Joe Cuba R.I.P. (Father of Boogaloo/Bang! Bang! Push! Push!)

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2009-02-15-obit-cuba_N.htm

NYC salsa band leader Joe Cuba dies at 78

By Laura N. Perez Sanchez, Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN — Salsa band leader Joe Cuba, dubbed the "Father of Latin Boogaloo"
for weaving a fluid, bilingual mix of musical influences, died Sunday in New York City, a member of his group said. He was 78.
The musician, a friend and contemporary of the late salsa giant Tito Puente, died from complications of a persistent bacterial infection at Mount Sinai Medical Center a day after doctors disconnected his life support, said Cheo Feliciano, a longtime friend and singer in the Joe Cuba Sextet. Cuba had fought the infection for several years.

Born Gilberto Calderon in 1931 in New York to a family from Puerto Rico, the band leader and conga player helped change the sound of salsa in the 1960s, Feliciano said.

Until then, most popular salsa had been played by orchestras, he said. But Cuba led a six-member band with three singers who also played percussion and danced a routine.

"He had a dynamic group," with a signature vibraphone-fronted sound that "caused a craze because it was different," Feliciano said. Albums such as 1966's Bang! Bang! Push, Push, Push incorporated elements of salsa, Latin jazz and R&B and featured lyrics in both English and Spanish.

Cuba, whose musical career took him on world tours, was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame and became director of the International Salsa Museum in New York's East Harlem.

In his 70s, he was confined to a sick bed for three years after contracting a staph bacterial infection while being treated for asthma at a hospital.
After care in hospitals, a nursing home and at his New York home, he resumed performing in 2006.

Feliciano said he spoke to Cuba by telephone from Puerto Rico just before Cuba died.

"I told him that God has a mission for all of us, and when we've come to the end of the mission, we have to go to the place we came from," said Feliciano, who debuted as a singer in the sextet in 1957.

The band leader's remains are expected to be interred in Puerto Rico.

R.I.P. I don't know more than "Bang bang, Push Push" but that's a great one.

My used LP copy of We Must Be Doing Something Right, which went No. 119 in Billboard in 1966, features the following words written by somebody (maybe Joe?) in blue ink around the dapper band photo on its cover: "New Wave Band," "We're Pissers," "To Jan All My Love Joe Cuba."

Anyway, always seemed to me his Latin bugalu had as much "Wooly Bully" as salsa in it. A great one. RIP.

Yes. I have read and heard some salsa purists snear at Latin bugalu.

some salsa purists snear at Latin bugalu.

Fuck 'em.

Also cool how "El Pito (I'll Never Go Back To Georgia)" is a definitive answer record to "Midnight Train To Georgia," albeit seven years before the fact.

Great tune.

Use of the term boogaloo as opposed to bugalu:

Various regions of the country had distinctive styles of this funky brand of
soul; for example, the boogaloo in Chicago, the ‘tighten up’ of Archie Bell and the
Drells out of Houston, the more jazz-influenced sound of Kool and the Gang
(originally called the Jazziacs) in the Northeast, the laid-back grooves of Charles
Wright’s Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band on the West Coast, and the slick soul of
Isaac Hayes in Memphis. The New Orleans tradition was carried forward in the
percolating grooves of the Meters and their dynamic drummer, Joseph ‘Zigaboo’
Modeliste.

From an Alexander Stewart article called Funky Drummer

Yes. I have read and heard some salsa purists snear at Latin bugalu.

wikapedia-

Though Latin boogaloo shares a common root with the R&B dance fad, the boogaloo, its style and sound would become markedly different. Latin boogaloo originated in New York City among teenage Cubans and Puerto Ricans. The style was a fusion of popular African American R&B, rock and roll and soul with mambo and son montuno.

See this Oliver Wang article in the Nation-http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080128/wang

excerpt-There's little agreement over who transformed the R&B boogaloo into the Latin bugalú, but the first to market its name was probably Brooklyn bandleader Ricardo "Richie" Ray. On his 1966 album Se Soltó, Ray prominently announced the debut of the "bugaloo," a Latin rhythm that he described as a "PHunky cha cha." For Ray, the bugaloo meant more than just a new style; his liner notes also proclaim that it was "the first real bridge" to bring Latin and African-American dance and music styles together. Ray's was a bold claim but not particularly accurate. Jazz had already served as a crossroads of exchange for black and Latin music, beginning as early as Dizzy Gillespie and Machito's Afro-Cuban suites of the 1940s. By the early '60s, there were any number of big R&B/Latin crossover hits, especially the slinky 1963 remake of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" by Cuban master percussionist Mongo Santamaria.

What made bugalú different was as much generational as it was musical. The players who led the movement were an emergent cadre of "Nuyoricans," New York-born and -raised Puerto Ricans. They came of age in and around working-class black and Latino neighborhoods, in a musical polyglot where the honeyed doo-wop sounds of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers were as resonant as Tito Puente's spirited mambos. When mambo's crown venue, the Palladium Ballroom, closed in 1966, bugalú was already rising to provide the next big thing.

The clarion call came with the 1966 single "Bang Bang," by the Joe Cuba Sextet.

x-post...I agree with you re the continuum and do not agree with the salsa-loving folks I heard snear at bugalu. Those 'purist' folks may not represent the majority of salsa lovers

To be honest, a little while back after I took the Latin Music 101 self-study course and went back to listen to some Ray Barretto bugalu records I thought "hey, this beat has no clave, and therefore according to my newly acquired expertise this record must be bad!" Then I realized I was being a jerk, one of those instant self-styled experts like the person who says "Oh, Kurosawa is not the real Japanese director, he is too influenced by the West."

from salsacrazy.com

During its heyday nearly every major Latin band recorded boogalus including Ray Barretto, El Gran Combo and even Eddie Palmieri, one of the styles most visible opponents. According to JJ Rassler in a Descarga.com article, Boogalu occupied a unique position in Latin music history since it emerged as the popularity of Charanga music was waning and before the emergence of Salsa.

According to music historian Juan Flores, Boogalu was not an accidental development in Latin music but was the embodiment of the social and cultural interplay found on the streets of Black and Spanish Harlem.

fuck the purists
and RIP Joe Cuba

a side note, 5 or so years ago my husband and I were dancing in Colorado to El Pito
and yet, here we are BACK IN GEORGIA
*sigh*

I didn't realize the Dizzy Gillespie connection with Joe Cuba's "El Pito":

As for the Dizzy Gillespie connection, that’s his and Chano’s bassline and melody you’re listening to. Not to mention that the “I’ll never go back to Georgia” refrain is the same one Dizzy used to intro his 1957 re-recording of “Manteca” (taken from At Newport). So, with the help of Chano Pazo, Dizzy Gillespie created Latin Jazz by borrowing the percussion instruments and cadences of Cuba. A decade later, Puerto Rican musicians from New York incorporated R&B and soul (and Dizzy’s bassline!) into their dance styles to come up with the first major Latin crossover hits in American pop history.

http://www.kalamu.com/bol/2006/10/08/joe-cuba-sextet-%E2%80%9Cel-pito%E2%80%9D/

Hate to be pedantic, but it's not Pazo, it's Pozo.

I think I saw some other typos on that site also

I still have probably only heard about 1/3 of his output (if that), but I particuarly like the stuff with Cheo Feliciano on it, which is just amazing, like this. Excuse the visuals (especially Nina)!

Also excuse the audio quality, but I think you can still get some sense of the song.

Oh, so that's what "Happiness is a warm gun" is referencing, right?

And of course there's "El Raton", which Cheo himself wrote:

(Again, ignore the visuals. Why he uses a Fania All Stars graphic for this I don't know.)

Sorry to all you mavericks if this is too much from the straight salsa side of Joe Cuba. I like boogaloo, but I like salsa more.

I like to think "boogaloo" derives from the Moroccan "Boujeloud."

Damn this sucks. From this thread:

can you name a band who have numbers in their name and aren't shite?

Joe Cuba says:

"There was actually a connection between my playing ball and playing music. I starting getting involved with music in early 50s when I was 19 years old. I broke my leg playing stoop ball, sliding into the sidewalk of all things, so I asked my friend to lend me his conga. My leg was up in a cast and I couldn't do anything, so for the next few months, I practiced in the house and on the block all the time. I hung out with this guy Santos Mirando who was a great Timbaleros players."

BEEP BEEP

ahhhhhhhhhh

BEEP BEEP

There's gonna be dj tribute to Joe Cuba Thursday night in DC at Zanzibar. Probably both his bugalu and salsa.

Did everybody hear this Afro-pop feature on bugalu?

http://www.afropop.org/radio/radio_program/ID/75/Bugalu

I caught it last night and it has some great snippets of interview with Joe Cuba. (Apparently parts of what became "Bang! Bang!" were lifted from what the audience itself started yelling when it was performed.) Also, Johnny Colon talks about a conspiracy to silence bugalu.

Here's an excerpt featuring the Joe Cuba segments:

http://odeo.com/episodes/24292355-Bugalu

(No new posts in almost 35 minutes: did everybody die?)

No, there are like 5 people in the world who seem to read Latin related ilx items and we were all away from computers! I have not listened to that afropop thing but intend to do so. I'm watching ACC basketball now.

No, there are like 5 people in the world who seem to read Latin related ilx items and we were all away from computers!

I meant on the whole board though.

Figured that was what you meant.

Oh, that's a few more than 5, I guess.

Gonna see New York band Spanglish Fly tonight for free in DC. They do boogaloo/bugalu and will hopefully play some Joe Cuba

Was pleasantly surprised by the wonderful latin boogaloo doc We Like It Like That from 2015. It has some amazing archival footage of the whole scene - also great stories from the likes of Joe Bataan, Johnny Colon, Ricardo Ray et al

Yes!

yeah, it's great