Thanks Aurora - it's Interesting to read your own personal experience of the disconnect with the new generation and identity crisis that Celia was experiencing at the time of this recording. Yes as you point out, the autobiography is definitely a flawed book but illuminating just the same for the first person accounts from Celia (whether or not you agree with her version of events)..
Pancho Cristal aka Morris Perlman - another fascinating personaje - would love to hear about any personal encounters you had with him if you knew him personally!
I never knew Pancho Cristal personally—only through Al Santiago, older musicians who mentioned him, and his name on countless Tico LPs. Everyone assumed he was Cuban, though much of the Latin music scene, from shows to new releases, was driven by Jewish DJs like Dick “Ricardo” Sugar, Symphony Sid, and Art “Pancho” Raymond. But more on that later.
Many books on these artists idolize them to a fault, taking their every word as gospel. Celia Cruz’s biography, for example, offers glimpses into her beginnings but leans heavily into hagiography, portraying her as flawless and glossing over the very human traits that made her truly compelling.
The move into rock/pop was a weak attempt to capture younger ‘non Latino” audiences who had rejected big band sounds—like Puente’s—in favor of simpler rhythms. Celia, who joked that her English was “not too good looking,” disliked singing in English and said so after recording for the Mambo Kings film.
Jerry Masucci repeated this misstep with the FAS Delicate & Jumpy LP. After Harlow sued him for royalties, Masucci shelved him and brought in Star Trek composer Jay Chattaway to lead a Bob James-style CBS production that failed to reach its final frontier, directly violating the mambo king’s prime directive of keeping the dancers moving! I recall how so many fans returned this album to the record stores. The 1996 RMM Tropical Tribute to the Beatles was equally disastrous. They never cracked the Santana-style salsa/rock hybrid to break into the pop mainstream.
Still, Celia, Tito, and the Fania and Alegre All-Stars stood in a league of their own. Ask Steven Stills—at the 1979 Havana Jam CBS recording, he tried to hang with these salsa legends. According to Harlow, after hearing Yomo Toro on cuatro, Bobby Valentín on bass, and the polyrhythmic fire of the drums, he got so drunk in awe and frustration that he smashed his guitar.
Puente thrived in jazz and big band collaborations—Revolving Bandstand—and even Broadway tunes like My Fair Lady. Yomo Toro’s music is heard over Woody Allen’s Bananas, Barretto scored Exodus, and Mongo Santamaría’s Watermelon Man helped spark the boogaloo movement. But the rock/pop world? A completely different beast.
Thank you for these astute observations Aurora! Agreed on the worshipful and non-critical fandom approach to writing about Celia that has been the norm. I do feel that songs like "Aquarius" might have been understandably dismissed with the younger crowd as hoaky in their time but so many years later, I love a lot of these off-the-wall recordings and am thankful for them. On the other hand, things like the Fania All Stars late English-language stuff no-I cannot listen to. The album Rhythm Machine, yikes!
The Jews passing as Latinos in the mambo - salsa scene is fascinating to me. I've written some about that but would like to know more. From what I've been able to find (via WDNA DJ Arturo Gomez), Pancho-Morris Cristal was indeed a Juban, who worked with Cristal beer in Cuba and adopted his alias when he got into the NY music scene.
I had the great Pleasure to see and hear both together on a great Night at the Montreux Jazzfestival.
It was a Time Jazz was still played in Montreux, great Brasilien Pop, Salsa, Latin Jazz and CuBop as well as The Tango Nuevo of Astor Piazolla and Country Rock mit Carlene Carter, Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe. Tito Puente and Celia Cruz! I just started to dig deeper into this Music here they were and I was torn in.
I can't stop thinking about the influence of Latin music on pop music during those years. I remember how impressed I was in the documentary "Summer of Soul" by the presence of forces like Ray Barreto and Mongo Santamaría, rock stars in their own right. What you mention about the change in sensibility during that era is interesting, and what a shame that even though son didn't leave Cuba, I do feel like we missed out on an important part of the party.
As you bring up Rafa, New York and Havana became so close but yet so far in those years. I think that fact has been largely overlooked and has recently become clearer in retrospect to those of us who are listeners and students of the music being made in both places. That is especially thanks to certain collectors and scholars who have brought records from Cuba from the late 60s and 70s, which for the outside world, was a pretty hidden musical period, to light. From what you say, the New York Latin music from that time was similarly hidden for people like you who grew up in Cuba. I'm glad you are being more exposed to it now and it's important to hear perspectives like yours on the NY salsa phenomenon etc. This is a huge conversation that I look forward to continuing!
“Our adaptation of that song was a hit around the world,” Celia later declared in her autobiography, Celia: My Life, co-written with journalist Ana Cristina Reymundo. I remember reading it while researching Larry Harlow and noticing how different the real story in New York was from her version. I caught several biographical errors that suggested a lack of research—for instance, the book claims Celia’s New York debut was in 1957 at the St. Nicholas Arena in the Bronx. But the arena was in Manhattan’s San Juan Hill. I even found a photo and ad from that very Easter Dance featuring Celia with Cortijo y su Combo and the Machito Orchestra. Both appear in my article New York’s Dance of Displacement on Substack and Lincoln Center’s Legacies of San Juan Hill site.
Another issue is the claim of success with young audiences. At the time, I was a teenage music student, and while I found my parents’ music—Puente, Machito, La Lupe—corny, I thought those pop covers were downright gauche. It was the English-language boogaloo hybrid that drew me back into Latin music and into Salsa.
Al Santiago, famed producer of the Alegre All-Stars, once told me he produced the Cuba y Puerto Rico Son album for Tico after selling his Alegre catalog to Fania (another story I’ll write about later). He described working with Cuban producer Pancho Cristal, who were more interested in profits than in the music’s quality. Santiago—and later Puente—said those records didn’t sell.
Harlow told me he had to write to Celia in Mexico, where she was semi-retired and depressed, to convince her to come back and record his Latin music opera: Hommy. It was during that 1973 Carnegie Hall concert that Celia reemerged—not in a hippie pantsuit and beehive but in a stylized afro and bespoke dashiki—as the mother queen of a new generation of Latino New Yorkers, mostly Boricua.
Puente called us the “sneaker crowd.” We rejected our parents’ dress-up club scene but embraced their music in this new style, a style we also created—halters, minis, platforms, open shirts, jeans, Afros, DAs, and sneakers we wore from protest lines to dance floors. Though Puente and the old guard initially hated the boogaloo and chased the pop market, they soon recognized the value of the younger Latino audience. Celia did too—embracing not just her Afro-Cuban roots but Afro-Boricua and Dominican ones as well. When she sings Antillana Soy, she’s singing to all of us.
Thanks Aurora - it's Interesting to read your own personal experience of the disconnect with the new generation and identity crisis that Celia was experiencing at the time of this recording. Yes as you point out, the autobiography is definitely a flawed book but illuminating just the same for the first person accounts from Celia (whether or not you agree with her version of events)..
Pancho Cristal aka Morris Perlman - another fascinating personaje - would love to hear about any personal encounters you had with him if you knew him personally!
I never knew Pancho Cristal personally—only through Al Santiago, older musicians who mentioned him, and his name on countless Tico LPs. Everyone assumed he was Cuban, though much of the Latin music scene, from shows to new releases, was driven by Jewish DJs like Dick “Ricardo” Sugar, Symphony Sid, and Art “Pancho” Raymond. But more on that later.
Many books on these artists idolize them to a fault, taking their every word as gospel. Celia Cruz’s biography, for example, offers glimpses into her beginnings but leans heavily into hagiography, portraying her as flawless and glossing over the very human traits that made her truly compelling.
The move into rock/pop was a weak attempt to capture younger ‘non Latino” audiences who had rejected big band sounds—like Puente’s—in favor of simpler rhythms. Celia, who joked that her English was “not too good looking,” disliked singing in English and said so after recording for the Mambo Kings film.
Jerry Masucci repeated this misstep with the FAS Delicate & Jumpy LP. After Harlow sued him for royalties, Masucci shelved him and brought in Star Trek composer Jay Chattaway to lead a Bob James-style CBS production that failed to reach its final frontier, directly violating the mambo king’s prime directive of keeping the dancers moving! I recall how so many fans returned this album to the record stores. The 1996 RMM Tropical Tribute to the Beatles was equally disastrous. They never cracked the Santana-style salsa/rock hybrid to break into the pop mainstream.
Still, Celia, Tito, and the Fania and Alegre All-Stars stood in a league of their own. Ask Steven Stills—at the 1979 Havana Jam CBS recording, he tried to hang with these salsa legends. According to Harlow, after hearing Yomo Toro on cuatro, Bobby Valentín on bass, and the polyrhythmic fire of the drums, he got so drunk in awe and frustration that he smashed his guitar.
Puente thrived in jazz and big band collaborations—Revolving Bandstand—and even Broadway tunes like My Fair Lady. Yomo Toro’s music is heard over Woody Allen’s Bananas, Barretto scored Exodus, and Mongo Santamaría’s Watermelon Man helped spark the boogaloo movement. But the rock/pop world? A completely different beast.
Thank you for these astute observations Aurora! Agreed on the worshipful and non-critical fandom approach to writing about Celia that has been the norm. I do feel that songs like "Aquarius" might have been understandably dismissed with the younger crowd as hoaky in their time but so many years later, I love a lot of these off-the-wall recordings and am thankful for them. On the other hand, things like the Fania All Stars late English-language stuff no-I cannot listen to. The album Rhythm Machine, yikes!
The Jews passing as Latinos in the mambo - salsa scene is fascinating to me. I've written some about that but would like to know more. From what I've been able to find (via WDNA DJ Arturo Gomez), Pancho-Morris Cristal was indeed a Juban, who worked with Cristal beer in Cuba and adopted his alias when he got into the NY music scene.
I had the great Pleasure to see and hear both together on a great Night at the Montreux Jazzfestival.
It was a Time Jazz was still played in Montreux, great Brasilien Pop, Salsa, Latin Jazz and CuBop as well as The Tango Nuevo of Astor Piazolla and Country Rock mit Carlene Carter, Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe. Tito Puente and Celia Cruz! I just started to dig deeper into this Music here they were and I was torn in.
Lucky me!
Thanks for that memory Erik! Fantastic - and Astor Piazolla!!
I can't stop thinking about the influence of Latin music on pop music during those years. I remember how impressed I was in the documentary "Summer of Soul" by the presence of forces like Ray Barreto and Mongo Santamaría, rock stars in their own right. What you mention about the change in sensibility during that era is interesting, and what a shame that even though son didn't leave Cuba, I do feel like we missed out on an important part of the party.
As you bring up Rafa, New York and Havana became so close but yet so far in those years. I think that fact has been largely overlooked and has recently become clearer in retrospect to those of us who are listeners and students of the music being made in both places. That is especially thanks to certain collectors and scholars who have brought records from Cuba from the late 60s and 70s, which for the outside world, was a pretty hidden musical period, to light. From what you say, the New York Latin music from that time was similarly hidden for people like you who grew up in Cuba. I'm glad you are being more exposed to it now and it's important to hear perspectives like yours on the NY salsa phenomenon etc. This is a huge conversation that I look forward to continuing!
“Our adaptation of that song was a hit around the world,” Celia later declared in her autobiography, Celia: My Life, co-written with journalist Ana Cristina Reymundo. I remember reading it while researching Larry Harlow and noticing how different the real story in New York was from her version. I caught several biographical errors that suggested a lack of research—for instance, the book claims Celia’s New York debut was in 1957 at the St. Nicholas Arena in the Bronx. But the arena was in Manhattan’s San Juan Hill. I even found a photo and ad from that very Easter Dance featuring Celia with Cortijo y su Combo and the Machito Orchestra. Both appear in my article New York’s Dance of Displacement on Substack and Lincoln Center’s Legacies of San Juan Hill site.
Another issue is the claim of success with young audiences. At the time, I was a teenage music student, and while I found my parents’ music—Puente, Machito, La Lupe—corny, I thought those pop covers were downright gauche. It was the English-language boogaloo hybrid that drew me back into Latin music and into Salsa.
Al Santiago, famed producer of the Alegre All-Stars, once told me he produced the Cuba y Puerto Rico Son album for Tico after selling his Alegre catalog to Fania (another story I’ll write about later). He described working with Cuban producer Pancho Cristal, who were more interested in profits than in the music’s quality. Santiago—and later Puente—said those records didn’t sell.
Harlow told me he had to write to Celia in Mexico, where she was semi-retired and depressed, to convince her to come back and record his Latin music opera: Hommy. It was during that 1973 Carnegie Hall concert that Celia reemerged—not in a hippie pantsuit and beehive but in a stylized afro and bespoke dashiki—as the mother queen of a new generation of Latino New Yorkers, mostly Boricua.
Puente called us the “sneaker crowd.” We rejected our parents’ dress-up club scene but embraced their music in this new style, a style we also created—halters, minis, platforms, open shirts, jeans, Afros, DAs, and sneakers we wore from protest lines to dance floors. Though Puente and the old guard initially hated the boogaloo and chased the pop market, they soon recognized the value of the younger Latino audience. Celia did too—embracing not just her Afro-Cuban roots but Afro-Boricua and Dominican ones as well. When she sings Antillana Soy, she’s singing to all of us.
The Piazolla Concert with Gary Burton was released on Atlantic or Warner Brothers Record.
Thanks, I'll look for it :)