Music of Puerto Rico

Essays

The Collaboration of Willie Colón/Rubén Blades at Fania Records

By: Joachim Satet, originally published by SalsaFrance.com
based on an oral presentation by the author to the Listening to Discs Conference sponsored by the Abanico School of Afro-Cuban music, Paris

Translated from the French by: Alison Weinstock, Editor, Rubén Blades Discography

Notice from Music of Puerto Rico editor/webmaster: The opinions of the author in this guest contribution do not necessarily reflect the views of Jaime Serrat, editor and webmaster of this website.

Page 2 - Metiendo Mano, part I
Page 3 - Metiendo Mano, part II
Page 4 - Siembra
Page 5 - With Strings
Page 6 - Maestra Vida
Page 7 - Canciones del Solar de Los Aburridos
Page 8 - The Last Fight

WILLIE COLON:

When the two men started to work together, Willie Colón was already a star. Born in April 1950 in the Bronx of New York, he began the trumpet at 12 years, before deciding on the trombone at 14 and assembling his own group, Los Dandees.

In 1967, while still only 17 years old, he recorded his first album El Malo, in which he plays the bad boy, using an image of gangster, a little in the manner of certain rappers today. The success of the disc was immediate. The rough sound of the disc, with the slightly dirty low register of the trombones in the brass section, was already characteristic of what salsa would be, to be strictly accurate, 3 or 4 years later.

The young singer of the group was a Puerto Rican named Hector Lavoe. He will take part in 10 albums of Willie Colón, until 1977 (one per annum on average!). Becoming meanwhile a true living legend, he began a solo career before his drug problems caught up with him. Following an overdose, the living legend became an all too brief legend.

In 1977, therefore, Willie Colón also became a star, but he no longer had a singer.

RUBÉN BLADES:

As for him, the course of Rubén Blades is less rectilinear. Already, his parents and grandparents had taken astonishing routes. His paternal grandfather was English (which completely justifies the pronunciation of Blades in the English way, as he does himself), on the maternal side he was from Louisiana. The grandmothers were, on the maternal side, Spanish of Galicia, the paternal side, Colombian. Despite all this mixture, Rubén's mother was Cuban and his father Panamanian. His mother was a singer, pianist and actress of radio dramas, while his father was bongocero and... policeman.

Singing in various groups, he began at the same time studies with the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of the National University of Panama. Soon his professors prohibited him from appearing in concert, pretexting that that isn't serious for a future lawyer. This didn't prevent him from getting noticed by Pancho Crystal, the producer of Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz and Joe Cuba.

In 1969, the social condition of Panama being particularly disturbed, the army closed the University. Taking advantage that his brother Luis worked at Pan Am (always a family of travellers! and of musicians, another brother, Roberto, just won a 2002 salsa Grammy!), he bought a ticket to New York, for which he paid 20 dollars.

He used his contact Pancho Cristal to finally put his foot in the record industry and recording, in 1970, with Pete Rodriguez (not "El Conde", but "El Rey del Boogaloo") in the album "From Panama to New York", in which he composed 9 titles out of the 10 that he sang. These 9 pieces already show a number of the characteristics of the future compositions of Rubén, as with his style of singing. But the disc did not have any success.

He thus went back to Panama City, where the University reopened, and finished his law studies. During this time, the family circumstances become politically particularly uncomfortable, obliging them to exile themselves to Miami in 1973. Not wishing to follow a legal profession under a military regime, Rubén joined them in 1974, then set out again to New York the same year. In search of work, he benefited from the recommendations of Roberto Roena, who had also heard him sing in Panama, to approach the label Fania Records (the only label to record salsa at the time). In an interview in 1996, Rubén remembers the telephone dialogue which followed:
- Here I am in New York, and I would like to record a few pieces.
- In fact, we do not really need anybody at this moment.
- Ah well, then what do you have? You have something available?
- In fact, yes, we're looking for somebody for the mail...
- That's good, I'll take it!

During 1975, Ray Barretto was looking for a good singer to replace Tito Allen who had just left. Roberto Roena explained to him why the little guy in the mail room sings really well, and Rubén became probably the world's first singer to pass an audition in the mail room in a record company. He sang on the album "Barretto" and the live one which immediately followed, with another singer, Tito Gomez.

He ended up recording one of his songs with Willie Colón, "El Cazangero", inspired by Brazilian music. He sang it on the album "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly", 10th album of Willie Colón, last album of his collaboration with Hector Lavoe. One can note that at the time, the brass section of the recording sessions includes members of the future Blues Brothers.

Metiendo Mano, part I - Page 2