Centro Journal

ISSN: 1538-6279

centro-journal@hunter.cuny.edu

The City University of New York

Estados Unidos

Carp, David M.

Salsa Symbiosis: Barry Rogers, Eddie Palmieris Chief Collaborator in the Making of La Perfecta

Centro Journal, vol. XVI, núm. 2, fall, 2004, pp. 42-61

The City University of New York

New York, Estados Unidos

Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=37716205

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CENTRO Journal

7Volume xv1 Number 2fall 2004

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Salsa Symbiosis: Barry Rogers, Eddie Palmieri’s

Chief Collaborator in the

Making of La PerfectaDAVID M. CARP

Cuban musical modalities, particularly son and itshybrids, have been passionately adopted by dancersand listeners throughout the Hispanic Caribbeanbasin; fueled by a major Puerto Rican migration,New York became a major part of this hybridization.By the late 1960’s, this music was being marketedunder the magnificently effective catchall phrase salsa.One of the groups that helped define this music wasEddie Palmieri’s dance band, La Perfecta. Of all ofthe bands of salsa’s period of nascency (the early1960s), it arguably presented the most potent mix ofCuban musical tradition and mid-twentieth centuryAmerican musical styles. The key element in LaPerfecta’s success was the collaboration of leader EddiePalmieri and Barry Rogers. Although Barry Rogers is bestremem-bered as a trombonist, the breadth anddynamism of his musical conceptions made him oneof the most important figures in vernacular Americanmusic, in addition to his role in the patrimony ofsalsa. [Key words: Eddie Palmieri, salsa, hybridization,Barry Rogers, musical styles, New York]

ABSTRACT

Barry Rogers, Eddie Palmieri; Location unknown; mid-1960’s; Courtesy of Chris Rogers.

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Bronx roots and beginningsBarron W. Rogers (a name that hecordially detested) was born in theBronx on May 22, 1935. Descended fromPolish Jews who came to New York viaLondon, the Rogers family (originalname: Rogenstein) possessed abundantmusicality. As youngsters living in EastHarlem, Barry’s father William andseveral of his uncles sang in the choir of Joseph Rosenblatt, one of the greatcantors of the twentieth century. Butthe only family member of thisgeneration to pursue the artsprofessionally was Barry’s uncle Milton,who maintained an active career as apianist, composer, educator, andbandleader, and whom Barry credited as a major role model. Barry’s mother,Phyllis Lacompte Taylor, was a trainedzoologist who also taught public schoolscience. Along with her teaching careershe also conducted a considerableamount of field research in Mexico, the Caribbean basin, and Africa. These trips inspired her to study thetraditional musics she encounteredfrom an anthropological perspective,which was accomplished largely throughcollecting field recordings andcommercially issued discs. As a childand young adolescent, Barry wasexposed to both folkloric and popularmusic from West Africa, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Family members and friends believe that records of late1940s New York mambo music werealso brought home by Mrs. Rogers.

In an interview with Robert FarrisThompson, Barry made it clear thathearing Tito Puente’s “Babarabatiri” was his equivalent of St. Paul viewingDamascus; there would be no turningback. Given his listening experiencesand his maternal influences, it’s hardlysurprising that during his teen yearsBarry became passionate about Afro-Cuban music in all of its manifestations.His wife Louise Rogers remembers one

very unique and long-lasting expressionof this addiction. “One thing he reallydid well and [which] always amazedme,” she said, is that “he could do thissort of old man coro singing. He soundedlike one of those little wizened guys inLa Sonora Matancera. He would screwhis face up and the trombone wouldhang on his arm and this funny voicewould come out of his mouth and itnever came out at any other time.”Barry was one of the few New Yorkerswho actively collected African recordsduring the 1950s. This was one of manyinterests he shared over the years withpercussionist Ernest Philip “Phil”Newsum, who offered the followingobservation: “Either it didn’t turn himon or it was great music, but nothingwas ever strange to him. It seems likeeverything he heard he couldunderstand right away. It made sense, it was comprehensible. Sometimes hewould scare me because he could catchon to things so fast.”

By the time he entered BronxVocational High School, Barry alreadyhad a year or so of trombone playingunder his belt. One of Barry’s extra-curricular activities was playing in asmall mixed Latin combo of studentsthat included a Dominican saxophoneand clarinet player named JohnnyPacheco. It wasn’t long before Barry was introduced to percussionist BennyBonilla, pianists Rupert Branker andArthur Jenkins, and other Bronx Latinmusic performers. It must be pointedout that non-Latin residents of Harlem,Morrisania, and Bedford-Stuyvesant had easy access to Latin music throughlocal record stores, black-oriented radiostations, and many live venues. In fact, it was not unheard of for African-Americanteenage musicians to be hooked onLatin before becoming jazz players.It was in this particular milieu thatBarry Rogers obtained his first signif-icant experience in playing Latin music.

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“This is your bible, study it hard.” The bible is Eddie

Palmieri’s “Páginas de Mujer,” and the advice that of

seasoned trumpeter Ray Vega to trombonist and

ethnomusicologist Christopher Washburne. The specific bit

of chapter and verse referred to was a 24-measure trombone

solo played by Barry Rogers with Palmieri’s stellar and

pioneering band, La Perfecta. It’s not just brass players who

feel this way about Rogers’ role as a musical inspiration.

Pianist Oscar Hernández had this to say: “I knew all of

Barry’s solos by heart, I could sing them all. I could say that

Barry is probably the instrumentalist other than pianists

that had the biggest influence on me.” And in a SaturdayReview article from as early as 1967, famed art historian and

mambo lover Robert Farris Thompson predicted the profound

and definitive influence of La Perfecta on what soon would

be called salsa: “The chief proponents of this music, a new

solution to the problem of Afro-Latin form, are two

intelligent New Yorkers named Eddie Palmieri and Barry

Rogers.... I do not think that it is an exaggeration to suggest

that the Eddie Palmieri ensemble is artistically the most

promising dance band now performing in the United States.”

The explosive potential sensed by Thompson more than

thirty years ago was fulfilled: salsa has become one of the

world’s major dance musics, the international expression of

Latino and Latin American culture. The role of Eddie Palmieri

and La Perfecta in this development has been acknowledged,

at least in part. The same can hardly be said for his chief

collaborator, Barry Rogers.

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The chicken and booze circuitBy the early 1950s, still in his teens, Barry was playing Latin music withgroups of Latinos, black Americans andwhite ethnics in lounges, dance halls, and nightclubs all over Harlem and theBronx. He had also discovered jazz andbegan frequenting Branker’s, CountBasie’s, and any clubs that held jamsessions. The spring of 1956 marked thebeginning of his most significant pre-Palmieri musical experience, a band led by an African American tenorsaxophonist named Hugo Dickens. The bread and butter of Hugo’s work(and that of competitors such as DavidPreudhomme “Joe Panama,” Alfred DuMire “Al La Paris,” and Henry “Pucho”Brown) was dances thrown by the AfricanAmerican social clubs of Harlem, a thriving scene during the 1950s.Although a soft-spoken gentleman, Hugo always had the ability to relate well to club members and promoters; in his heyday in the mid- to late 1950s, he was able to provide regular (if not high paying) employment. The workconsisted of fashion shows, afternooncocktail sips, and “chicken and booze”dances, where audience membersreserved tables and brought their ownbrown bags and bottles. These affairstook place at Harlem venues such as theSavoy Ballroom, Dawn Casino, AudubonBallroom, Rockland Palace, BroadwayCasino, Royal Manor, RenaissanceBallroom, and the Celebrity Club. It was taken for granted that a musicianworking the “chicken and booze” circuitwould be able to play jazz, rhythm andblues, calypso, and Latin. This wasparticularly true of Hugo’s variousunits, considering the caliber of manyof his musicians: Marty Sheller, Bobby Porcelli, Bobby Capers, PeterSims “Pete La Roca,” Eddie Diehl,Hubert Laws, Ted Curson, and RodgersGrant are only a few of Hugo’s better-known side musicians.

Barry’s arrival in the Dickensorganization more or less coincided with Hugo’s decision to reduce the size of the group. A long time Dickens devotee,Phil Newsum recalls the transition:“Before Barry came into it the band was really chart-bound. But when Hugoput the big band aside and we startedgoing out with the three-horn front line,Barry really took over how it wasorganized. Hugo handled the businessbut Barry would say, hey, you do this andI’ll do this and you do that. We weren’tusing charts, it was all head arrange-ments. And the freedom that it gaveeverybody made all the guys really happybecause not being bound by the charts,everybody who had this kind of jazzdisposition anyway, they felt like they had unlimited freedom to be creative,which they did. And the band kind oftook off and everybody’s morale went up,we were just one happy bunch of dudes. A lot of that I believe was due to Barry.”

This freewheeling atmosphere was anideal setting for developing the conceptof playing “hard bop” a la Art Blakey orHorace Silver with the underpinning ofauthentic Afro-Cuban rhythm. A keypoint of origin for this approach can be found in the early 1950s conjuntorecordings of Tito Rodríguez, many of which were very popular in Harlem. Phil Newsum cites Rodríguez’s versionof “Sun Sun Babae” in this context. “The break in ‘Sun Sun Babae,’ the onewith the repeated rhythmic figure—it wasn’t always exactly the same, but Rodríguez incorporated a similar type of thing in one tune after another.Even the later ones, like ‘Ol’ Man River,’they had three breaks in the middle andthen the rhythm would come in, therewould be a piano break and the rhythmwould come in. He incorporated ostinatofigures in the middle of a lot of hismambos and then having the rhythmcome in behind furious—it was veryeffective, it was wonderful. But all of the

stuff that those conjuntos recorded wasvery rhythmically oriented and reallyappealed to the black community ofHarlem. They really identified with itbecause it minimized the amount ofSpanish and maximized the rhythm, so that the language didn’t mean much.”All of Hugo’s sidemen and numerousaudience members speak fondly of Dickens’“Ol’ Man River Mambo.” Other numbersfrequently recalled are “Speak Low,”“Nica’s Dream,” “Old Devil Moon” and “Spontaneous Combustion”; typical Cuban tunes in the book includedcha chas such as “Chanchullo” and “Los Marcianos” and the danzón “Almendra.”Whether based on the changes of a 32-bar song or on the more open formcharacteristic of a montuno, solos from altoplayer Bobby Porcelli, trumpeter MartySheller, and Barry Rogers were common.

Not much recorded evidence ofAfrican American experiments withLatin music characteristic of the later‘50s has survived. There are no knowncommercial recordings of any of HugoDickens’ groups; the best existingdocumentation consists of 8-millimeterfilms taken by Barry (unfortunately thereare no soundtracks). One of the mostfrustrating examples of this situation isthe lack of any recordings of Hugo’sexperimentation with multipletrombones. An eyewitness for this trendis Steve Berríos, Junior, who by 1961 wasplaying both trumpet and percussionwith Latin-oriented uptown groups. He remembers the presence of twotrombones in some of Hugo’sinterpretations of “Ol’ Man River,”“Work Song,” “Chanchullo,” “Nica’sDream,” and “Saint Thomas”; othertrombonists besides Barry included Steve Pulliam, John Gordon, and JackHitchcock. Berríos and other informantsremember that one trombone wouldplay repeated riff figures and the otherone would respond to these figures bysoloing in a call-and-response style.

It’s experiences such as this that Barryrecalled in a 1977 WBAI-FM interviewwith Pablo “Yoruba” Guzmán. “It was aschool for us all, that’s where I was reallyfirst exposed to Latin music. And boy, did I learn a few things about the worldand life and music, that was my firstexperience with really heavy playing. And when I came out of that I ran intoEddie and I just threw in there what I had learned in the past three or fouryears with Hugo’s group.” It’s no accidentthat all of the surviving participants inthe Sabú Martínez and his Jazz Espagnolerecording are Hugo Dickens alumnae.The importance of Mongo Santamaría’spost-charanga groups to the emergingLatin jazz of the 1960’s is undisputed;key Mongo sidemen such as BobbyCapers, Rodgers Grant, Hubert Laws,Bobby Porcelli, and Marty Sheller are allgraduates of the Hugo Dickens Academy.Perhaps the most far-reaching impor-tance of the uptown Latin-oriented scene is that this is clearly where BarryRogers developed a personal inter-pretation of African-based music thatwas to reach its full fruition with EddiePalmieri’s La Perfecta.

Perfecting La PerfectaOne of salsa’s most influential figuresbegan as a bandleader in 1960, when the use of this word as a magnificentlyeffective catch-all phrase was very mucha thing of the future. Active at firstfronting trios for weddings, bar mitzvahs,and hotel engagements, Eddie Palmierilonged for a vehicle to play the ruggedCuban music so dear to his heart. The key to reaching this goal becameconsiderably clearer after a visit to asocial club called the Tritons, locatedabove Loew’s Spooner Theatre in theHunts Point sector of the Bronx. This iswhere Eddie heard Barry jamming withthe likes of Johnny Pacheco and the restwas history—this, at least, is how Eddieusually tells the story. Trumpet player Joe

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de Mare remembers leading a LouisPrima-style shuffle band that includedboth Barry and Eddie; de Mare claimsthat Barry was aware of Eddie’s rhythmicgenius from the get-go. Not surprisingly,one of the earliest instrumentations thatEddie used to express his musical visionwas a conjunto. Here’s Barry’s first memoryof the next stage: “We started with onetrombone and a rhythm section and asinger and that was the group. ‘Cause whenwe got together and jammed it just bleweverything away. So he got rid of thetrumpets and we just worked as a quintetfor some time. Then we added GeorgeCastro on flute and the last thing to comein was the second trombone, that was atleast a year after we started the group.”

The first regular second trombonistwith La Perfecta was Mark Weinstein.Although he can be seen in thephotograph on the cover of the Alegrealbum Eddie Palmieri: La Perfecta, thesecond trombone parts are actuallyplayed by a Brazilian named João Donato.After approximately one year Markmoved to Europe and was replaced by Joe Orange, another excellent jazztrombonist. During the year of Joe’stenure the album El Molestoso wasrecorded. (Mark Weinstein came back for the bolero “Contento estoy,” whichuses three trombones.) By the appearanceof Lo Que Traigo Es Sabroso, the secondtrombonist was José Rodrígues, a Dominican who had resided in Brazilfor a number of years, and who stayedwith Palmieri until 1974. Eddie Palmierirecalled what is considered by all(including Weinstein and Orange) to behis most successful trombone section:“Barry Rogers and José Rodrígues were so opposite in what they individuallycould do and we worked it that way. For example, Barry was involved in

singing coro, so when we’d play a mambothe first part would be given to José orthe highest notes would be given to him,anything that would make it easier forBarry, who always had problems with hislip. Fever sores, that was a problem. He taught himself to play the trombonein the unorthodox way of learning andput too much pressure and that took a lotout of him. And even José Rodrígues toldme once, ”If he keeps playing the way heplays he’s gonna die.“ That instrumenttakes so much out of you and the way he plays! Just the recordings told youthat, imagine live! Those trombones,when they used to get into a riff behindthe flute they don’t stop and then Barryjust takes off and keeps going and we justkept pushing and pushing. That instru-ment is not an instrument to be able todo that and they did it. And unfortunatelyit cost them dearly because they bothpassed away, they were both young.”

La Perfecta’s flute and two-trombonelineup drew immediate comparison with the instrumentation of charanga,which was still hot in New York; in fact,Charlie Palmieri baptized the group with the name trombanga. But the model for Eddie’s music was certainly notcharanga, at least in regard to musicalform. For Mark Weinstein, the modelthat inspired Eddie and Barry was FélixChapottín. “If you know enough aboutCuban 78s from the ‘40s and early ‘50syou hear a lot of Eddie’s arrangements.But think of the Chapottín album that has a very sort of abstract, almost cartoon-y cover with MiguelitoCuní. That’s the best Chapottín, with ‘Quimbombó’ on it. And that wasthe model, there were a couple of otherconjuntos. But it wasn’t really a matter of stealing. Because Eddie’s band, bizarrely,was Cuban revivalist, and the model of

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Top left: La Perfecta. Kutsher’s Country Club, Monticello, NY, Summer 1962 Joe Rivera, Barry Rogers, Ismael Quintana,Manny Oquendo, George Castro, Chicky Perez. Courtesy of Joe Rivera.

Bottom left: La Perfecta. Kutsher’s Country Club, Monticello, NY, Summer 1962 Eddie Palmieri, Joe Rivera, Barry Rogers,Ismael Quintana, Manny Oquendo, George Castro. Courtesy of Joe Rivera.

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the line of the music. Now these littleinnocent Yale students had never heardPalladium-type intensity, I mean they had never heard a trombone that loud!But remember, in the Palladium if it isn’tall-out intensity you’re going to lose youraudience. Well, he was Palladium trainedso he had learned to pick up notes off ofthe heels and toes of the people, he sawthem as eighth notes and whatever.Barry’s genius was to have such a highlydefined inner pulse control in the Africansense, so that if you look at the feet ofthe guys in the movie, boom!, he was ableto reconstruct what kind of mambo theywere dancing to, that it was a fast batirior a slow kain. He made me see the dancefloor as sheet music.” One thing thatThompson always noticed aboutPalladium musicians in general was theirathleticism. I remember interviewingAlfred Levy, aka Alfredito, and asked himwhy didn’t you play the Palladium morefrequently. He said, “Well, the reason I don’t play at the Palladium, man, the Palladium’s a laundry!” I’ll neverforget that, the Palladium’s a laundry,you’ve got to work and then I realized,yeah! And I watched Barry play, sweatpouring down from his hair, his thick,athletic neck. The same thing with GilbertLópez, all those guys, it was like theSuperbowl. That’s another part of him,it may be that the strain of producing allout mambo sounds at Palladium intensitymay have weakened his heart.” Or, putanother way, in Farris Thompson’s words,“Barry danced his trombone.”

La Perfecta’s initial audience washeavily Puerto Rican, the majority ethnicgroup that patronized Bronx venues suchas the Tritons and the Caravana Club.The crowd that Eddie won at thePalladium was the African Americans,whose musical traditions also exerted aninfluence on Barry’s broad stylisic range,and because of his centrality to the band,on the La Perfecta sound. Some insightinto this process can be gained by listening

to African-American low brass groupsthat play gospel-inflected call-and-response patterns in Central Park and other New York public spaces. Mark Weinstein describes the first timehe heard the Fabulous Hummingbirds,a band of five trombones and a tuba.“When I heard them I fell down becausethe lead trombone player was doingexactly what Barry did! Now Barry reallyloved rhythm and blues, and what he was doing was playing a rhythm and blues kind of shout against a salsa vamp.But it wasn’t until I heard these guys,this trombone band from somewhere inSaint Albans and South Jamaica, that Irealized that Barry had really inventedsomething, and it was using thetrombone to play essentially vocalisticmusic using the inflections of thetrombone the way a voice could do it.‘Cause that’s what the trombone can do,it can do what a voice can do. So Barrywas playing trombone like a rhythm andblues singer and that’s what connectedwith the black audience.”

Along with this strong African-American tie, the Cuban traditions werefundamental to Barry’s style. It’s beensaid that Barry Rogers was one of thefirst to play the trombone in the mannerof Felix Chapottín, Chocolate Armenteros,and the great Afro-Cuban trumpetplayers—that is to say, like a great sonero.Playing in the most typical Cuban waypossible was one of Barry’s principalgoals. He made it his business to under-stand how the music was structured,o that he could play and write in amanner that grew organically from themusic, rather than imposing externallyderived techniques. His understanding of tumbao was sound enough to enablehim to play an occasional second conga partduring Tommy López solos; consideringTommy’s demands on a personal and musicallevel, this was obviously no small feat!

Barry’s understanding of Cubanmusical structures was further deepened

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the trombone improvisation came fromthe way Chapottín, the soloist, wouldplay against the trumpets. Then Barryextended that, but that was the model.”One clear example of the kind of“borrowing” described by Mark is “La Gioconda” as recorded by OrquestaAragón on their album Danzones de Hoy y Ayer. The uptempo final section of theAragón version opens the version of thetune recorded by La Perfecta on El Molestoso

almost note for note. The main differenceis the substitution of two trombones forviolins and lowering the key from Eminor to C minor, which makes it easilyplayable in its new instrumentation.

Weinstein describes the “road map”for a representative Palmieri/Rogerschart. “You play down the head andthere’d be the first montuno, in thefirst montuno Barry would always besinging coro. And while the singer wasimprovising Barry’d turn around andduring the four bars of the singer’simprovisation he would play some-thing for me to play, picking it upeither out of the air or from something

the singer had sung or whatever. I thenhad to get it from him in that intervaland then if I didn’t get it the first timehe’d do it again, if I didn’t get it thesecond time he was angry at me. Then I’d start playing that lick, Barrywould join in playing the lick with mein unison, then in harmony and thenthe shit would happen. Barry wouldthen start slowly, almost the way a sitarplayer develops a solo, he would start

to very slowly move that lickinto not quite a solo but intoa sequence of ever increasingsophistication. We outswungTito’s band with all of hisfuckin’ cymbals, with all ofhis triplets, with all of hissticks over his head. Becausewhen Barry would get thepots on there was nothing in the world that was moreexciting, nothing, nothing!Not all of the high notes, not all of the screamingtrumpets and the saxophones.When Barry would start tomove through a sequence ofimprovisations there wasnothing in the world that was more exciting and thedancers loved Barry Rogers.”

Dancing the trombone, Barry styleThis link between Barry’s playing anddancing is key to his contribution to the success of La Perfecta, and to thebeginnings of salsa. An early chronicler of Palladium history, Robert FarrisThompson had ample opportunity to seeLa Perfecta in this setting. The Palladiumclosed its doors in 1966; two years later,he invited Barry Rogers to lecture at Yale.It wasn’t until then that he realized thedepth of Barry’s connection tomovement. “I had films from thePalladium with no sound, Barry looked at the screen and from the feetreconstructed the sound and played off

La Perfecta. Kutsher’s Country Club, Monticello, NY, Summer 1962Ismael Quintana, Manny Oquendo, Barry Rogers. Courtesy of Joe Rivera.

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through intense listening to the music of Arsenio Rodríguez and study of tresplaying. In fact, he learned thisinstrument well enough to record on tres with La Perfecta, Johnny Pacheco,and the Cesta All Stars. Listening toCuban 78 rpm records with MannyOquendo and dubbing many onto openreel tape provided a fine sense of Afro-Cuban musical nuance. As much as BarryRogers respected and loved the Cuban

models he studied so assiduously,copying them was not enough. One fundamental difference between the original and Barry’s interpretationinvolves the fundamental grounding oftypical Cuban brass soloing in diatonicharmony, with occasional chromaticpassages of an ornamental nature. The excellence of Barry’s ear and his jazz background enabled him to hearharmonies implied by the basic diatonicidiom, and to graft on extensions in a

clear and logical way. Likewise, his experience both as a player andcollector of rhythm and blues musicallowed him to incorporate the blues scaleinto Latin music to an unprecedenteddegree. The vocal inflections and rhythmicconcept of King Curtis, James Brown, andother Rogers favorites were a rich stylisticvein he mined successfully for the rest ofhis life. In listening to Barry’s final soloon “No Me Hagas Sufrir” (Eddie Palmieri —

Eddie Palmieri) one is struck immediatelyby how Barry phrases, articulates, slides,and bends the pitches in a way that bearsamazing likeness to a great soul singer.For a listener with any experience listeningto rhythm and blues, it’s easy to createwords in one’s own mind for the tromboneline, and to imagine Otis Redding singingthem. Perhaps these influences andconnections have something to do withEddie’s magnetic appeal to many African-American and non-Latino audiences.

Symbiotic Arrangements and “that f#*@in’ trombone”It’s true that Eddie gained a lot frombeing around Barry; it’s also true thatBarry found La Perfecta to be anincomparable learning experience. With Manny Oquendo as the band’sbongocero, timbalero, and Cuban musicguru in residence, how could it beotherwise? A less known aspect of howthe Eddie Palmieri experience benefitedBarry is suggested by Joan Fagin,an English fashion designer and closefriend of Barry’s. “He felt that they hadcollaborated really well, that they weregreat together because Eddie couldprovide the basic idea and he woulddevelop it and do the arrangement. And that’s how he preferred to workbecause he found it very difficult toinnovate himself, innovate in the sense of creating a melody or anything like that.He admired people who could do that,this included his wife Louise, who he saidwas very good at that, and Eddie, but hehad trouble with that. Even just a littlephrase, he could do something with itbut to start from zero was not his thing.”

An especially fascinating aspect of theEddie/Barry symbiosis is La Perfecta’sarrangements, specifically the trombonewriting. When it came time to createhorn lines, Barry’s experience as a listenerto jazz records and participant in jamsessions paid off enormously. The trom-bone playing of J.J. Johnson is often citedas a major influence on Barry, the obviousparallel being that between the J.J.Johnson/Kai Winding duo and Eddie’svarious two trombone frontlines. Interms of approach to the horn itself, J.J.and Barry are night and day, J.J. havingthe more refined technique and Barrybeing the brasher and more strident ofthe two (there’s more to follow aboutBarry’s relation with the trombone...). Joe Orange claims that Barry’s favoritejazz trombonist of the early ‘60s wasJulian Priester; he quotes Barry as saying

that J.J. was a great player but altogethertoo easy to imitate in a superficial way.Perhaps the real substance to thecomparison between Barry and J.J. can be found in examining their approach toarranging. Although the musical contextsare certainly different, it’s logical tocompare the J.J. and Kai Winding lineupwith the Barry Rogers/José Rodriguesequivalent strictly in terms of how theinstruments function. To begin with, the difficulty of writing for two trombonesis the difficulty of any kind of two-partcomposing. Searching the collectedworks of even the greatest composers willyield very few masterpieces written fortwo single-line instruments. Then there’sthe issue of the limitations of theinstrument vis-a-vis the idiosyncrasies of manipulating the slide. This can betrue even for as great a technician as J.J.Johnson (for that matter, Barry Rogerswas no slouch when it came to slidetechnique). The notes played by J.J. andKai on their classic albums are cannilychosen for their intervallic weight and for their artful use of two of the oldestdevices in any composer’s bag of tricks:tension and release. It is especially intheir ballad work that one can hearfrequent use of diatonic dissonance, also known as “white note dissonance.”Slow-moving passages using voicingsbased on seconds or fourths open up a large number of possibilities forresolution, and these possibilities areused to their fullest potential.

No aspect of J.J. Johnson’s musicallandscape was terra incognita for BarryRogers, who knew J.J.’s records andcaught his club appearances. One of thegreat thrills of Barry’s life was sharing the stage of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouwwith J.J.’s group as a member of JimmyWormworth’s American Jazz Quintet in the summer of 1957. It seems clear that J.J.’s arranging concepts wereabsorbed by Barry, whether consciously orotherwise. Barry’s economy as a writer is

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Alegre All Stars recording session, New York, early 1960’s. Ray Maldonado, Puchi Boulong, Barry Rogers.Courtesy of Roy Ramirez.

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octaves are common. La Perfecta’s chartsshow a far greater degree of harmonicintricacy and jazz influence, withoutsacrificing one iota of sabor. On MonRivera’s recordings the most commonhigh note for the trombones is the Gabove the piano’s middle C; some A’s and a very rare B flat can be heard.Sometimes it seems that where Mon’strombone sections leave off, in terms ofrange, Eddie’s begin. Much of what Barryplays on La Perfecta albums lies betweenthe F above middle C and the C a fifthabove this note. There’s no question thathis exploitation of a consistently higherrange than any previous trombonist inLatin music contributed to La Perfecta’svisceral excitement. Writing in this rangealso has a practical advantage—the trombonist will normally have to use only the first three or four positions,and will not have to move the slide as far as playing parts written in a middle to lower range. It is this middle to lowerrange where much of Mon Rivera’strombone parts are written.

An excellent source on this subject is JoeOrange, who both played with La Perfectaand subbed on Mon Rivera’s band at dancesand recorded with him. Joe observed:“You can hear a lot of trombone bandswhere the writer doesn’t understand theinstrument he’s writing for like Eddie did,and that’s the difference. And you can evenhear the awkwardness in the execution.Mon’s is kind of rough because he didn’twrite for that upper middle register. His lines may look easy on paper, but theycan be a lot more awkward than they look.But Eddie really knew where the sound ofthe trombone was, which is really in thatmiddle to upper register.” It must be notedthat playing in this range was one of thehallmarks of innovative trombonists of thelate 1920s, giving them a newly acquiredfacility compared with earlier players. As astudent of the playing of Jack Teagarden,Lawrence Brown, and J.C. Higginbotham,Barry Rogers understood this perfectly.

La Perfecta a la Barry, Barry a laPerfecta: challenges and legacies1968, the year after his participation inthe Champagne album, was the last year in which Barry Rogers worked for EddiePalmieri on a regular basis. Over the nextdecade and a half he would return to thePalmieri organization on a per projectbasis. Recorded fruits of these latercollaborations include Sentido, The Sun ofLatin Music, and Eddie Palmieri, some ofthe greatest Latin music ever committedto disc. Nevertheless, Barry needed amore dependable way of supporting hisfamily. A temporary solution was joiningthe house band at Lloyd Price’s Turntablein October 1968 (this club was known asBirdland in its previous incarnation). It was also time for Barry to look for freshmusical challenges and play not only withNew York’s best Latin musicians, but withNew York’s best musicians, period.

Young New York Latino musicians ofthe 1960s were mesmerized by the fierytrombones heard on La Perfecta’s recordsand in personal appearances. One was a teenager, Willie Colón, who becameaware of Barry’s solo through Joe Cotto’shit recording “Dolores.” A fledglingtrumpet player, Willie immediatelymemorized the solo and decided toswitch instruments: “When I first heard a trombone solo by Barry I said,‘What the hell is that?’ It sounded like an elephant, it was so big and angry andpowerful and just brilliant. I starteddoubling on the trumpet and tromboneand then finally I dropped the trumpetand I started a two- trombone band. And that’s when things really startedhappening because it was such a contrastfrom these big bands with all thesaxophones. You know, the old-timerswould get up and they’d have like fourtrumpets, five saxes, a flute player, you know, a legion of musicians on thestage. And then we’d come up and it was like one of these little rap groups,two trombones and a rhythm section.

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as pronounced as his economy as a player;this is obvious from listening to LaPerfecta albums. A listener can forget that there are usually only two tromboneson these records, the ear sometimes beingfooled by the craft with which the noteshave been selected and the intensity withwhich they have been played. When athird trombone is available (an examplebeing the bolero “Contento Estoy”), it’s also a shock that there are only threehorns; the mastery of shell voicings andclever use of simultaneous major andminor harmony is a guarantee for somegorgeous backgrounds for the leadinstrument or voice. When we ask who wrote any of these arrangements (Joe Orange thinks that the three-trombone version of “Contento Estoy”was written by Eddie), we may be posing an unanswerable question.

In some ways, trying to separate thePalmieri from the Rogers contributionsto a La Perfecta arrangement can becompared to unscrambling an egg. Eddie Palmieri has always given BarryRogers full credit for exposing him to atremendous variety of new musical ideas,particularly from the cutting edge of early1960s jazz. As noted, this relationshipdefied the fixed roles of teacher andstudent. Arranger and trumpet playerMarty Sheller alluded to this type ofmusical symbiosis when I asked him tocomment on their mutual growth as writers: “I think they both had the sameway of thinking about harmony. That’s whyit’s almost interchangeable, the arrange-ments that Barry would do and thearrangements that Eddie would do. It’s almost like Duke Ellington and BillyStrayhorn.” Particularly worthy of note is a mutual interest in harmonic exploration,a topic which fascinated (and still fascinates)Eddie Palmieri; this resulted in genuineand wonderful forms of musical dialoguebetween Eddie and Barry. The trombone-based introduction to the Palmiericomposition “Solo Pensar en Ti”

(from the Azúcar pa’ Ti album) is repletewith mystery and expectation, which iscreated by a kind of harmonic ambiguitybetween the keys of F minor and A flatminor. The harmonies outlined by theintervals of the two trombone parts aremirrored and developed marvelously in aseries of runs and other pianistic devicesimprovised by Eddie. Exactly who createdthis arrangement? To me the real questionis this: could such an arrangement havebeen created in any way other than thePalmieri/ Rogers collaboration?

With all of the sharing of ideas betweenthe two key musicians of La Perfecta,however, there is one aspect of the musicthat clearly comes from Barry Rogers—the voicing of the trombone parts. Joe Orange remembers driving to thePalmieri home in Brentwood, New York,in Barry’s Volkswagen. “Eddie hadwritten out the charts on the piano, hehad copied the trombone parts and wewould play them. And then we wouldstart to just discuss and change and movethings around so that it felt right for thetrombones. He really wrote for thetrombone, other than the volume it’s verycomfortable playing Eddie’s music on thetrombone, the range is perfect. I’m surehe got that from Barry, the music lentitself very, very easily to the trombone.”

With no value judgment intended, it is revealing of La Perfecta’s distinctivestyle to compare the horn parts createdby Barry Rogers and Eddie Palmieri with Mon Rivera’s charts for three andfour trombones; Mon Rivera, after all, is considered Eddie’s main forerunner inbringing the multiple trombone line tothe front of Latin music. Mon’s moreintuitive execution was based onarrangements which used simple diatonicharmonies often presented homo-rhythmically. The chord changes areoften limited to tonic and dominantharmony, with an occasional subdom-inant or other scale degree. His triadsare usually voiced as closely as possible;

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been playing and the kind of work hewas doing. I hasten to add that JoeOrange is totally in awe of the greatnessof Barry’s ears and the brilliance of hisconceptions; he’s on record as sayingthat Barry Rogers was the most musicaltrombone player he’s ever heard.

Rather than studying with tromboneplayers, it was Barry’s choice to seek helpfrom non-trombone-playing instrumentaldiagnosticians. One of New York’s mostcelebrated “chop doctors” was a saxo-phone player named Carmine Caruso, who was known for extraordinary insightinto how to make a brass player’s lip, air,and psyche work productively together.Barry’s son Chris is a highly gifted trumpetplayer and composer/arranger, a featuredsoloist for five years with Gerry Mulligan’sConcert Jazz Band. He has also workedwith many of the top Latin groups of the‘80s and ‘90s. He was always aware of hisfather’s search for self-improvement. “He definitely practiced every day, I have vivid memories of him practicing.In fact if I listen to my childhood cassettesof myself playing with my friends you canoften hear my dad practicing in thebackground. Later on he was morecomfortable with being able to take a fewdays off and be able to come back strong.But he had a very specific routine when hestarted practicing, you know, stuff for thebrass embouchure. Carmine Caruso typeslurring, harmonic exercises, he wouldalways do that to keep his range up.”

It was only after abandoning full-timework in the Latin scene that Barry becamesuccessful in resolving his struggles with his chosen instrument; the need to play“loud, louder, and loudest” became a thingof the past. Working regularly during the1970s as a recording artist both facilitatedand necessitated a less strident approach to playing. Generally speaking, musicianswho spend most of their professional livesplaying for microphones play softer andwith less tonal edge than musicians whoperform in large concert halls or who do

most of their work with dance bands. The “fuzz and buzz” that makes the soundof an instrument project well in a largespace is worse than unnecessary in arecording situation. Microphones are veryunforgiving of bright, edgy tonal qualities,which tend to record poorly. This approachbecame more and more internalized byBarry throughout the ‘70s. Still, it wasimpossible to mistake his playing foranyone else’s. A thorough student of hisfather’s playing, Chris Rogers offers thefollowing comments. “There was a definiteevolution to his approach with thetrombone. He probably would refer to his style in the beginning as ‘elephanttrombone’ because he was just poundingthe horn on his face, playing really loud. I don’t know how he could do it, and definitely in the long run that’s not the productive way to play. If you’re reallyoverblowing, you’re playing your loudestthe whole time and you’re probably cuttingyour dynamic range. I think that’s probablyhow it was on the gigs, but I know thatchanged. Listen to Eddie Palmieri’s WhiteAlbum, I mean Barry’s tone on that isamazing and is so centered because he had somehow gotten to a point eventuallywhere he decided OK, he’s not going tooverblow, if there’s a mike he’s going use itand he’s not going to kill himself. On theliner notes for Eddie and Cal Tjader’salbum El Sonido Nuevo, they describe oneof my father’s solos as swashbuckling. I think my dad never lost that quality, he just refined it. That’s the way he played,graceful but amazingly strong presenceregardless of whether he was overblowingor playing softly. Amazing dynamics in hisplaying, which I would love to hear in otherplayers, that I very rarely hear. So I stillthink of ‘elephant trombone’ as just a wayof describing really loud, distorted, metal-in-your-face playing.”

By 1974, the year of some of hisgreatest collaboration with EddiePalmieri, Barry’s rethinking of hisinstrument was already paying off.

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That became the standard of the salsaband now, if you listen to salsa radio now the rule is that it’s a tromboneband.” Or, if not literally a tromboneband, a trumpet-and-trombonefrontline. One of the most commondispositions of these instruments is twotrumpets and two trombones, a scoringinitially popularized by Larry Harlow(not coinci-dentally, many of Harlow’scharts for these instruments werewritten by Mark Weinstein, one ofBarry Roger’s earliest disciples).

There were older trombonists whowere turned off by what they perceived as the crassness of this new style. One ofthem was Jack Hitchcock, a veteran bigband musician who was no stranger toLatin music. His credits included workboth as a trombonist and vibraphonistwith José Curbelo and writing for bothHerbie Mann and the short-lived butexciting Patato/Mangual Band of 1960.The changing expectations in Latintrombone playing were not to his liking;by the 1970s he had left the Latin sceneand was making his living playing clubdates. When asked what was expected of trombone players in the CharliePalmieri Orchestra of the mid ‘60s, his response was “Loud, louder, andloudest.” Hitchcock said: “You couldalmost blame Barry Rogers for whathappened to trombones in Latin music. I got to love Barry a lot, man, we got very close but at the time I hated hisguts. Because I was essentially a rathersoft trombone player and I liked it thatway. Now Eddie Palmieri was the hotband and Barry and José Rodrígues, they pumped that stuff out and it was soloud, I mean it was incredible. ThenWillie Colón comes up after him andsays, ‘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 withOrlando Marín or whoever I was with itwas, ‘Hey, man, can’t you play louder?’,

‘cause they didn’t feel they were getting’their money’s worth. And poor Barry, he was sick half the time, I mean he wasalways coming down with colds. He lookedlike death warmed over and it wasn’tbecause of drugs or anything like that, I think it just took so much out of him.”

Like many Latino trombonists comingup in the 1970s, Angel “Papo” Vásquezreceived his first real incentive to masterthe instrument from listening to LaPerfecta records. Papo’s first meeting withone of his idols provided some advice thatsurprised him. “Barry told me, ‘Listen,man, when you play with these electricbass players, people with electricinstruments, you put your bell into themicrophone.’ He kind of messed up hischops when he was with Eddie Palmieri’sband. They used to play real loud and heused to not use the microphone toomuch. And that’s when they started usingthe baby bass, the electric Ampeg bassand electric pianos and I guess he out-blew his chops.” It’s a given among brassplayers that one’s “chops” are slow todevelop and easy to mess up. Whenconsidering Barry’s early “chop problems,”it is important to keep in mind that whenLa Perfecta was formed he had not beenplaying much more than ten years. Viewed in the context of a brass player’sentire career, that’s hardly any time at all.Joe Orange has a story from this period. “A couple of times I talked Barry intocoming over to my house so we could playclassical duets together. Barry couldn’tplay! I mean he could (makes loud noise)but he was doing that so much that whenhe had to play with a lot of control andsoftness and get into the high register hecouldn’t do it! Now the problem wasn’treading, he could read. It was hisapproach to the horn, he could just play what he could play at that time.” As surprising as it may be to hear a storylike this about one of salsa’s canonizedheroes, it makes sense when oneconsiders the length of time Barry had

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Finale On Wednesday, April 18, 1991, Barry Rogers went to sleep in his Washington Heightsapartment. He never woke up. There was no history of any illness that could haveprovided any context or explanation. The shock to Barry’s friends, family, andcolleagues was compounded by the veil of mystery clouding the end of his life.According to his cousin Heidi Rogers, the autopsy was inconclusive.

The life and work of Barry Rogers is fraught with irony. Not a Latino, he helpedchange the face of Hispanic Caribbean music, especially in his vital role in the seminalband La Perfecta. Not a scion of the African diaspora, he felt, mastered, performed and taught Afro-Atlantic music as if it were part of his own make-up. Known best as a trombonist, he spent much of his life fighting “that fuckin’ trombone.” Although heeventually won, it was an invisible battle to all but the keenest observers and his closestfriends. A man who worshipped John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins and who began andended his life playing jazz, he is best known as a salsero. The de facto leader of almostevery band fortunate enough to count him as a member, he never officially led a bandor had a hit record. His role (however vaguely formulated or insufficiently understood)in shaping the sounds of ‘60s salsa and ‘70s fusion masks another achievement, possibly even greater: Barry Rogers can be considered to be one of the first worldmusicians. The clouding of this achievement is probably the greatest irony of all.

To leave her the last word, Louise Rogers views Barry Rogers’ creativity from aslightly different perspective: “Barry had an ability to go to the heart of a given musicalvernacular. At the same time he never lost himself, he was always himself in doing it.Which is why he was not someone who emulates beautiful things from the past, he was really a creator in the stream of the past.”

P H O T O G R A P H Y A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

I would like to thank the following people for the use of photographs that appearwith this article: Arthur Jenkins, Joe Rivera, Chris Rogers, Roy Ramirez.

F U R T H E R R E A D I N G

For those interested in finding out more about Barry Rogers and his ambiente musical talent,there are several worthwhile sources. As an afterward to my 1998 Descarga interview with EddiePalmieri, I recommended Robert Farris Thompson’s “New Voice From The Barrios,” publishedin the 10/28/67 issue of Saturday Review. Also cited was John Storm Roberts’ “Salsa’s ProdigalSon,” an interview with Palmieri that appeared in the 4/22/76 issue of Down Beat. Althoughconsiderable time has passed since their printing, both pieces hold up extremely well, due to the cogent thinking and imaginative writing of both authors. Another piece of great value isChristopher Washburne’s “Play It Con Filin!: The Swing and Expression of Salsa,” whichappeared in the fall/winter 1998 issue of Latin American Music Review, Volume 19, Number 2.This article contains accurate and well-annotated transcriptions of various salsa improvisations,including the solo from “Páginas de Mujer” referred to at the beginning of this piece. A S E L E C T L I S T I N G O F L AT I N M U S I C R E C O R D I N G S , I N C L U D I N G B A R R Y R O G E R S

Alegre All Stars, The Alegre All StarsAlegre All Stars, Vol. 3 — Lost and FoundAlegre All Stars, Vol. 4 — Way OutAlegre All Stars, Te InvitaAzuquita , La FouleBataan, Joe LasoBataan, Joe Singin’ Some Soul

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His astounding work on “Cobarde” shows him playing passages up to ahigh F, something he would have neverdreamed of doing during the 1960s. On “Páginas de Mujer” from the 1981release Eddie Palmieri (aka “The WhiteAlbum”), Barry tosses off beautifullycentered high C’s and D’s, using all of thecrafty pitch choices and emotional direct-ness of the halcyon days of La Perfecta.

Barry Rogers was endowed with a highlyacute pitch sense and a rhythmic feel thatwas both gutsy and precise. In addition, he had the ability to keep track of detailwithout losing awareness of the big picture.His sense of how to deal with musical andtechnical problems that constantly arisein a studio setting improved countlessrecording projects. Many of hisaccomplishments in this area have neverbeen credited, financially or otherwise. In a 1974 interview with John StormRoberts, he presented the dilemma inwhich he often found himself: “Now wheredo you draw the line between arrangingand producing? You can’t. And of courseyou never get paid for it, for that reason.But I did a hell of a lot of work on somealbums that no one knows about, including

tape editing, producing, which includeddoing overdubs for other musicians. I meanthey’d leave me alone for hours, and I ranthe sessions, which I enjoyed doing. I gaveit, and that’s the way I am. I give more thanI ever get paid for.” Although listed as thearranger of “Un Dia Bonito” (The Sun ofLatin Music), he is not credited for thelayering and molding of sound so brilliantlyrealized in this number. In his 1977 WBAIinterview he recalled the sessions:“I produced everything except the

original rhythm track, without horns and without the arrangement. After therhythm track was laid down by Eddie and the gang, without horns and withoutsinging, I had to go in there and cut it allup with a razor blade with an engineer atthe Electric Lady studios and we piecedthe entire thing together and overdid allthe horns and the singing later.” In a 1998interview for Descarga’s website, Eddiesummarizes Barry’s role: “‘Un Dia Bonito’is the maximum of our collaboration ever.I never played piano like that again and I couldn’t do that again if I tried. Because it was the magic between he and I, he drew it out and I dreweverything out of him too.”

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Quintana, Ismael & Papo Lucca, Amor, Vida y SentimientoRivera, Ismael, Feliz NavidadRivera, Mon, Mon y Sus Trombones (originally Que Gente Averigua)Rivera, Mon, Kijis-KonarSabater, Jimmy, SoloSantamaria, Mongo, UbaneTico All Stars, Descargas at the Village Gate, Live, Vol. 1Tico All Stars, Descargas at the Village Gate, Live, Vol. 2Tico All Stars, Descargas at the Village Gate, Live, Vol. 3Tico-Alegre All Stars, Live at Carnegie Hall, Vol. 1Tjader, Cal, El Sonido NuevoTorres, Roberto, El CastigadorValentin, Bobby, Afuera

I N T E R V I E W S U S E D A S S O U R C E M AT E R I A L F O R T H I S A R T I C L E

( A L L C O N D U C T E D B Y D A V I D M . C A R P U N L E S S O T H E R W I S E I N D I C AT E D . )

Lolly Bienenfeld 3/13/99Steve Berríos Jr. 6/13/97Benny Bonilla 8/12/96Randy Brecker 10/13/98Mike Brecker 12/26/98Willie Colón 9/7/92Eddie Daniels 3/13/99Joe de Mare 5/4/99Alfred Du Mire 5/15/97Joan Fagin 2/15/97Bernard Fox 3/20/97John Gordon 4/11/99Rodgers Grant 6/9/96Oscar Hernández 4/5/99Jack Hitchcock 7/10/97Arthur Jenkins 5/10/96Luis Máquina 10/22/93Kenny Mills 4/14/97Phil Newsum 10/10/98; 10/17/98Joe Orange 2/6/99Johnny Pacheco 4/2/97Eddie Palmieri 8/13/98Bob Porcelli 6/30/96Joe Rivera 1/30/99Barry Rogers 1974 (interview with John Storm Rogers)Barry Rogers 1/30/77 (WBAI-FM, interview with Pablo “Yoruba” Guzmán)Chris Rogers 11/10/96Heidi Rogers 4/22/99Louise Rogers 4/17/97Ray Santos 8/3/92Lenny Seed 7/7/96Peter Sims 5/15/96Marty Sheller 5/26/96; 12/23/96Robert Farris Thompson 1/18/99Papo Vásquez 8/3/93Mark Weinstein 11/24/96

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Byrne, David Rei MomoCachao, DosCesta All Stars, Cesta All Stars, Vol. 1Colón, Willie, El Baquine de Angelitos NegrosCortijo y su Combo, Caballo de Hierro (mixing)Cotto, Joe, DoloresCruz, Celia (w. Tito Puente), Cuba y Puerto Rico Son...Cruz, Celia, The WinnersDimond, Markolino/Frankie Dante, Beethoven’s VEntre Amigos, Entre AmigosFania All Stars, LiveFania All Stars, Live at the Cheetah, Vol. 2Fania All Stars, Live at Yankee Stadium, Vol. 2Fania All Stars, SalsaFania All Stars, Tribute to Tito RodríguezFeliciano, Cheo, FelicidadesFeliciano, Cheo, The SingerHarlow, Larry, Our Latin Feeling/Nuestro Sentimiento LatinoLibre, Con Salsa y con Ritmo, Vol. 1Libre, Tiene CalidadLupe, La, Un Encuentro con La Lupe — with Curet AlonsoMachito, FireworksMann, Herbie, Brazil: Once AgainMann, Herbie, SunbeltMiranda, Ismael, No Voy al FestivalOrquesta Broadway, PasaporteOrquesta Novel, SalsamaniaOrtiz, Luis “Perico,” El IsleñoOrtiz, Luis “Perico,” Sabor TropicalOrtiz, Luis “Perico,” El AstroPacheco, Johnny, Johnny Pacheco con Pete (Conde) Rodriguez/La Perfecta CombinaciónPacheco, Johnny, Pacheco — His Flute and Latin JamPalmieri, Charlie, Mambo ShowPalmieri, Eddie, La PerfectaPalmieri, Eddie, El MolestosoPalmieri, Eddie, Lo Que Traigo Es SabrosoPalmieri, Eddie, Echando Pa’lantePalmieri, Eddie, Azucar Pa’ TiPalmieri, Eddie, MozambiquePalmieri, Eddie, Cal Tjader and Eddie Palmieri/El Sonido NuevoPalmieri, Eddie, MolassesPalmieri, Eddie, BamboleatePalmieri, Eddie, ChampagnePalmieri, Eddie, The Sun of Latin MusicPalmieri, Eddie, Unfinished MasterpiecePalmieri, Eddie, Eddie PalmieriPlaya Sextette, La, Si, Si, La PlayaPlaya Sextette, La, The La Playa Sextet in Puerto RicoPucho and the Latin Soul Brothers, Legends of Acid Jazz — the Best of Pucho and the Soul BrothersPuente, Tito, Cuba y Puerto Rico Son...Puente, Tito, Vaya PuenteQuintana, Ismael, Ismael Quintana

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