Women of Fania, Part 2: The Making of Hector Lavoe's Comedia
A salute to Art Director Alberta Dering.
A week or so ago I wrote about the Fania compilation Feel the Moment: The Latin Sound of New York (1964-1978) with a special focus on the liner notes written by Aurora Flores, a journalist and musician who was a witness to and participant in the birth of salsa.
Today I bring you my chronicle of the making of the Hector Lavoe album Comedia, whose historic cover was conceptualized and art directed by Alberta Dering, a young Fania Records employee at the time. I spoke to album producer Willie Colon and the photographer unaware of the fact that he had shot one of the most iconic Latin music covers in history, and others for these notes. But my greatest delight was making contact with Alberta. A native New Yorker, she now lives in Florida, where she’s a trauma-informed yoga instructor, helping people with mental health issues. She won a Latin NY award for best art direction for the cover the year it came out, but she had not spoken about Comedia publicly in the decades since.
In 1977, roller skaters in short shorts grooved in disco rinks and Central Park in New York City, where on a fall night at Madison Square Garden, dozens of musicians played the mix of Latin rhythms, funky grooves and urban grit that had become known as salsa. Hector Lavoe, wearing his uniform of tinted glasses and a cream-colored suit, dark shirt and patterned tie, was received by a screaming crowd, as noted in the NY Daily News, “like an all-healing holy figure.” By the end of the year, the world was mourning the death of Charlie Chaplin, who made people laugh at their troubles as they watched his Little Tramp get knocked down by life and get back up, again and again like a blow-up clown.
In midtown Manhattan, Lavoe’s Comedia was being recorded at La Tierra Sound Studios, the high-ceilinged room on the 25th floor of 1440 Broadway at 40th Street in New York City where mythical recordings on the Fania label were made.
“By the time we got there it was past its prime,” Willie Colón recalls more than 45 years after he produced the album in that now-defunct studio. “It was dusty, stuffy and dark, with ancient equipment.”