Search Results for: Sonora+Matancera
Carlos “Patato” Valdés one of the best percussionists in the history of Latin Jazz.
On November 4, 1926 in the Los Sitios neighborhood of Havana, Cuba, Carlos “Patato” Valdés was born. Known as Patato, he is, quite simply, one of the best percussionists in the history of music.
Patato was born into a very santera and very musical family, his father was a tres player of Los Apaches, the port germ of two illustrious sonera groups: the Sexteto Habanero and the Sexteto Nacional.
He learned to play the tres and the botijuela before turning to percussion, first on the cajones and finally on the congas.
He was an extraordinary percussionist of outstanding participation with the “Conjunto Kubavana”, “La Sonora Matancera”, “Conjunto Casino” and the “Orquesta de Tito Puente”, among other groups, both Son and Latin Jazz.
Formed in rumbero gatherings and carnival groups, Valdés became a professional in the early forties, after trying his luck as a boxer and dancer.
He played with Conjunto Kubavana, La Sonora Matancera and El Conjunto Casino. He accumulated nicknames: Zumbito (for his performances at the Zombie Club), Pingüino (for a dance he did on television) and Patato (for his small size), and in those days, dedicating oneself to music in Cuba guaranteed hardship. Besides, Patato wanted to experiment and that was not possible playing for dancers or tourists.
In 1954, he emigrated to New York, like his leather friends: Cándido Camero, Armando Peraza, Mongo Santamaría and the pioneer Chano Pozo (murdered there in 1948).
He immediately began working with Tito Puente. His first recording in the United States was the album Afro-cuban, by trumpeter Kenny Dorham, which opened with the intoxicating Afrodisia. Those were good times for tropical music.
He was the first percussionist to improvise “Solos” with 3 or more Congas at the same time. In addition, he was the creator of the “Congas Afinables”, instruments on which he would ride to dance making them sound rhythmically.
Patato Valdes was an excellent musician, an unforgettable person. Nervous and diminutive, he spoke with an impenetrable Cuban accent; he dressed elegantly, hiding the necklaces and bracelets of Changó and other “orishas”. He looked like a living caricature, but when he hit the percussions he became a divine creature: he had power, spectacularity, sense of melody.
Those skills made him an ambassador of Afro-Cuban rhythms in the jazz world, although he will also go down in history for his extraordinary rumba recordings.
In 1956, Patato appeared in the film Y Dios creó a la mujer, teaching the dances of his homeland to Brigitte Bardot. A great moment, although an implacable Guillermo Cabrera Infante criticized the actress’s movements: “she seems to commit suicide by dancing a cross between mambo and chachachá, a really toxic cross between mambo and chachachá”.
A flexible musician, Valdés sounded as comfortable playing with Machito’s big band as with Herbie Mann’s group. However, he felt indebted to the “rumba de solar” and in 1968 he recorded a revolutionary album with his friend Eugenio Arango, alias Totico.
The exuberant Patato & Totico had genuine Havana flavor, but enriched the basic percussion instrumentation with Cachao’s contrabass and Arsenio Rodriguez’s tres.Patato expanded the creative possibilities for percussionists by playing with three or more congas.
He also made their lives easier by developing a tunable conga: fed up with the traditional method (heating the leather over fire), he installed a metal hoop and keys for tensioning.
The LP company mass-produced his model, which was to become the standard for conga players. To promote it, he formed the Latin Percussion Jazz Ensemble with Tito Puente, Jorge Dalto and Alfredo de la Fé, among others, an orchestra that would end up becoming Puente’s big band in the early 80s.
It was during this period with Dalto that the album we have chosen for today began to take shape. It was titled “Patato, Master Piece” and it synthesizes all of Patato’s genius.
“Masterpiece” is an album that travels first class through tango, jazz, descarga, guaguancó and bolero, always in a masterful way and with a luxury crew made up of names like Jorge Dalto, Artie Webb, Michel Camilo, Jerry and Andy González, Nicky Marrero, Ignacio Berroa, Joe Santiago, Néstor Sánchez, Vicentino Valdés, and Sabú Martínez, among others.
The Art of Flavor.
Unfortunately Dalto had already passed away when in 1993 the project was released by the venerable German label Messidor, the same label that had already financed some impressive sessions of Patato with Mario Bauzá or Bebo Valdés, with whom he would later record the famous El Arte del Sabor.
In fact, the great Argentine pianist had to be replaced for the last recording sessions that were made 6 years ago since his illness was too advanced, but he left us some incredible arrangements that were kept in the great majority of the themes.
Dalto left us in 1987 when he was only 39 years old. His replacement was nothing more and nothing less than a very young Michel Camilo.formed by 9 cuts among which we especially want to highlight the huge versions of Cute and Nica’s Dream, Masterpiece is an essential album for all lovers of Latin-jazz with capital letters and that is why we wanted to share it on a day as special as today.
Already recognized as a legend, Patato became more visible in the last 25 years: he had his own band, Afrojazzia, although The Conga Kings, with Cándido and Giovanni Hidalgo, turned out to be more popular.
He even made his way onto the modern dance floors, with a remix of San Francisco tiene su propio son. Just as he was returning from playing in California with the Conga Kings, his breathing began to fail.
The plane he was on had to make an emergency landing in Ohio to admit him to a hospital. The 81-year-old percussionist, a heavy smoker, was on his way to his beloved New York, but he would never get there. According to his relatives, he held out until December 4, the day of Santa Barbara, the Afro-Cuban equivalent of Changó, when the cables and tubes that kept him alive were removed.
Valdés died in Cleveland, USA, on December 4, 2007.
Fuentes: http://www.herencialatina.com/Patato/Patato_Valdes.htm
Imágenes: Martin Cohen de Congahead.com
Latin America – August 2022
Wuelfo Gutiérrez López was a brilliant Sonero, “El Ultimo de los Matanceros”
Wuelfo Huergo Gutiérrez López, son of Wuelfo the sailor, was born in Santiago de Las Vegas, Cuba on September 23, 1942.
The eldest of three brothers, he was from a very young age an enthusiast of dancing, music and singing.
On May 31, 2005, Wuelfo Gutiérrez López “El Ultimo de los Matanceros” passed away.
He was a brilliant Sonero of outstanding participation with “La Sonora Matancera”, Orquesta de Javier Vásquez, “Orquesta Harlow”, and his own group, which he founded in Mexico after settling in this country.
He gave as much luster to his small homeland as to the big one: in the 70’s he was the singer of the famous “Sonora Matancera”, the pioneer of the Cuban ensembles.
At the end of the 50’s he organized together with three other coterráneos, Juan Luis Cobo, Manolito Santos, and Rolando (Rolo, E.P.D.) González, a quartet called “The Fraterns” (Los Fraternos), in the style of the American school of famous quartets like “The Platters”, “The Drifters”, “Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers”, and others that marked a guideline in the history of “Rock and Roll” and the so-called “Doo Wop”, which is a choral sound characteristic of these groups of the decades of the 50s and 60s.
Around 1958, the group appeared in the well-known José Antonio Alonso’s program of the then powerful Cuban television, which was a continuity of “La Corte Suprema del Arte” of the Cuban radio, initiated in 1938, from where great figures of the Cuban music came out. Substantial changes took place in our country and soon after “Rock and Roll”, at least in Cuba, fell into silence.
Wuelfo left Cuba in mid-1961. I did not see him again (although I always knew about him through his brothers Juan and Gabriel) until 1979, when he returned to visit his native land.
Always with the same sympathy and friendly and popular simplicity that characterized him.
At that time he had already been with “La Sonora Matancera”; the great singer Roberto Torres, “El Güinero Mayor”, who was leaving his place in the Sonora to form his own group, introduced him to the director Rogelio Martinez, who accepted him immediately.
He remained with La Sonora from 1973 to 1976, with which he visited the U.S.A., Mexico and most of Latin America. He recorded, among sones and guarachas, 20 numbers of diverse musical authors, among them: “Anacaona”, by Tite Curet Alonso; “A Burujón Puñao”, by José Carbó Menéndez; “Así Se Compone Un Son”, by Ismael Miranda; “Muñeco Viajero”, by Carlos and Mario Rigual; and “El Chivo”, by our late compoblano Vinicio Gonzaléz, one of our santiagueras glories, among other authors.
When he left La Sonora due to disagreements with Don Rogelio, he settled definitively in Mexico, which became his second homeland.
In Mexico City he formed his own group, which he named “Sonora Las Vegas”, alluding to the person who made him known as a singer and gave him celebrity, and to his hometown, therefore Las Vegas.
He began to be called “Mister Salsa” working in radio, television and cabarets. He loved Mexico very much; in an interview he said: “because the people are tasty and because I feel at home here”.
In Mexico he married Miss Araceli Zoreda Pérez, from whose marriage there were no children; the union was interrupted by Araceli’s death several years later.
The year 1989 marked the 65th anniversary of the founding of “La Tuna Liberal”, among other names, which achieved notoriety in Cuba and internationally under the name of Sonora Matancera. So that this date would not be overlooked, the notable Puerto Rican journalist, broadcaster and producer Gilda Mirós had the happy initiative to gather all the singers alive at that time who had left their art with La Sonora Matancera.
The event was to be held in New York City. Wuelfo was there singing “Anacaona”, together with a true constellation of stars: Vicentico Valdés, Yayo El Indio, Celio Gonzaléz, Nelson Pinedo, Carlos Argentino, Bobby Capó, Alberto Beltrán, Leo Marini, Albertico Pérez, Roberto Torres, Jorge Maldonado, Daniel Santos, and the greatest female voice Cuba has ever produced: Celia Cruz.
In July 1995 I met my friend again, when Wuelfo arrived from Mexico invited to the celebration of our patron saint, Santiago Apostle, in the halls of the former Radisson Hotel in Miami. Among those present sang Amado Herrera (Maninito), José Antonio García (Chamaco), and Wuelfo. All the santiagueros present recognized our values; among them were Wuelfo Sr. and other close relatives.
I did not see him again until 1999, when a group of santiagueros friends welcomed him to Miami, where he intended to settle down. It was not possible.
Wuelfo’s last recording?
He had spoken to me about sending me his recordings with the idea of getting them to some radio stations so that they would know him, and in turn, to some places where records were sold to see if I would have the opportunity to play his recordings, among them the 14 LPs he had recorded and possibly his last recording, a CD called “Wuelfo Cumbia Del Gato Volador”, which he kindly sent me from Mexico.
He spent long periods of time in Veracruz, where he felt at home and his performances were strongly applauded. To such an extent that the government of the state of Veracruz, in November 2003, offered him a just tribute in the framework of the Festival del Son (first photo, above right). On that occasion he performed with his “Sonora Las Vegas” at the La Reforma Theater and the Atarazanas Cultural Center.
Wuelfo, Lázaro Reutilio Domínguez (son of Celina González and Reutilio Domínguez), and the author meet by chance at the “Palacio de los Jugos” on 8th Street and 143rd Avenue in Southwest Miami.
Like many other singers, he dreamed of spending the rest of his life singing; he wanted to die on the stage. Apparently an oversight in his health was complicated by prostate cancer. We would talk on the phone from time to time and he would show me that he was very optimistic, but he was not. In 2004 he underwent intensive treatment at the Oncology Hospital of the Centro Medico Nacional Siglo XXI in Mexico City, but the initial illness led to pulmonary complications which in turn caused a stroke that took his life on May 31, 2005.
According to a friend who assisted him until the last hour, it was very sad to see how his life was passing away.
The Sindicato Único de Trabajadores de la Música had been carrying out activities to collect funds to help him financially.
He was buried in the American Pantheon at 11:00 a.m. on June 1, 2005.
It seems to me very fair to remember this value of ours six years after his departure, remaining in our local history along with other celebrities that also in due time it will be necessary to give them the merit they deserve, not only for future generations to know them, but at present there are coterráneos that for lack of the required information, and against our will, do not know anything about them.
This small biography is not even remotely all that can be known and said of Wuelfo, because there are stages unknown by the writer, who urges those who know and wish, to make their contribution to know much more of our singer friend, who had the honor of going down in posterity, perhaps without him thinking about it, for having sung with that great musical group that was and is La Sonora Matancera.
This work would not have been possible if he had not had the help of Dr. Héctor Ramírez Bedoya. Héctor Ramírez Bedoya, Colombian anesthesiologist who helps many to mitigate their ills through surgery in his native Medellín, but who as a musicographer, and from the presidency of the Corporación Club Sonora Matancera de Antioquia, has had the merit of having written the “Historia de la Sonora Matancera y sus Estrellas”, a book of the same title published in 1996, which is considered the greatest work ever written about the dean of the Cuban ensembles.
Joseíto Mateo “They call me the Negrito del Batey, because work for me is an enemy”
Joseito was a consecrated Dominican merenguero who began his career in the 1930’s, better known as “El rey del merengue, El diablo Mateo”.
As a child he learned to sing and dance. He sang at the “Fiestas de la cruz” and at wakes, since at that time the deceased were prayed to with songs.
Mateo began his career as a singer during the 30’s, a period in which he was gaining the public’s favor.
Some time later he was requested by the record label “SEECO” to join the cast that in Havana would record with the Sonora Matancera.
Those were the years of the Trujillo Era in which Dominicans required an exit permit to travel abroad.
At first, this document was denied to Joseito.
As a consequence, in Havana, once the record was contracted and the pieces that would be part of it had been selected, including “El negrito del batey”, Joseito’s place was taken by the Dominican singer Alberto Beltrán, who was known since then by the Cuban public as “El negrito del batey”, instead of his true inspirer.
He was born on April 6, 1920 in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic).
In one of his later trips, he decided to stay in Cuba to sing in CMQ, together with Celia Cruz and La Sonora Matancera, a very popular group at that time.
After the assassination of Rafael Trujillo on May 30, 1961 and the end of his dictatorship, Joseito decided to try his luck in Puerto Rico.
In 1962, Joseíto participated as vocalist in the first tour of the “Gran Combo” to Panama, to promote the album ‘El Gran Combo con Joseíto Mateo’.
There he met the young singers Pellín Rodríguez and Andy Montañez, who ended up replacing him in the Puerto Rican group.
“El Gran Combo was very good to me, I adapted to sing plena, bomba, guaracha, boleros, but then I had to return to Santo Domingo to clear my name.
They were falling behind all those who were with Trujillo, and in the Republic they said I was a spy and was on the run”.
Mateo’s professional work has spanned more than 70 years and constitutes an important reference of the Dominican musical culture.
He was nourished by the roots of merengue and became a singular exponent of it. His innovative style was characterized by a stage participation enriched by his particular way of dancing and singing.
Some of his best known songs are Madame Chuchí, Dame la visa, La cotorra de Rosa and La patrulla, among others. Joseito is known as “El Rey del Merengue” (The King of Merengue).
On November 11, 2010, Mateo was recognized at the 11th Latin Grammy Awards with the Latin Recording Academy’s Musical Excellence Award for his contributions to Latin music.
He retired in 2001, close to his 82nd birthday and after recording 50 “elepes”.
Joseíto Mateo passed away on June 1, 2018 at the age of 98, due to leukemia. He spent his last days in the Hospital de las Fuerzas Armadas.
Source:
https://www.buscabiografias.com/biografia/verDetalle/8662/Joseito%20Mateo