Date: 1998
Release: RHINO #R2 75209
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Eighteen sizzling Latin grooves with the power to put some spice back into your life. The tracks collected here were recorded between 1954 and 1972, and range from classic mambo and Latin-jazz to funk and salsa.

This collection contains only the hottest tracks from such major Latin artists as Willie Bobo, Mongo Santamaria, Cal Tjader, Machito, Tito Puente, Ray Barretto, and others. There are also a number of obscure and less-obvious selections, including songs by Ocho, Kako & His Orchestra, and the ever-funky Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers, making it a well rounded and totally enjoyable introduction to this diverse genre.

The songs are ordered effectively, with each track adding a little more heat to the overall vibe. While Latin music can sometimes start to sound a bit repetitive after a while, this disc brims with such high-octane grooves that it’s bound to grab you by the hips and set you moving. A perfect choice for keeping your house guests happily on their feet and off your nice white sofa. Auy, yuy, yuy!!!

Date: 1969
Release: Prestige #7765
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I was first exposed to the irresistible music of Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers in the mid 1990s, when he was in the midst of his UK inspired resurgence. But it wasn’t a British DJ that turned me on to Pucho, it was my old friend Steve. Steve and I had a strangely competitive friendship, built around a mutual love of music. Our dysfunctional dynamic led us on an out of control CD buying spree, a musical arms race of sorts, with both of us vying to accumulate more wonderfully obscure music than the other…more music, that is, than either of us could afford or digest. This irresponsible form of male bonding through competitive consumption was a direct by-product of our short-lived second adolescence, courtesy of the University of California, where we had found a temporary reprieve from the working world to live high on the hog of student loans (me) and parental largess (‘shaking the money tree,’ as Steve put it). But instead of hitting the books, we spent hours of our not so free time scouring the used record bins, each trying to surpass the other.

One week I’d nudge ahead with the discovery of a gem like Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, but then Steve would catch up with something like Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers. He was too good. I could never win. Steve and I eventually went our separate ways. I built this web site and continued to spend my time (and net worth) locked in an endless search for the next great record. I think he wound up liquidating most of his collection. Oh well. But let’s step back a moment to give thanks and appreciation where it is surely due. This Pucho review would not exist without the help of my friend’s discerning ears. PERIOD.

What neither of us knew at the time was just how important and influential this seemingly obscure Pucho guy really was. Harlem-born and bred, Henry “Pucho” Brown was one of the most imaginative musicians to ever merge black and Latin styles, a key player in the soulful, jazzified, and all-around funky movement known as the Latin boogaloo. Between 1966 and 1969, he and his band released eight fiery albums on the Prestige label, culminating with 1969′s seminal psychedelic soul offering, Jungle Fire.

Blessed with a formidable gathering of Soul Brothers, the album features pianist and composer Neal Creaque, versatile guitar master Billy Butler, funky rhythm king Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, along with a supporting cast of lesser known but highly inspired players. Under Pucho’s steady hand, the band blazes through the real meat of the record…the three extended covers of songs written by Motown legends Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong and originally recorded by Gladys Knight & The Pips and the Temptations: “The Friendship Train,” “I Finally Got Myself A Good Man,” and “Cloud 9.” Pucho transforms these classic songs, dropping the vocals and expanding upon their molten musical core of catchy hooks, fuzz & wah tinged guitar, pulsing bass, and earth shattering drum breaks. It’s heady stuff.

Give the album a spin, and soon you’ll find that riding inside a Pucho groove is a bit like flying on Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon—it might never launch into warp speed, but you’re guaranteed one hell of a ride. Three decades after they were recorded, Pucho’s Whitfield/Strong repertoire gained the distinction of being some of the most savored and oft-sampled staples of the British acid-jazz movement. While a lot of fine music was inspired by Pucho (and Whitfield/Strong for that matter), my suggestion is skip today’s middle men and go directly to the source. Jungle Fire is the Latin funk motherload.

Date: 1973
Release: Soul Jazz Records #12
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The Arabs gave the world the concept of zero. America’s own School House Rock taught us that “three is a magic number.” And Chinese numerologists revealed which numbers carried good luck and bad. All these developments set the stage for the release of eight songs recorded by eight Puerto Rican-born African-American musicians who took their name from the Spanish word for the number eight, Ocho. One of the defining bands of the ‘black and proud’ NuYorican scene of the early 1970s, Ocho masterfully fused elements of Latin, funk and jazz. From 1973-75, they recorded four LPs (all reissued by Soul Jazz Records) that are on par with almost anything released by Ray Barretto, Joe Bataan, and Eddie Palmieri. The cream of the crop is Ocho 1, a glorious record loaded with exactly the kind of sounds I have in mind when I tell people that I’m into Latin music.

The absolute best track on the album is “Undress My Mind,” which I first heard on Rhino Records’ excellent Afro-Latin groove collection, Sabroso! This was the song that got me deep into Ocho. “Undress My Mind” could have easily shot up the charts to number one, if only the great Latin artists of the ‘70s had enjoyed the same media hype of today’s dubious talents (think Ricky Martin). The song starts off with a cool chorus of voices singing over a soft yet propulsive rhythm. Midway through the timbales and electric bass kick in, launching into a funky groove that climaxes with the heated vibes solo of band-leader Chico Medoza. Perfectly blending schmaltz, soul, and hard driving salsa, “Undress My Mind” reflects the changing face of Latin music in New York during the early ’70s.

Throughout the album, super heated drum and percussion rhythms cook behind James Brown-tight horn arrangements, giving rise to one spicy jazz funk workout after another. Saxophonists Billy Phipps, Charlie Marshall and Herbie Morgan are unstoppable, breaking frequently into impassioned solos and exchanges, giving the band the upper hand in the swing department. For the few short years that they remained together, Ocho was one of the toughest acts to beat on the Afro-Latin music scene. Their small but essential catalogue of recordings remains highly influential and enjoyable.

Date: 1972
Release: TICO #1303
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Before the heyday of Salsa, Eddie Palmieri functioned as a path-breaking phenomena from Puerto Rico. His lingering influence on Latin music cannot be overstated. This album perfectly combines Palmieri’s experimentalism with the heavy rhythms that kept him ahead on the street. Playing for the toughest of crowds imaginable–the inmates of New York’s notorious Sing-Sing prison–Palmieri and band tore through an ambitious and aggressive set of funky salsa tunes that had the guards dancing in their towers. The prisoners responded with riotous enthusiasm to the music, whose gritty sound came out of the poverty of the Barrio, in South East Harlem, in the Bronx, and other places where bad breaks abounded. This, after all, was THEIR music, and anybody familiar with the condition of America and its prisons in the early 70s (remember Attica!) can understand why the aggressive rhythms of Palmieri resonated so deeply with the incarcerated audience at Sing-Sing.

After a no-nonsense introduction by M.C. Joe Gaines, the concert kicks off with a high-energy salsa, “Pa La Ocha Tambo.” The drummer plays funky, the percussionists throw in handfuls of Latin spice, the horns storm through rhythmic melody lines, the singers soulfully belt out Spanish lyrics, and finally, with great fanfare, Palmieri steps out. He launches into a fiery solo loaded with flourishes of McCoy Tyner, Thelonious Monk, and Latino America. The brass section and singers lock into a heated call and response exchange that gets mesmerizing by the time the song hits the 10-minute mark. The song ends, the prison yard erupts with joy, and the band responds with “V.P. Blues.” This is a heavy early 70s salsa, the exact kind of thing that Santana was busy popularizing with mainstream audiences outside the penal system. The electrifying guitar solo even has a hard Santana blues edge.

The crowd is thoroughly warmed up by the time street poet Felipe Luciano takes to the stage. Luciano stirs the crowd deeply with his spoken word piece, “Jibaro / My Pretty Nigger.” Reciting his poetry with the skill of a ghetto-corner preacher (think the young Malcolm-X), Luciano brings the crowd to its feet with his politically charged words, which read like the lyrics of a classic Gil Scott-Heron or Last Poets song. The album closes out with Eddie Palmieri’s supergroup Harlem River Drive joining in on the album’s funkiest track, “Azucar.” Harlem River Drive was the first group to really merge black and Latin styles and musicians, resulting in a freewheeling fusion of salsa, funk, soul, and jazz. Just when it seems impossible, this song takes things higher, bringing the set to a powerful climactic close.

If this music could–for an afternoon–liberate the inmates of Sing-Sing prison, imagine what it can do for you.

Date: 1968
Release: FANIA SLP-346
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By the time 1968 rolled around, Ray Barretto was a celebrated studio session player whose hard-driving conga rhythms could be heard all over the records of Dizzy Gillespie, Cal Tjader, Cannonball Adderley, and countless others. Once he dropped Acid onto the music world, Barretto firmly established a reputation for himself as an innovator in his own right.

Like the drug itself, Acid had a mind-expanding influence on everyone, allowing for a far more adventurous and eclectic edge to slip into New York’s Latin music scene. A lot less psychedelic than its title and cover might lead you to believe, Acid remains one of the most far-out fusions of Latin and soul music ever conceived.

Catchy as hell, the records four original Latin/soul numbers (“Mercy, Mercy Baby” “The Soul Drummers” “A Deeper Shade of Soul” and “Teacher of Love”) are obscure classics loaded with plenty of vintage ’60s soul references — punchy James Brown and Stax Records sounding horns, thickly grooving bass lines, fat-back drums, and cliché soul catch-phrases such as “What I say,” “Lord have mercy,” “Come on, come on baby” and “Sock it to me!”

“El Nuevo Barretto (The New Barretto)” opens the album on familiar ground, with its high-energy boogaloo-styled salsa sung passionately in Spanish. With the second track, “Mercy, Mercy Baby,” the sound shifts dramatically as soul gets a serious drenching in hot sauce. The band chants “Mercy, Mercy Baby” behind Memphis-styled horns, catchy lyrics, timbales, and Barretto’s kicking congas. The title track, “Acid,” opens up sparsely with a lazy hypnotic bass and percussion groove over which stretches the muted trumpet sounds of Rene Lopez (who was soon to be drafted and shipped off to Vietnam). After a rock-steady timbales solo by Orestes Vilato, the band begins calling out “Barretto, Barretto,” and master Ray steps forward, obliging them with one of his most fiery and intense conga solos ever.

The lyrics on “The Soul Drummers” totally sums up the record:

“Have you heard them cooking
The Soul Drummers
well they play so cool
Soul Drummers
so hard to resist
Soul Drummers
with the African twist.”

The album’s most psychedelic soul sounds can be heard on its closing track, the appropriately titled “Espiritu Libre (Free Spirit).” This instrumental opens with some pretty far out-there trumpet statements that sound as if they could’ve come straight off of Bitches Brew — pretty advanced stuff for a 1968 Latin record! The track builds into a full blown drum-heated jam flavored with odd rhythmic time-signatures, passionate brass, and feverish bass lines, bringing the album to a satisfying peak that leaves you in bad need of a smoke.

Acid turned on a lot of important players with its irresistible blending of Latin and soul music, significantly helping to bring about the rise of the Afro-Latin funk revolution.

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Date: May 24-26, 1966
Release: VERVE #314 519 812-2
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Cal Tjader was a Swedish-American vibraphonist who led pioneering Latin jazz bands from the 1950s until his death in 1982. He was instrumental in bringing Latin music into the mainstream of jazz, creating a fluid, cool-toned vibraphone sound that perfectly embraced both musical styles.

His 1966 collaboration with Latin pianist Eddie Palmieri, El Sonido Nuevo, is one of the most intense mixtures of hot salsa and cool jazz ever recorded. For this session, Tjader and his bassist Bobby Rodriguez joined forces with Palmieri and his high-spirited band, La Perfecta, creating a new unit with a new sound.

This new soul sound is showcased on the album’s opening track, “Los Jibaros.” The song starts off with a slightly chunkier than usual mambo theme, which Tjader spices up with an Eastern-influenced vibes solo set against several bluesy trombones that quickly digress into a caterwauling dialogue with one another. “Ritmo Uni” begins with the audaciously grooving bass of Bobby Rodriguez, who is then joined by the feverish rhythms of Palmieri’s ever supportive percussion and brass sections, all of which combine to create a hypnotic, funky, and mildly psychedelic vibe that perfectly underpins Tjader’s superb solo. The song prematurely fades out after a scant three minutes of bliss.

Thankfully, the producers allowed the tape to run on “Picadillo,” a hard-driving 7-minute exploration of Tito Puente‘s mambo classic. Palmieri reaches deep inside his Nuyorican soul to unleash a long, climactic piano solo filled with echoes of McCoy Tyner, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell. The band moves in heated rhythmic discussion behind him, playing with just the right amount of restraint, heightening the intensity of Palmieri’s inspired solo. Tjader is given just the push he needs to take his playing one step beyond, and trombonist Barry Rogers brings it all home with his swaggering solo.

But the best is saved for last, and all the stops are pulled on the album’s title cut, “El Sonido Nuevo.” Loosely structured, atmospheric and jamming, it is on this track that all of the talents of the assembled players coalesced, producing a blazing masterpiece of Latin-jazz improvisation. The power of the original vinyl release is diluted by the six enjoyable but rather lightweight bonus tracks mindlessly tacked on to the end of the Verve CD reissue. One can’t help but wonder whether or not there were any outtakes from the 1966 sessions left somewhere in the vaults. The reissue could surely have added value if it at least included the full and unedited versions of the songs, without all those irritating fade-outs.

Nevertheless, the incandescent musical meeting of Tjader and Palmieri produced an invigoratingly new soul sound that was a hugely influential precursor to salsa, Afro-Latin funk, and Latin-Rock. El Sonido Nuevo is strongly intoxicating.