Chano Pozo played a major role in the founding of Latin jazz, which was essentially a mixture of bebop and Cuban folk music. He gained his musical background from Cuban religious cults. After moving to New York in 1947, he met Dizzy Gillespie who enthusiastically added him to his bebop big band. Among his features with Dizzy were "Cubana Be,"... [+] Read More

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Clare Fischer has had a varied career as keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader. The composer of two standards, "Pensativa" and "Morning," Fischer has long had an interest in Latin rhythms. After graduating from Michigan State University, he moved to Los Angeles in 1957, working as accompanist and arranger for the Hi-Lo's. He wrote for... [+] Read More

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The bomba and plena traditions of Puerto Rico's slums were given respectability through the music of Rafael Cortijo (born Rafel Cortijo Verdejo). Inheriting his band, which he renamed Cortijo y su Combo, when bandleader Mario Roman retired in 1954, Cortijo went on to become one of the Caribbean's most successful artists of the 1950s and '60s.... [+] Read More

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Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time (some would say the best), Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis' emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated.... [+] Read More

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Eddie Palmieri is one of the foremost Latin jazz pianists of the last half of the 20th century, blessed with a technique that fuses such ubiquitous jazz influences as the styles of Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk, and McCoy Tyner into a Latin context. No purist, he has also shown a welcome willingness to experiment with fusions of Latin and... [+] Read More

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The flagship act for Fania Records, the Fania All-Stars popularized New York salsa during the 1970s by organizing concerts at larger and larger venues (from the Red Garter in Greenwich Village all the way to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx) that spotlighted not only the label's but the salsa world's biggest stars -- Ray Barretto, Willie Colón,... [+] Read More

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For a long stretch of time in the 1950s and early '60s, George Shearing had one of the most popular jazz combos on the planet -- so much so that, in the usual jazz tradition of distrusting popular success, he tends to be underappreciated. Shearing's main claim to fame was the invention of a unique quintet sound, derived from a combination of... [+] Read More

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Universally known as the King of the Mambo, Pérez Prado was the single most important musician involved in the hugely popular Latin dance craze. Whether he actually created the rhythm is somewhat disputed, but it's abundantly clear that Prado developed it into a bright, swinging style with massive appeal for dancers of all backgrounds and... [+] Read More

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CD Review Latin Jazz Network
Papo Vazquez
Piratas Trovadores (Pirates Troubadours)
From the Badlands
By Tomas Pe?a
Leave it to the mind of trombonist Papo Vazquez to conjure up a title that evokes images of riding shotgun through the Wild West! Actually, the analogy is not a stretch. According to Papo, “the badlands of... [+] Read More

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Multi-instrumentalist Tito Rodriguez played an important role in New York's thriving Latin dance scene of the 1950s and '60s. His expressive playing was an important factor in the success of his brother Johnny Rodriguez's band. A native of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Rodriguez displayed his talents at a very young age. Accomplished on a variety of... [+] Read More

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