6/19/11

Mardi Soir Sessions volume III
The South American Way

The South American Way - Los Hermanos Brothers:

here's a link to download: http://www.mediafire.com/file/spfaw3xyyhv4yhh/The%20South%20American%20Way.mp3

TRACKLIST: Mardi Soir Sessions (Vol.3):
“The South Amercian Way”

1. Carmen Miranda - South American way
2. Gerry Mulligan - La carioca
3. Mildred Bailey & Red Norvo - The weekend of a secretary
4. Machito & his Afro Cuban Salseros - Un poquito de tu amor
5. Lolita Garrido - Bote Hawanna
6. The Lion with orchestral accopaniment - Trinidad, the land of Calypso
7. The Duke of Iron - Kockeemoonga
8. Roaring Lion - Carnival long ago
9. Nora Dean - Must get a man
10. Jacki Mittoo - Voodoo Moon
11. Allen Toussaint - Tequila
12. Los papacitos - jazzy
13. Compay Quinto - El cumbanchero
14. Billy May's Rico Mambo Orch - Hernando's hideway
15. Perez Prado - Mambo nr. 5
16. Danza Latina - Ran Kan Kan 
17. Lucho Bermudez y su orchestra - Fiesta de negritos
18. Mitchi Sarmiento y sus bravos - Hong Kong
19. Fruko y sus Tesos - Salsa Na Ma
20. Lucho Bermudez - Gaita de las flores
21. La Sonora Cienaguera - La Piojosa
22. Lucy Gonzalez antolin y su combo orense - La ley poderosa 


Point of departure for this musical journey is Hollywood, paying tribute to Carmen Miranda, considered to be the precursor of Brazil's Tropicalismo, with her version of 'South American Way'. Carmen Miranda was a Portuguese-born Brazilian samba singer, Broadway actress and Hollywood film star popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was, by some accounts, the highest-earning woman in the United States and noted for her signature fruit hat outfit she wore in the 1943 movie 'The Gang's All Here'. 


We remain in Los Angeles with yet another reference to Hollywood's reading of Brazilian exuberance: the rendition of 'La Carioca' by the famous Muligan/Baker pianoless quartet. Despite their very different backgrounds, Mulligan a classically-trained New Yorker and Baker, a much more instinctive player, they had an almost psychic rapport and Mulligan later remarked that, "I had never experienced anything like that before and not really since". 'La Carioca' is a song that first appeared in the 1933 'Flying down to Rio', a feature by Thornton Freeland, starring Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, appearing together on screen for the first time.
 



Instead of Rio, we find ourselves travelling to Havana with a young secretary from New-York. This novelty song, recorded in 1938, depicts a shy clerk who comes alive on a weekend trip to Cuba. Mildred Bailey seems to get a kick out of telling the story. Red Norvo plays the maracas as well as the vibraphone, and the band members join in on the chorus. Everybody has a rollicking good time, on what was to become one of the more succesful tunes Mildred Bailey recorded in the mid 1930s with her third husband Red Norvo. A dynamic couple, they earned the nicknames "Mr. and Mrs. Swing". Despite her divorce from Norvo, she and Red would continue to record together until 1945.

By the end of the song, the protagonist of 'The weekend of a private secretary' finds herself back in Harlem, but her trip to Havana has made a lasting impression on her, as she confides that however she chooses to marry, will surely be one of the many Cubans New York welcomed at the time. "Macho" moved to the Big Apple in 1937 as a vocalist with "La Estrella Habanera" (Havanan Star). He worked with several Latin artists and orchestras in the late 1930s, recording with Conjunto Moderno, Cuarteto Caney, Orchestra Siboney, and the bandleader Xavier Cugat. After an earlier, abortive attempt to launch a band with Mario Bauza, calling himself "Machito", he founded the Afro-Cubans, a big band-style brass section with trumpets and saxes that was backed by a Cuban rhythm. Their first gig took place in December 1940 at the Park Plaza Hotel. Machito took on Bauza the following year as musical director, a role he kept for the next 34 years.  
 

Lolita Garrido is a Spanish artist, born in Valencia, who moved to Madrid where she would soon develop a musical career. She embraced a lot of different styles: rumba, bolero, boogiewoogie, foxtrot & cha-cha-cha, among others. The B-side of one of her greatest hits contained "La Televisión", which didn't get a lot of response back in the days but is now one of her best remembered songs  because it features her singing about appearing on television, 9 years before she actually did. "...la televisión pronto llegará, yo te cantaré y tú me verás...
"

After this jolly good time in Havanna, we jump isles to Trinidad, which is (as explained by the song 'Trinidad, the land of Calypso') where Calypso originated. Raphael de Leon, (1908–1999) AKA The Lion, or Roaring Lion, a leading figure in Calypso for over sixty years, was both a popular Calypsonian, with songs like 'Ugly Woman' or 'Mary Ann and Netty', and a historian of the genre. In his book 'Calypso From France to Trinidad: 800 Years of History' (1986) he argued against the prevailing idea that Calypso was based on African musical forms, and proposed medieval French troubadour origins. He even disputed the origin of the name Calypso, usually said to be from the word kaicho, from language of the Huassa tribe in Nigeria. Roaring Lion argues that it's from Enrico Caruso, as the name of Caruso, the opera superstar of the turn of the century, became a descriptive noun for any singer, or vocal performance, in the Trinidad of his youth. 

The Duke of Iron for instance, was a calypsonian, nightclub entertainer, and recording artist from the 1930s through to the 1960s. He was renowned for his bawdy humor, crisp diction, and confident vocal mannerisms. His clarity in pronouncing English lyrics helped him achieve tremendous popularity with American audiences. Jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins, who recorded a number of Caribbean-styled instrumentals, composed and recorded a piece entitled "Duke of Iron" in his memory.


Still jumping the Isles, Jamaica is represented by Nora Dean and Jackie Mittoo. Whereas Jackie Mittoo needs no further introduction, singer Nora Dean remains one of reggae’s greatest mysteries. She recorded solo, as well as a member of The Ebony Sisters, The Soul Sisters and The Soulettes. She also did backing vocals on recordings by Jimmy Cliff. Although she was not a prolific artist (especially by reggae standards), a number of her songs are very fondly remembered by fans of Jamaican music as true reggae classics. This is because Nora Dean brought something extra to her best songs, making them unusual and endlessly enjoyable. And yet, there is little biographical information about her anywhere. No interviews with her have ever been published. Photos seem to be non-existent. Go through every reggae book, documentary, and liner note of the dozens of compilations her classic tracks appear on, you’ll learn that Nora Dean was born in 1952, and nothing more. Google until the search results are exhausted and all you’ll learn is how many people share her name. 

Allen Toussaint grew up in a shotgun house in the New Orleans neighborhood of Gert Town, where his mother welcomed and fed all manner of musicians as they practiced and recorded with her son.'Tequila' is a 1958 rock song by the band The Champs. The title of the song constitutes the entirety of the lyrics. Tequila  is also a spirit made from the blue agave plant, primarily in the area surrounding the city of Tequila, 65 kilometres northwest of Guadalajara, and in the highlands (Los Altos) of the western Mexican state of Jalisco. 

From Mexico, our journey takes us to Panama. Los Papacitos were led by Aristides 'Tille' Valderrama and his brothers Eloy (trumpeter) and included Dirk Ortega, who recorded with Bolita y su Tentacion Latina on piano. Los Papacitos never record an LP, but are remembered by Combos fans in Panama as an especially hot group.

And from Panama, we move on southwards, all the way to Peru. Compay Quinto is a Peruvian tropical music group with Perú Pancho Acosta on guitar and Pepe Baroni singing and playing Tuba. We can clearly hear the roots of what would later be called 'Chicha' (peruvian psychedelic cumbia), but that are still heavily influenced by afro-cuban rhythms.
 

"Hernando's Hideaway" is a show tune from the musical The Pajama Game, written by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross and published in 1954. The lyrics describe a dark and secretive nightclub. The Pajama Game is set in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Hernando's Hideaway was a dive in East Dubuque, Illinois, perched on a high cliff overlooking the highway between Dubuque and Galena. The movie was based on the stage play of the same name which, in turn, was based on the book; it is only in the original book that there is information about where the story takes place. A number of places around the world today are named Hernando's Hideaway, evidently based on the popularity of the song. Thus 'Hernando's Hideaway' also became a nickname for the smoking room for British parliamentarians in the House of Commons. 


Born as Dámaso Pérez Prado in Matanzas, Cuba, his mother was a school teacher, his father a newspaper man. He studied classical piano in his early childhood, and later played organ and piano in local clubs. For a time, he was pianist and arranger for the Sonora Matancera, Cuba's best-known musical group. He also worked with casino orchestras in Havana for most of the 1940s, and gained a reputation for being an imaginative (his solo playing style predated bebop by at least five years), loud player. He was nicknamed "El Cara de Foca" ("Seal Face") by his peers at the time.

In 1948 he moved to Mexico to form his own band and record for RCA Victor. He quickly specialized in mambos, an upbeat adaptation of the Cuban danzón. Prado's mambos stood out among the competition, with their fiery brass riffs and strong saxophone counterpoints, and most of all, Pérez's trademark grunts (he actually says "¡Dilo!", or "Say it!", in many of the perceived grunts).  


Prado is the composer of such famous pieces as "Mambo No. 5" (later a UK chart-topper for both Lou Bega in 1999 and animated character Bob the Builder in 2001) and "Mambo No. 8".
His popularity in the United States matched the peak of the first wave of interest in Latin music outside the Latino communities during the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s.

Via 'Ran Kan Kan' we then arrive at what was consciously chosen to be the final destination of our journey, Colombia. Lucho Bermúdez, a clarinetist and composer, is considered to be one of the most important interpreters and composers of traditional Colombian music of the 20th century. The importance of his musical realisations/heritage is to have adapted the traditional colombian rhythms such as the Cumbia and the Porro into modern day rhythms which would end up being used as symbols of national identity, and this from the thirties onwards. Lucho was one of the first innovators that experimented with these local rhythms and was able to adapt them to the standards of contemporary music of that era. His music was known throughout all Latin America.  


Lucho Bermúdez was a very versatile composer. He specialized in composing porros, cumbias, gaitas, fandangos, mapalés, paseos and merengues, all of these being rhythms of the caribean coast of Colombia. He also worked with music from the inland, such as: torbellinos, pasillos and joropos. He experimented with genres from other countries: bossa-nova, tango, mambo, chirivico, chachacha, jazz and pasodobles. He invented new rhythms like the tumbasón and the patacumbia, but we also find salsas, guarachas, jalaítos, rancheras, cumbiones, danzonetes, sonsonetes and paseos in his repertoire. 

Mitchi Sarmiento is another of these emblematic figures of Colombian music. Who better to present his music then himself:  

 
We can only be grateful to Soundway Records to bring to our attention the music originally released by Discos Fuentes, Colombia's most important record company. Discos Fuentes was founded in 1934 in Cartagena by Antonio Fuentes Estrada, and was the first Colombian record label. The label was instrumental in introducing African-based genres such as cumbia, fandango, and porro to Colombia. Disco Fuentes is responsible for the rise of musicians and composers like Guillermo Buitrago, Rafael Escalona and Julio César Bovea, among many others. While founder Estrada died in 1985, the late 1980s saw the company expand into video production, and the takeover of labels including Discos Tropical and Curro.


Fruko y sus Tesos is a salsa group from Colombia which enjoys immense popularity throughout the Latin American world. It was formed in 1970 by Ernesto Fruko Estrada who modeled it after the New York salsa sound of the Fania All-Stars, one of the leading salsa groups at the time. A favorite of salsa DJs around the globe, some have referred Fruko y Sus Tesos as Colombia's most important export. 


Only one musical production was enough for the name 'La Sonora Cienaguera' to reside for ever in the hearts of Colombians, which have enjoyed their music for many generations. True represenatives of the folclore of the Atlántico, Bolívar, Córdoba and Magdalena provinces, they published this song in 1963, thanks to Discos Fuentes.