really loved rhythm and blues, and whathe was doing was playing a rhythm and blues kind ofshout against a salsa vamp. But it wasn't until Iheard these guys, this trombone band from

somewhere in Saint Albans and South Jamaica, that Irealized that Barry had reallyinvented something,and it was using the trombone to play essentiallyvocalistic music using the inflections of the trombonethe way a voice could do it. 'Cause that's what thetrombone can do, it can do what a voice can do. SoBarry was playing trombone like a rhythm and bluessinger and that's what connected with the black


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audience." It's been said that Barry Rogers was oneof the first to play the trombone in the manner ofFelix Chapottn, Chocolate Armenteros, or any greatAfro-Cuban trumpet player - that is to say, like agreat sonero. Playing in the most typical Cuban way

possible was one of Barry's principal goals. He madeit his business to understand how the music wasstructured, so that he could play and write in amanner that grew organically from the music ratherthan imposing externally derived techniques. Hisunderstanding of tumbao was sound enough toenable him to play an occasional second conga partduring Tommy Lpez solos; considering Tommy'sdemands on a personal and musical level, this wasobviously no small feat! Barry's understanding ofCuban musical structures was further deepenedthrough intense listening to the music of ArsenioRodrguez and study of tres playing (he learned thisinstrument well enough to record with La Perfecta,Johnny Pacheco, and the Cesta All Stars.) Listeningto Cuban 78 rpm records with Manny Oquendo anddubbing many onto open reel tape provided a finesense of Afro-Cuban musical nuance. As much asBarry Rogers respected and loved the Cuban modelshe studied so assiduously, copying them was notenough. One fundamental difference between the

original and Barry's interpretation involves thefundamental grounding of typical Cuban brass soloingin diatonic harmony, with occasional chromaticpassages of an ornamental nature. The excellence ofBarry's ear and his jazz background enabled him tohear harmonies implied by the basic diatonic idiom,and to graft on extensions in a clear and logical way.Likewise, his experience both as a player andcollector of R & B allowed him to incorporate theblues scale into Latin music to an unprecedented

degree. The vocal inflections and rhythmic concept ofKing Curtis, James Brown, and other Rogers favoriteswere a rich stylistic vein he mined successfully for therest of his life. In listening to Barry's final solo on "NoMe Hagas Sufrir" (Eddie Palmieri - Eddie Palmieri)one is struck immediately by how Barry phrases,articulates, slides, and bends the pitches in a waythat bears amazing likeness to a great soul singer.


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For a listener with any experience whatsoever inlistening to R & B, it's easy to create words in one'sown mind for the trombone line, and to imagine OtisRedding singing them. It is this aspect of Barry'stalent that is one of the major factors in Eddie

Palmieri's success in reaching out beyond his ownculture.

The importance of Barry Rogers to Eddie Palmieri inso many ways and on so many levels is recognizedby everyone who ever worked with any of his groups.It's true that Eddie gained a lot from being aroundBarry; it's also true that Barry found La Perfecta tobe a tremendous learning experience. With MannyOquendo as the band's bongocero, timbalero, andCuban music guru in residence, how could it beotherwise? A less known aspect of how the EddiePalmieri experience benefited Barry is suggested byJoan Fagin, an English fashion designer and long timeclose friend of Barry's. "He felt that they hadcollaborated really well, that they were greattogether because Eddie could provide the basic ideaand he would develop it and do the arrangement.And that's how he preferred to work because hefound it very difficult to innovate himself, innovate inthe sense of creating a melody or anything like that.

He admired people who could do that, this includedhis wife Louise, who he said was very good at that,and Eddie, but he had trouble with that. Even just alittle phrase, he could do something with it but tostart from zero was not his thing."

One fascinating aspect of the Eddie/Barry symbiosisis La Perfecta's arrangements, specifically thetrombone writing. When it came time to create hornlines, Barry's experience as a listener to jazz records

and participant in jam sessions paid offtremendously. The trombone playing of J. J. Johnsonis often cited as a major influence on Barry, theobvious parallel being that between the J.J.Johnson/Kai Winding duo and Eddie's various twotrombone frontlines. In terms of approach to the hornitself, J.J. and Barry are night and day, J.J. havingthe more refined technique and Barry being the


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brasher and more strident of the two (there's more tofollow about Barry's relation with the trombone...).Joe Orange claims that Barry's favorite jazztrombonist of the early '60's was Julian Priester; hequotes Barry as saying that J.J. was a great player

but altogether too easy to superficially imitate.Perhaps the real substance found in the rather facilecomparison between Barry and J.J. can be found inexamining their approach to arranging. Although themusical contexts are certainly different, it's logical tocompare the J.J. and Kai Winding lineup with theBarry Rogers/Jos Rodrigus equivalent strictly interms of the parameters of how the instrumentsfunction. To begin with, the difficulty of writing fortwo trombones is the difficulty of any kind of two partcomposing. Searching the collected works of even thegreatest composers will yield very few masterpieceswritten for two single line instruments. Then there'sthe issue of the limitations of the instrument vis-a-visthe idiosyncrasies of manipulating the slide. This canbe true even for as great a technician as J.J. Johnson(for that matter, Barry Rogers was no slouch when itcame to slide technique.) The notes played by J.J.and Kai on their classic albums are cannily chosen fortheir intervallic weight and for their artful use of twoof the oldest devices in any composer's bag of tricks:

tension and release. It is especially in their balladwork that one can hear frequent use of diatonicdissonance, also known as "white note dissonance."Slow moving passages using voicings based onseconds or fourths open up a large number ofpossibilities for resolution, and these possibilities areused to their fullest potential.

No aspect of J.J. Johnson's musical landscape wasterra incognita for Barry Rogers, who knew J.J.'s

records and caught his club appearances. One of thegreat thrills of Barry's life was sharing the stage ofAmsterdam's Concertgebouw with J.J.'s group as amember of Jimmy Wormworth's American JazzQuintet in the summer of 1957. It's my contentionthat J.J.'s arranging concepts were absorbed byBarry, whether consciously or otherwise. Barry'seconomy as a writer is as pronounced as his economy


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as a player; this is obvious from listening to LaPerfecta albums. A listener can forget that there areusually only two trombones on these records, the earsometimes being fooled by the craft with which thenotes have been selected and the intensity with

which they have been played. When a third tromboneis available (an example being the bolero "ContentoEstoy"), it's also a shock that there are only threehorns; the mastery of shell voicings and clever use ofsimultaneous major and minor harmony is aguarantee for some gorgeous backgrounds for thelead instrument or voice. When we ask who wroteany of these arrangements (Joe Orange thinks thatthe three trombone version of "Contento Estoy" waswritten by Eddie), we may be posing anunanswerable question; in some ways, trying toseparate the Palmieri from the Rogers contributionsto a La Perfecta arrangement can be compared tounscrambling an egg. Eddie Palmieri has alwaysgiven Barry Rogers full credit for exposing him to atremendous variety of new musical ideas, particularlyfrom the cutting edge of early 1960's jazz. As noted,this relationship lacked fixed roles of teacher andstudent. Arranger and trumpet player Marty Shelleralluded to this type of musical symbiosis when Iasked him to comment on their mutual growth as

writers. "I think they both had the same way ofthinking about harmony. That's why it's almostinterchangeable, the arrangements that Barry woulddo and the arrangements that Eddie would do. It'salmost like Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn."Particularly worthy of note is a mutual interest inharmonic exploration, a topic which fascinated (andstill fascinates) Eddie Palmieri; this resulted ingenuine and wonderful forms of musical dialoguebetween Eddie and Barry. The trombone-based

introduction to the Palmieri composition "Solo Pensaren Ti" (from theAzcar pa' Tialbum) is replete withmystery and expectation, which is created by a kindof harmonic ambiguity between the keys of F minorand A flat minor. The harmonies outlined by theintervals of the two trombone parts are mirrored anddeveloped marvelously in a series of runs and otherpianistic devices improvised by Eddie. Exactly who


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created this arrangement? To me the real question isthis: could such an arrangement have been createdin any way other than the Palmieri/Rogerscollaboration?

With all of the sharing of ideas between the two keymusicians of La Perfecta, there is one aspect of themusic that clearly comes from Barry Rogers - thevoicing of the trombone parts. Joe Orangeremembers driving to the Palmieri home inBrentwood, New York in Barry's Volkswagen. "Eddiehad written out the charts on the piano, he hadcopied the trombone parts and we would play them.And then we would start to just discuss and changeand move things around so that it felt right for thetrombones. He really wrote for the trombone, otherthan the volume it's very comfortable playing Eddie'smusic on the trombone, the range is perfect. I'm surehe got that from Barry, the music lentitself very,very easily to the trombone." Compare Mon Rivera'scharts for three and four trombones with the hornparts created by Barry Rogers and Eddie Palmieri. Anintuitive man for whom making music was as naturalas breathing, Mon's arrangements used simplediatonic harmonies often presentedhomorhythmically. The chord changes are often

limited to tonic and dominant harmony, with anoccasional subdominant or other scale degree. Histriads are usually voiced as closely as possible;octaves are common. La Perfecta's charts show a fargreater degree of harmonic intricacy and jazzinfluence without sacrificing one iota ofsabor. OnMon Rivera's recordings the most common high notefor the trombones is the G above the piano's middleC; some A's and a very rare B flat can be heard.Sometimes it seems that where Mon's trombone

sections leave off range-wise, Eddie's begin. Much ofwhat Barry plays on La Perfecta albums lies betweenthe F above middle C and the C a fifth above thisnote. There's no question that his exploitation of aconsistently higher range than any previoustrombonist in Latin music contributed to much of LaPerfecta's visceral excitement. Writing in this rangealso has a practical advantage - the trombonist will


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normally have to use only the first three or fourpositions, and will not have to move the slide as faras playing parts written in a middle to lower range. Itis this middle to lower range where much of MonRivera's trombone parts are written. In addition to his

work with La Perfecta, Joe Orange subbed on MonRivera's band at dances and recorded with him. Heobserved: "You can hear a lot of trombone bandswhere the writer doesn't understand the instrumenthe's writing for like Eddie did, and that's thedifference. And you can even hear the awkwardnessin the execution, Mon's is kind of rough because hedidn't write for that upper middle register. His linesmay look easy on paper, but they can be a lot moreawkward than they look. But Eddie really knew wherethe sound of the trombone was, which is really inthat middle to upper register." It must be noted thatplaying in this range was one of the innovations ofinnovative trombonists of the late 1920's, givingthem a newly acquired facility compared with earlierplayers. As a student of the playing of JackTeagarden, Lawrence Brown, and J.C. Higginbotham,Barry Rogers understood this perfectly. It must alsobe said that the last thing on my mind is to show theleast particle of disrespect for the brilliance of MonRivera's rhythmic concept, his greatness as a sonero,

and the place he has won in the collective heart ofPuerto Rico. My point is that Eddie Palmieri and BarryRogers set the highest possible standards fortrombone writing, regardless of musical genre.

Eddie Palmieri's periodic financial and organizationalquagmires and struggles with his own personaldemons are well known within the Latin musicindustry. In his 1976 Down Beatinterview with writerJohn Storm Roberts, he addressed these issues with

great candor. 1968 was the last year in which BarryRogers worked for Eddie Palmieri on a regular basis(this was after his participation in the Champagnealbum). Over the next decade and a half he wouldreturn to the Palmieri organization on a per projectbasis. Recorded fruits of these later collaborationsinclude Sentido, The Sun of Latin Music, and EddiePalmieri, some of the greatest Latin music ever
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committed to disc. Nevertheless, Barry needed amore dependable way of supporting his family. Atemporary solution was joining the house band atLloyd Price's Turntable in October 1968 (this club wasknown as Birdland in its previous incarnation.) It was

also time for Barry to look for fresh musicalchallenges and play not only with New York's bestLatin musicians, but with New York's best musicians,period.

That f@#kin' trombone!

Before moving on to Barry Roger's life after LaPerfecta, it is important to examine his relationshipwith his chosen instrument. First, a few words on thisinstrument's relationship with the music itself (andonlya few words, the history of the trombone in Latinmusic is a topic very much worthy of its own article.)The early 1960's represents a watershed for Latintrombone playing. Up till this period trombones hadadded color and fullness of sound to the Latin bandsthat were open to using them and able to pay them(this is, of course, a vastly oversimplified statement.)For Ren Hernandz, Chico O'Farrill, and others whowrote "mambo music" in a layered fashion, having atrombone section added one more layer to interact

with trumpets and saxophones. This supplementaryrole was to change; by the end of the decade inquestion the trombone was established as an integralpart of salsa's front line. It's generally accepted thatLa Perfecta's popularity both with dancers and recordcollectors was the key factor in this change; it'saxiomatic that Barry's trombone playing has much todo with this. Never before had there been atrombone player in Latin music who was equallyfeatured - not even Beny Mor's "Tojo" Jimnez (who

Barry was very much aware of.) No one had evermade comparable use of the upper part of thetrombone's range, or played with anythingresembling his tonal and emotional intensity. It mayvery well be true that the experience of hearing LaPerfecta's recordings, as dynamic as they are, is onlya pale shadow of what was experienced at theirdances. This has been said by every dancer and


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musician with whom I'veever brought up this topic.However, La Perfecta'srecordings suggest theincredible volume level of

Eddie's trombone section,and Barry in particular.Simply put by Joe de Mare,"Big, fat sound, biggestsound I ever heard on atrombone!"Trombonistically speaking,how did Barry create his

sound? Answering this question requires us toconsider his unorthodox schooling: Mark Weinstein,Louise Rogers, and Chris Rogers agree that Barryprobably never took a trombone lesson in his life.Mark Weinstein expands further on this thought."Barry was not a schooled musician, he had prettygood natural setting on the trombone. One of the realtests of whether you have a good, balancedembouchure is whether you can go from the lowregister to the high register. I had an enormous lowregister, listen to "Lzaro y Su Micrfono" where thetrombone plays endlessly from low B flat to low C tolow F - I originated that lick, I was the first guy who

played it. But I had my jaw so spread that I couldn'tmove up from that register, I had to reset myembouchure. Not Barry, Barry could go down to thebottom. He didn't have a fat low register, as big asmine, but he could go easily from the bottom to thetop. He had good placement but he played withenormous pressure. He also played the high registeras a pressure player, never played above a high D,sometimes played mainly D flats. He also tendedwhen he wrote the charts - and his charts were

always the best charts, to be perfectly honest - towrite high and then he would always play lead. Joswas not a good lead player, Jos was a powerhousebut he was really comfortable in the middle and lowerregister. Now Barry didn't use as big a mouthpiece asI did but he may have used too big a mouthpiece andhe may have used too much top lip, I don't know. Imean when I think of Barry all I think of is a red


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piece of meat between his nose and his lower lip, Imean that he got from so much pressure."

This hyper-intense approach to the trombone wasexacerbated by an almost complete absence of the

kind of sound reinforcement taken for granted intoday's salsa world. "The thing that nobody realizesabout the '60's", continues Weinstein, "was that wedidn't have microphones, if there was one mike thesinger got it. Now Eddie always had an amp and thebass player always had an amp and Georgie wouldplay on the microphone and the trombone playerswould sweat, sweat blood. Oh, yeah! Barry wouldsometimes catch the edge of the microphone bypointing his trombone towards the microphone. Butbecause we were always playing during themontunos the singer was in the way. And the secondtrombone was more grueling in a way because younever got to relax your chops whereas Barry couldvary what he was playing. But to Barry music waseverything, and if in order to get something out hehad to jam the mouthpiece in and grind his lip intohis teeth he would do it. He also had cold soreproblems, he was very susceptible to cold sores andlike most brass players he'd get the cold sore right onthe rim. I mean he and I for a while were both Blistex

addicts - we would carry Blistex around, rub it on ourlips. Now think of a place like the Palladium, big barn,you knew you were playing loud enough when youwere bouncing off the back wall. Now that'stremendous volume!"

During a long and candid interview conducted withMark Weinstein, a picture began to emerge in mymind of a more or less continuous struggle betweenBarry and his chosen instrument. I asked Mark if

anyone had ever questioned whether the trombonewas the most appropriate vehicle for Barry's naturalgifts. His reply: "Barry and I never called it atrombone, we called it a fuckin'trombone. Man, thatwas it, I mean for Barry and I the trombone was afucking cross that you bear! We hatedthe fuckingthing because you couldn't do shitwith it! The fuckin'trombone, man, to go from a B flat to a B natural you


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go from first to seventh position, you have to movethree and a half feet. I mean that is stupid! And ifyou play it with the stupid trigger then you'recarrying all that extra weight in your left hand. Thetrombone stinks!" This was confirmed by others,

including Louise Rogers. "He always hated thetrombone. He studied over the years with a greatdiagnostician named Carmine Caruso and he workedat it and he was dutiful and fairly faithful. But hisheart wasn't really in being an instrumentalist, hisheart was in having a voice that he could speak withand that he had in spades always and that was hisreason for playing the trombone. He loved the soundof it, he loved the voice of it, he hated the problemsof it."

Young New York Latino musicians of the 1960's weremesmerized by the fiery trombones heard on LaPerfecta's records and in personal appearances. Onewas a teenaged Willie Coln, who became aware ofBarry's solo through Joe Cotto's hit recording"Dolores." A fledgling trumpet player, Willieimmediately memorized the solo and decided toswitch instruments: "When I first heard a trombonesolo by Barry I said, 'What the hell is that?' Itsounded like an elephant, it was so big and angry

and powerful and just brilliant. I started doubling onthe trumpet and trombone and then finally I droppedthe trumpet and I started a two trombone band. Andthat's when things really started happening becauseit was such a contrast from these big bands with allthe saxophones. You know, the old-timers would getup and they'd have like four trumpets, five saxes, aflute player, you know, a legion of musicians on thestage. And then we'd come up and it was like one ofthese little rap groups, two trombones and a rhythm

section. That became the standard of the salsa bandnow, if you listen to salsa radio now the rule is thatit's a trombone band." Or, if not literally a tromboneband, a trumpet-and-trombone frontline. One of themost common dispositions of these instruments istwo trumpets and two trombones, a scoring initiallypopularized by Larry Harlow (not coincidentally,many of Harlow's charts for these instruments were


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written by Mark Weinstein, one of Barry Roger'searliest disciples.)

There were older trombonists who were turned off bywhat they perceived as the crassness of this new

style. One of them was Jack Hitchcock, a veteran bigband musician who was no stranger to Latin music.His credits included work both as a trombonist andvibraphonist with Jos Curbelo and writing for bothHerbie Mann and the short-lived but excitingPatato/Mangual Band of 1960. The changingexpectations in Latin trombone playing were not tohis liking; by the 1970's he had left the Latin sceneand was making his living playing club dates. Whenasked what was expected of trombone players in theCharlie Palmieri Orchestra of the mid '60's, hisresponse was "Loud, louder and loudest." Hitchcocksaid: "You could almost blame Barry Rogers for whathappened to trombones in Latin music. I got to loveBarry a lot, man, we got very close but at the time Ihated his guts. Because I was essentially a rathersoft trombone player and I liked it that way. NowEddie Palmieri was the hot band and Barry and JosRodrgues, they pumped that stuff out and it was soloud, I mean it was incredible. Then Willie Colncomes up after him and says, 'That must be the way

you play!' So I mean all these guys are blatting awayand I finally got to play louder out of self-defense.'Cause whether I was with Orlando Marn or whoeverI was with it was, 'Hey, man, can't you play louder?','cause they didn't feel they were getting' theirmoney's worth. And poor Barry, he was sick half thetime, I mean he was always coming down with colds.He looked like death warmed over and it wasn'tbecause of drugs or anything like that, I think it justtook so much out of him."

Like many Latino trombonists coming up in the1970's, Angel "Papo" Vsquez received his first realincentive to master the instrument from listening toLa Perfecta records. Papo's first meeting with one ofhis idols provided some advice that surprised him."Barry told me, 'Listen, man, when you play withthese electric bass players, people with electric


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instruments, you put your bell into the microphone.'He kind of messed up his chops when he was withEddie Palmieri's band. They used to play real loudand he used to not use the microphone too much.And that's when they started using the baby bass,

the electric Ampeg bass and electric pianos and Iguess he out-blew his chops." It's a given amongbrass players that one's "chops" are slow to developand easy to mess up. When considering Barry's early"chop problems," it is important to keep in mind thatwhen La Perfecta was formed he had not beenplaying much more than ten years. Viewed in thecontext of a brass player's entire career, that's hardlyany time at all. Joe Orange has a story from thisperiod. "A couple of times I talked Barry into comingover to my house so we could play classical duetstogether. Barry couldn't play! I mean he could(makes loud noise) but he was doing that so muchthat when he had to play with a lot of control andsoftness and get into the high register he couldn't doit! Now the problem wasn't reading, he could read. Itwas his approach to the horn, he could just play whathe could play at that time." As surprising as it may beto hear a story like this about one of salsa'scanonized heroes, it makes sense when oneconsiders the length of time Barry had been playing

and the kind of work he was doing. I hasten to addthat Joe Orange is totally in awe of the greatness ofBarry's ears and the brilliance of his conceptions; he'son record as saying that Barry Rogers was the mostmusical trombone player he's ever heard.

Rather than studying with trombone players, it wasBarry's choice to seek help from non-trombone-playing instrumental diagnosticians. One of NewYork's most celebrated "chop doctors" was a

saxophone player named Carmine Caruso, who wasknown for extraordinary insight into how to make abrass player's lip, air, and psyche work productivelytogether. Barry's son Chris is a highly gifted trumpetplayer and composer/arranger, a featured soloist forfive years with Gerry Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band.He has also worked with many of the top Latingroups of the '80's and '90's. He was always aware of


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his father's search for self-improvement. "Hedefinitely practiced every day, I have vivid memoriesof him practicing. In fact if I listen to my childhoodcassettes of myself playing with my friends you canoften hear my dad practicing in the background.

Later on he was more comfortable with being able totake a few days off and be able to come back strong.But he had a very specific routine when he startedpracticing, you know, stuff for the brass embouchure.Carmine Caruso type slurring, harmonic exercises, hewould always do that to keep his range up."

It was only after abandoning full-time work in theLatin scene that Barry became successful in resolvinghis struggles with his chosen instrument; the need toplay "loud, louder and loudest" became a thing of thepast. Working regularly during the 1970's as arecording artist both facilitated and necessitated aless strident approach to playing. Generally speaking,musicians who spend most of their professional livesplaying for microphones play softer and with lesstonal edge than musicians who perform in largeconcert halls or who do most of their work with dancebands. The "fuzz and buzz" that makes the sound ofan instrument project well in a large space is worsethan unnecessary in a recording situation.

Microphones are very unforgiving of bright, edgytonal qualities, which tend to record poorly. Thisapproach became more and more internalized byBarry throughout the '70's. Still, it was impossible tomistake his playing for anyone else's. A thoroughstudent of his father's playing, Chris Rogers offersthe following comments. "There was a definiteevolution to his approach with the trombone. Heprobably would refer to his style in the beginning as'elephant trombone' because he was just pounding

the horn on his face, playing reallyloud. I don't knowhow he could do it, and definitely in the long runthat's not the productive way to play. If you're reallyoverblowing, you're playing your loudest the wholetime and you're probably cutting your dynamic range.I think that's probably how it was on the gigs, but Iknow that changed. Listen to Eddie Palmieri's 'WhiteAlbum,' I mean Barry's tone on that is amazing and is


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so centered because he had somehow gotten to apoint eventually where he decided OK, he's not goingto overblow, if there's a mike he's going use it andhe's not going to kill himself. On the liner notes forEddie and Cal Tjader's album [Cal Tjader & Eddie

Palmieri: El Sonido Nuevo ] they describe one of myfather's solos as swashbuckling. I think my dad neverlost that quality, he just refined it. That's the way heplayed, graceful but amazingly strong presenceregardless of whether he was overblowing or playingsoftly. Amazing dynamics in his playing, which Iwould love to hear in other players, that I very rarelyhear. So I still think of 'elephant trombone' as just away of describing really loud, distorted, metal-in-your-face playing."

By 1974, the year of some of his greatestcollaboration with Eddie Palmieri, Barry's rethinkingof his instrument was already paying off. Hisastounding work on "Cobarde" shows him playingpassages up to a high F, something he would havenever dreamed of doing during the 1960's. On"Pginas de Mujer" from the 1981 release EddiePalmieri(aka "The White Album"), Barry tosses offbeautifully centered high C's and D's, using all of thecrafty pitch choices and emotional directness of the

halcyon days of La Perfecta. Part of this newly foundoneness of his chops, his ears, and his soul areattributable to a period of study in 1979 and 1980with one of the greatest brass playing"troubleshooters" ever. This was Vince Penzarella,who has held jobs with the Baltimore Symphony andMetropolitan Opera Orchestra and is currently playingsecond trumpet with the New York Philharmonic.Another outstanding Penzarella student is ChrisRogers, whose time in this brass guru's studio

coincided with his father's. The 1980's became aperiod of progressive refinement by Barry Rogers offundamentals grasped in the late '70's.

Dreams

"Over the last three decades, no musical innovationin jazz has been more important - and more
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controversial - than the wedding of jazz improvisationwith rock music. The last coherent radical movementto emerge in jazz, it has continued to evolve in a waythat most other areas of jazz have not" (StuartNicholson,Jazz Rock: A History).

"There was really no term for what we were doingback then, nobody called it fusion. We were justsearching for new ways to break down barriers. Itwas a very fertile period. People were experimenting,trying different things. It was an exciting time to bein New York" (Michael Brecker, quoted by BillMilkowski in liner notes for CD reissue ofDreams).

Jazz musicians have always played other vernacularmusics, if for no other reason than to help pay therent. Whether or not one wants to waste timearguing whether Barry Rogers was or was not a jazzmusician, he embodies the jazz sensibility and wasbrought up musically with jazz values. Having saidthis, it's equally true that he was no hideboundpurist. Known among his friends as a musicalomnivore, his pantheon of musical heroes includesthe masters of American black music of all genres, aspreviously noted. Backing New Orleans blues stylistLloyd Price in late 1968 and early 1969 proved in

many ways to be an enjoyable musical experience.However, playing the same music night after night ina show band was not how he wanted to spend therest of his life. An alternative way of combining hislove of jazz, funk, and R & B came in 1970 when hemet a young tenor sax phenom named Mike Brecker;the setting was a band called Birdsong, an R & Bgroup with jazz leanings led by a singer andsongwriter named Edwin Birdsong. The chemistrybetween Mike and Barry was instantaneous. One

feeling that Barry shared with Mike Brecker wasenthusiasm for some original material written by tworock musicians named Doug Lubahn and Jeff Kent.Eventually Mike was able to sweet talk his trumpetplaying older brother Randy into coming to arehearsal with Lubahn and Kent; somehow drummerBilly Cobham was coaxed into showing up. This wasthe beginning of Dreams, a band that Louise Rogers


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considers to be the most significant part of Barry'slife and legacy. She claims that: "Dreams was inways much more incredible than the Palmieri band,because every person in that band was absolutely apinnacle talent. The energy in that band, it was

exactly the same, it was Barry, and Mike will tell youso. I think he describes him as the balls of the band.And the records are nothing compared to what itwas, it was unbelievable! If you can ever get some of

the last live tapes of the band you'llhear that it was a whole groundworkfor funk and fusion, it's all in there."The arrangements for the front line oftrumpet, tenor sax, and trombone(shades of Hugo Dickens!) were donecollaboratively. Randy Brecker says:

"There might have been little snippets that werearranged by more than one guy and, I think, lookingback on it, Barry probably had a bigger hand thanMike and I. Maybe not in the original idea of the part,but he was ahead of anybody in the band, I think,harmonically and as far as his experience. So hewould sometimes say you play this note, I'll play thatnote or whatever, he was rhythmically more astutethan I think we were. If anything he was kind of thestraw boss of the whole group. Other times we'd just

come up with voicings, he was great at finding innerparts and finding these weird notes that would fit. Weall were pretty good at it but I think he was ahead ofall of us." Mike Brecker agrees: "He would alwaysthink of great horn riffs and we used to do them live.He'd think up things on stage, he was a goodarranger and sort of arranged on the fly. And some ofthe things that we would come up with live justbecame the arrangements that we recorded."

Chris Rogers quotes Mike Brecker as having said thatBarry Rogers was the Coltrane of the trombone.Considering Mike's mastery of the style of Coltrane,among others, that's a pretty extraordinarystatement. When questioned about this attribution,Mike replied: "I might have said that, and I meant itin a way that he had that kind of intensity andconviction. He had a tremendous conviction when he


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was playing and he could just make a rhythm sectionlevitate, he would just carry you right along. Barryused to say that the only way he could do that was ifthe rhythm section inspired him. There were timeswhen he couldn't play, if he felt nothing was

happening in the rhythm section he didn't botherplaying. But if he got excited all hell broke loose."The regularly observed phenomenon of hell breakingloose at Dreams concerts was pretty muchguaranteed by the presence of Billy Cobham. Boththe musical and visual impact was overwhelming.According to Mike Brecker: "The music was builtaround Billy, who was playing in a very unique way atthe time. He had, and still has, an enormous amountof technique and played the drums in a way that Ihad never heard anybodyplay. He was a burning R &B drummer and great jazz drummer, he could doboth, and that was unusual. And so we took thetunes written by Doug and Jeff, they wrote really nicesongs and they sang them and then kind of arrangedthem around Billy."

By late 1971 Billy Cobham had defected to join thenewly formed Mahavishnu Orchestra. Dreamsbecame legendary for holding drum auditions formonths; between sixty and seventy drummers were

heard (Alan Schwartzberg, Rick Marotta, Steve Gaddand Bruce Ditmas are among the handful thatactually worked briefly with the band.) By this timekeyboardist Don Grolnick and bassist Will Lee werepart of the Dreams family. In spite of the level oftalent assembled, Dreams was history by 1972. Theinability of any of the drummers, as excellent assome of them were, to fully be able to replace BillyCobham is cited by members as a major part of thisdecision. For reasons having mostly to do with the

vagaries of the promotion and business side of music,Dreams was never able to translate the power of itsmusic into even a vague equivalent in terms ofcommercial acceptance. Their concerts consisted ofworking rock venues and colleges, usually openingfor established acts such as Three Dog Night, TinaTurner and the J. Geils Band. Their recorded legacyconsists of two albums, both issued by Columbia.


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Much of their legacy is more indirect; the emotionalforce and sophistication of their work is still talkedabout by musicians lucky enough to have heardthem. As stated by Down Beatstaff writer BillMilkowski, "Rather than being a band of jazzers

checking out the visceral power of rock, or a band ofrockers making feeble attempts at improvising,Dreams was a balanced act; rock and jazz musiciansbringing their influences to bear, creating together,melding their disparate sensibilities into a whollyunique hybrid." For Barry, the stridency of the LaPerfecta days was replaced by an ever growingmastery of the horn without sacrificing intensity andconviction (in fact, it is the considered opinion ofChris Rogers that his father's mature playing beginsin this period.) Jazz trombonist Gary Valenteremembers hearing Dreams as a teenager; asoverwhelming as the whole experience was, hisstrongest memory is of Barry's playing: "He hadinnovated a new style, what can I say, no one hadplayed with that sound and vibrato. And most of thething was the sound over the band, it was over thewhole shit, it was very present. So when he took asolo it was really strong and up over everything,man, and that was a big influence." Considering thewide circulation of Dreams' alumnae throughout the

emerging world of jazz/rock and their key presence inthe cream of the fusion world, is it possible to saythat Dreams is to the music of the '70's and '80'swhat La Perfecta was to the nascent salsa of the'60's? If so, Barry Rogers can be considered byextension one of the fathers of fusion and jazz/rock.

Playing with Dreams exposed Barry to a world he hadnever been part of; the elite who live theirprofessional lives in the studios of New York

recording musical backing for jingles, film, and popalbums. His ears, stylistic versatility and readingability more than qualified him for this kind of work;his closeness to active studio players such as DonGrolnick and the Breckers provided the all-importantlinks to contractors and producers. Artists with whomhe recorded in this period include James Taylor, CarlySimon, Aerosmith, Average White Band, Chic, Todd


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Rundgren, and Tina Turner. By the mid 70's, Barrywas highly in demand in New York's recording scene.Only the very longest established trombonists in themusic business would have been routinely calledahead of him. The music world abounds with cliches

about musicians who succeed as recording artists dueto affable and completely inoffensive personalities,utter reliability, and a complete lack of any personalquality in their playing. Randy Brecker comparedBarry's way of playing with that of some hypotheticalfaceless studio player: "He could do it, he could playin a section but his real forte was really playing out.That's what we used to like about him, he wouldreally put a lot of air through the horn. That was hiswhole sound as opposed to somebody like BillWatrous or Urbie Green, who were probably first callback then. Guys like that play a lot softer and playwith a lot of agility and finesse, probably morefinesse than Barry. Barry, he had a lot of techniquebut it was more just on-the-spot excitement andplaying the hippest notes that you could hear, he justhad great ears. I mean there were a lot of guysprobably that could play faster or higher or whatever,but Barry would play the hippest stuff."

Producing

Barry Rogers was endowed with a highly acute pitchsense and a rhythmic feel that was both gutsy andprecise. In addition, he had the ability to keep trackof detail without losing awareness of the big picture(put in other words, the capacity for functioningsimultaneously as telescope and microscope.)Combined with a knack for the technical andmechanical, whether regarding boats, cars, electronicequipment, or cameras, a picture emerges of

someone ideally qualified to direct recording sessionsand deal with post production. This, in fact, was trueof Barry Rogers. His sense of how to deal withmusical and technical problems that constantly arisein a studio setting improved countless recordingprojects. Many of his accomplishments in this areahave never been credited, financially or otherwise. Ina 1974 interview with John Storm Roberts, he


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presented the dilemma in which he often foundhimself: "Now where do you draw the line betweenarranging and producing? You can't. And of courseyou never get paid for it, for that reason. But I did ahell of a lot of work on some albums that no one

knows about, including tape editing, producing, whichincluded doing overdubs for other musicians. I meanthey'd leave me alone for hours, and I ran thesessions, which I enjoyed doing. I gave it, and that'sthe way I am. I give more than I ever get paid for."Although listed as the arranger of "Un Dia Bonito"(The Sun of Latin Music), he is not credited for thelayering and molding of sound so brilliantly realizedin this number. In his 1977 WBAI interview herecalled the sessions: "I produced everything exceptthe original rhythm track, without horns and withoutthe arrangement. After the rhythm track was laiddown by Eddie and the gang, without horns andwithout singing, I had to go in there and cut it all upwith a razor blade with an engineer at the ElectricLady studios and we pieced the entire thing togetherand overdid all the horns and the singing later." In a1998 interview for Descarga's website, Eddiesummarizes Barry's role: " 'Un Dia Bonito' is themaximum of our collaboration ever. I never playedpiano like that again and I couldn't do that again if I

tried. Because it was the magic between he and I, hedrew it out and I drew everything out of him too."Artists on whose albums Barry receives non-playingcredit, whether for mixing, engineering, or producing,include Rafael Cortijo, David Lahm, Jens Wendleboe,and the Star-Scape Singers.

One of Barry's closest friends was audio engineerBernard Fox. Their relationship involved a veryproductive exchange, with Barry picking up

considerable insight into recording technique andBernard becoming acquainted with key concepts ofmusical form and style. Interestingly enough, to thisday Fox thinks of Barry Rogers as a producer and notas a trombone player, even though he playedtrombone to make a living. He views a greatproducer the way many symphony musicians view agreat conductor: as a teacher. Hearing his take on


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what made Barry's producing special recalls thetelescope/microscope hybrid mentioned earlier:"What's interesting is that it's because music is soemotional we have a tendency to think that we can'tanalyze it and those that analyze it are unemotional

about it. But Barry had that together - I mean there'sa reason why this works and there's a reason whythis doesn't work and it ain't that sudden magical gel.That sudden magical gel could be made to happen,

and Barry used to do that on acontinuous basis and I'd see it. I'd seehim do it with vocalists who couldn'tsing, who couldn't sing this song. Theywould suddenly figure it out, he'dexplain it to them and get them to singit on a line-by-line basis and they'd get

it. He'd do it with players and he'd do it with musicalstructure." Fox comments on Barry's attention todetail: "Here's a little notebook, it's got 150 pages oflittle things. This page doesn't have much on it, OK,because I write big and quick and sloppy. Imaginevery, very, very small writing, much smaller and finerthan this. Barry would generate books like this onevery single record he was working on, notes uponnotes upon notes of what he was thinking and howhe was approaching it and when he had a thought.

And he'd come in with this little book and you wouldhave to overdub four pages in that book in a day, alltotally prepared. I mean normally I go in the studiowith a producer and we listen together and I mark offwhich lines go together to assemble and I assemblethem. Barry'd come in with all that done. If youwanted to know about musicians you called up him.If you wanted their phone number you called upLarry Harlow, if you wanted to know what style theyplayed perfectly you called up Barry."

One of Barry's most justly celebrated productions isOrquesta Broadway's Pasaporte. Of all the albumsmade by this charanga, this is arguably the one withthe best production values and the highest technicalquality. Bernard served as the audio engineer ofPasaporte; the following anecdote reveals how thesong "Barrio del Pilar" was recorded: "I've never been


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to Puerto Rico, Barry explains to me the kind offeeling we're trying to capture. OK, we take a pieceof multi track tape and cut it into a loop and mix itdown so now we have a loop with a rhythm pattern,in time with the album. We take this rhythm pattern

and we copy it onto an entire reel of two inch tape,so now we have 32 minutes of the same rhythmpattern playing over and over and over again. Wetake this and we cut it into the song in time. Soinstead of having a four minute song we now have a34 minute song. We put two microphones on the roofof the building to mike the street on Eighth Avenueand 54th Street and we book a session for 4:30Friday afternoon with a whole bunch of Barry'sfriends. There's 25 people in the studio, there's congadrums all over the room. There's people playingpercussion, I think we even had food and drink there.Everybody's having a real good time, everybody's alittle drunk and now we play back this 34 minute"Barrio del Pilar" and invite everybody to play alongfeeding the street noise, which is now 5:30 Fridayafternoon into the studio. And wouldn't you know it,you can hear some gunshots, there's car horns going'Beep beep, beep beep' and it might have beenFrankie Malab going 'Bop bop, bop bop' on theconga and you've got this interaction between the

street noise and the actual rhythm of the song. Aboutfive minutes later we hear sirens coming onto thestreet and now we have 34 minutes of actual streetnoise with people playing against it like it would be inreal life. We cut this 34 minutes down to 6:32 andthat's how that song got made. Now that's radicalthinking for a producer!" This is hardly the first timethis type of layered approach has been usedsuccessfully; albums made by Ramsey Lewis andMarva Whitney immediately come to mind. In the

Latin field, this level of studio creativity was certainlynovel, as was the overall patina of sonic refinement.As Bernard Fox remembers, the time required toachieve these results was also exceptional for a mid70's Latin record: "Most producers try to get it done,deliver for the budget that they gave you. Barry forbetter or worse didn't care about the budget, healways did what he ultimately felt needed to be done.


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Most Latin albums took 40 or 60 hours at that timeand here we're into 150 hours and Harvey Averne'sscreaming, OK? And then once Pasaporte came outnobody was going to stop. I mean charanga wasn'thappening, salsa was happening in '75. It was Barry

and this album that turned charanga into the bigthing it became again and consequently at that pointall the numbers were blown out the window. Therewas no more, 'Let's do an album in 60 hours' anymore, it was, 'What does it take to make a greatalbum?' 'Cause that album as I remember was on thecharts for seven months, I mean it had one song oranother song on the charts for such a long time thatit didn't matter."

By the late 1980's, Linda Ronstadt had acknowledgedher Mexican roots, as evidenced by her highlysuccessfull album Canciones de Mi Padre. When shebecame interested in doing a bilingual album drawingon Hispanic Caribbean musical traditions, BarryRogers was suggested as the sine qua non of anysuch project. After spending time with Linda orientingher to the music, Barry introduced her to his wife, atalented songwriter and lyricist. The plan was thatBarry would produce an album of bilingual,thematically conceived songs created by Louise

Rogers. A demo recording was made with the creamof New York's salsa and jazz musicians, with a studiosinger laying down the part intended for LindaRonstadt and with Bernard Fox as engineer. All of thework was done on spec; this should give readerssome idea of the extent to which Barry was loved,respected, and trusted by his colleagues. For reasonsthat have never been clearly explained, the projectwas abandoned by Ronstadt and her representatives.None of the musicians were paid. All that remains of

this project is a demo reported by the few who haveheard it to be of unimaginably high quality. For BarryRogers, this was a disappointment unequal to any inhis life. The loss was not only a career opportunitydazzlingly close, but a chance for overdue recognitionsnatched away. This combination of nonpareil talentand name recognition could have brought a wholenew audience to Latin music; the word "crossover"


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could have been given a totally new meaning. Or isthis word really the most appropriate one? With amusical vision as broad as that of Barry Rogers, theparts are related in such an organic whole thatthere's no need to "cross over."

World musician, musician for the world

The term "world music" is very much a product of thelast quarter of the twentieth century, and very muchspawned by the Age of Marketing. Searching for newsounds from foreign cultures can be a stimulus tointellectual growth and a source of great pleasure.This process can also turn into a jejune quest formusical novelty of highly limited shelf life. From sucha perspective, the view provided of other cultures canbe a highly patronizing one. In the words ofethnomusicologist Henry Sapoznik, sampling ethnicmusic often amounts to a kind of slumming in theglobal village.

What's so refreshing about Barry Rogers' musicalodyssey is his total freedom from these limitations,and from the dilettantism that can easily become akind of baggage for the musically curious. A closefriend of Barry's from the Hugo Dickens days, Bobby

Porcelli can attest to this: "He had more knowledgethan everybody about everything, every kind ofmusic. He was so curious he got into Arabian music,this and so many things. He learned how to play thetres, the tambora, before I would ever see anyCaucasian horn players do it. He'd always be the firstone I'd ever see do these kind of things. He had aknack for it too, not just being curious and playingterribly but being curious and really being able to doit. In all these areas when you talk to people about

Barry they'll always say, 'He turned me on to this,''he's the first person who mentioned this name tome,' that comes up constantly with me and witheverybody else who knew him and I don't care whatyear it was." For Barry Rogers, listening to music withfriends was tantamount to Holy Communion. MarkWeinstein maintains that those who truly understoodthe depth of Barry's love of music were those with


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whom he shared these experiences: "To be invited toBarry's house to listen to records was the guaranteeof an experience that would transform your thinkingabout music. Barry could sit down for hours on endand play records, classical records. I remember he

introduced me to this record called Greek Island andMountain Music, I've just never heard anything like it.The music that I stole for Cuban Roots, it was on arecord of a pre-Castro folkloric group that had all ofthe classic guaguancs and all the classic comparsas- Barry introduced me to that album. Barryintroduced me to West African music, Barryintroduced me to Peter Pears singing with DennisBrain, who was this amazing French horn player. Imean you would go to Barry's house and you knewthat every single record you would hear would beamazing beyond belief and that the sequence ofrecords that you would hear would be transcendental.To listen to Barry's records with Barry was to learnmore about music than you could ever want to learnfrom another human being."

Barry's musical multi-lingualism can be viewed as aset of variations on lifelong themes. His earlylistening experiences and ease of learning hasalready been noted. This facility also translated into a

gift for learning languages. One of the world'shoariest bits of wisdom is the observation that "thedoctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient"and numerous variants thereof. Barry turned thiscliche upside down: anyone who teaches himself somany skills so brilliantly stands an excellent chanceof developing into a fine teacher. Robert FarrisThompson recalls an important lesson at a jamsession that included some guaguanc: "Barrylaughed and said, 'You realize that that's a hocket,

those are two drums.' A hocket is when the noteleaps from one player to the other and then comesback again. Hocketing is about the most pure, mostancient African procedure that there is, when youdivide the melody among the people. Of courseEllington did it and Machito - who was the baritoneplayer, Leslie Johnakins, he opened up that wholecurrent of incandescent Africanness in the hocketing


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patterns that are in things like 'Feeding theChickens.' It's this terraced quality, each guy is on adifferent note, a different level, and that'sAfricanismo. Now I'm not a hundred per cent surethat he called it a hocket but he definitely drew my

attention to what it was. That was another greatlesson." Hocketing is a technique that goes back tothe Middle Ages; its presence in the courts ofthirteenth century France, in the villages of CentralAfrica, and in the solares of Havana provides one far-reaching example of musical unity that transcendstime and place. Barry Rogers grasped that unity likevery few.

Barry's uncanny ability to absorb the most arcanetechniques of music making was demonstrated duringa visit to Robert Farris Thompson's home near YaleUniversity, where he's taught for some forty years:"Barry discovered that I had some bat drums and tomy amazement he picked them up and he knew howto play them. Ernie Ensley was with us, he showedErnie how to do the (sings "Kun KUN KUN KUN") andhe showed me how to do (sings "KON ke KON keKON KON ke KON ke KON KON"). And then once hehad the two he came in on iya and we fused and wegrooved and it was very spectral because bat of

course are loaded with ach. So they started playingthemselves, the notes started going in and out and itwas really incredible! I've never played bat before orsince, I don't know why he never explored this in hisrecording. But knowing Barry I think he did it as arhythmic exercise, he had it stored in his mind andhe started improvising. It's like Piazzolla and his newtango, of course he had an awful lot of modern jazzand an awful lot of Western harmony but at the sametime he pushed tango back to the root before the

tango, the candombe. The real geniuses do that, thereal geniuses borrow from Europe as deeply as theycan but you forget that as deeply as they drink fromEurope they're exploring something else in Africa."Louise Rogers views this type of creativity from aslightly different perspective: "Barry had an ability togo to the heart of a given musical vernacular. At thesame time he never lost himself, he was always


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himself in doing it. Which is why he was not someonewho emulates beautiful things from the past, he wasreally a creator in the stream of the past."

Finale

On Wednesday, April 18, 1991, Barry Rogers went tosleep in his Washington Heights apartment. He neverwoke up. There was no history of any illness thatcould have provided any context or explanation. Theshock to Barry's friends, family, and colleagues wascompounded by the veil of mystery clouding the endof his life. According to his cousin Heidi Rogers, theautopsy was inconclusive.

The life and work of Barry Rogers is fraught withirony. Not a Latino, he changed the face of HispanicCaribbean music. Not a scion of the African Diaspora,he felt, mastered, performed and taught Afro-Atlanticmusic as if it were part of his genetic makeup. Knownbest as a trombonist, he spent much of his lifefighting "that fuckin' trombone." Although heeventually won, it was an invisible battle to all butthe keenest observers and his closest friends. A manwho worshipped John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins andwho began and ended his life playing jazz, he is best

known as a salsero. The de facto leader of almostevery band fortunate enough to count him as amember, he never officially led a band or had a hitrecord. His role (however vaguely formulated orinsufficiently understood) in shaping the sounds of60's salsa and 70's fusion masks anotherachievement, possibly even greater: Barry Rogerscan be considered to be one of the first worldmusicians. The clouding of this achievement isprobably the greatest irony of all.

Photography Acknowledgements


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We would like to thank the following people for the use ofphotographs that appear with this article:Arthur JenkinsJoe RiveraChris RogersRoy Ramirez

Writer's afterword and barely disguised plug

The life and work of Barry Rogers is something thatI've been studying on and off since 1996. Studyingthis topic has made it easy for me to approachmusicians, dancers, and music industry operatives,regardless of my "insider" or "outsider" status.Discussing Barry's human and musical qualitiesseems to encourage openness and articulateresponse from interview subjects. Considering thegiving way in which people have opened their heartsand minds when the subject of Barry Rogers hascome up, it's a mitzvah to make this informationavailable to the world at large.

Those who are diligent in seeking knowledge ofBarry's life and work will find a great deal missing inthe above article. There's not a lot of discussion ofthe role jazz played in his life, and the additionalironies caused by his love of this music. There's notvery much about Barry's relationship with

automobiles. In this respect I have failed our mutualfriend Lenny Seed, who early in my research enjoinedme to collect every possible story about Barry Rogersand Volkswagens. I have totally neglected to mentionthe family yacht Harpoon, or his skills as aphotographer and filmmaker. Barry comes from afamily filled with steam locomotive fanatics; his wifeis probably reading this piece and pondering thisomission. Of all the hundreds of recordings in whichBarry participated, only the Latin-oriented ones are

listed at the end of this article.

Descarga readers, if you were me, what would youdo? Indeed, what would any obsessive recordcollector and researcher do after coming up with amere 12,000 words on a topic of such self-proclaimedimportance? The only possible recourse in such aquandary is to write and publish a book. This, in a


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word, is my intention. The book in question should beout by October 1999; it

barry rogers

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