Los cuadernos azul y marrón
(de Vicente Ulive-Schnell)

R.B.: On the Latin scene, there were a few cats like Cándido Camero, Patato Valdés, Mongo Santamaría and Julito Collazo, but they mostly played Latin and Afro Cuban music. For most of the time, I was the only conga player in uptown playing straight-ahead jazz and bebop. Eventually, they all started playing some jazz gigs and doing some recordings, but it was a new and different world for most of them and the same was the case for me in their Latin world. For them, it was a case of not being able to lose their accent musically, you could always tell they were Latín players. In my case, I never had an accent to begin with. Then one day, I got a call from Monchito Muñoz, a Puerto Rican drummer/percussionist and he said he was going to the mountains (the Catskills) to do a gig with the Johnny Conquet Band for a week and they needed a conga player. So I took the gig and played for a mostly Jewish crowd of dancers in the resorts. It was a lot of fun and it helped my Latin playing. Soon thereafter, Monchito called me again to go audition for the conga chair of the José Curbelo orchestra. So I went, tried out and got the gig. I stayed with the Curbelo orchestra for about four years and really developed my Latin chops and a more traditional way of playing the conga drums within a tropical dance format. On José Curbelo's album Wine, Women and Cha Cha Cha, Curbelo tried to keep me out of the recording after being in his band for over two years because he wanted to use Mongo and Willie Bobo, who were the choice percussionists in the Latín scene at the time. But after my disagreeing and stating my case, he agreed to let me play the congas and used Mongo on bongó for the recording with Monchito Muñoz on the timbal. This was the first time I got to play together with Mongo. Years later, we carne together again with the Fania All Stars. While playing with Curbelo's orchestra I also continued working with many jazz bands and my life and musical career were both doing well and I finally felt fulfilled.

RM: Why did you leave Curbelo's orchestra if everything was going so well?

RB: Well, first of all, Santitos Colón, who was the lead singer for Curbelo's orchestra, left to join Tito Puente's band, who had just lost singer Vicentico Valdés. Soon thereafter, Mongo and Willie Bobo would also leave Puente's band to join Cal Tjader on the West Coast. So, Santitos Colón recommended me to Puente. I sat in one Wednesday night at the Palladium with the band and after the gig Puente asked me if I could be at the RCA Studios the next day at 2 p.m. for a recording session. That was the first session of the popular Dancemania album recording. So I joined the band and was part of Puente's next top three recordings in the history of his band. I stayed with the band from 1957 to 1961. The Tito Puente Band was always ready for any type of gig or concert anywhere. We played commercial gigs, privates, society dances, weddings, you name it, we played it. Puente's music book was so vast and complete that it complimented all engagements. At some society dances I ended up playing trap drums instead of conga, and I loved it. But like everything else, one day, because of a money dispute and my own personal pride, I left the band.

RM: Did you have another job pending?

RB: I did not have anything, only my pride. I tried to do some gigs around town, first with Joe Quijano and with Herbie Mann, but none of it was fulfilling me anymore. Then, one day, one of the owners of Riverside Records, who was a good friend of mine, called me over and said to me, "Ray, this charanga thing is really happening and it looks like it's going to take off. Why don't you give it a try?" Charlie Palmieri had a charanga, so did Johnny Pacheco and they both seemed to be doing well. So, I got half of Charlie Palmieri's band members and half of Pacheco's band and formed my own charanga with my name as a leader and recorded my first own band on the Riverside label. The album was titled Barretto Para Bailar. Now it has been reissued by Fantasy Records on a CD set called Barretto Carnival. The album was released and not much really happened, but I did get some calls for gigs and with time, the charanga grew and evolved into the Charanga Moderna.

With La Moderna I recorded three albums for the Tico Records label and two others later on. One day, we were playing at the Palladium and the kids were doing a dance across the dance floor called the "Watusi." So I said to myself: I can play something on my drums to match those steps they are dancing to. I put this song together which I called El Watusi, recorded it and it took off like wild tire, becoming a huge hit for me.

RM: El Watusi was your first big commercial hit song?

RB: My only big commercial hit song! It was the only hit that truly crossed over from the Latín scene to the R&B scene. Everyone in the city was doing the Watusi. After that album I couldn't duplicate the commercial success on my following recordings. So that album was a blessing as well as a curse in many ways.

RM: But I remember you having many other hits after El Watusi!

RB: Yes, but they were hits for specific target audiences like the Latin recordings as well as the jazz ones. Anyway, after the Tico recordings, I moved on to the United Artists label, recording two more albums, but I was never happy there. I started to experiment with string instruments and horns and mixing both and changing to trombones and so on; basically looking for a new sound. And I never allowed a producer to tell me what to play. Still owing an album to United Artists, I asked out of my contract because it was just not working at all, and luckily, they let me go.

Meanwhile, Jerry Massuci was after me to join his new label, Fania Records, so that's what I did. I started fresh once again with just two trumpets and not too many music charts, but in the end it all worked out fine because there was more room for improvisation in our tunes, and our recordings of Acid and Espiritu Libre were like jam sessions. You see, I was trying to get away from that Latin music formula of always playing the same tunes the same old way: the introduction followed by the singer, then the break, and to the chorus and back to the singer, to the coda and so on. It works great for the dancers but for the musicians, after a while, it gets old fast. In my band I allowed everyone to really play and stretch out as much as possible within the tunes, that way, the musicians had fun making music.

Then, in 1973, about half of my band left me to form the band Típica 73 and once again I had to readjust and reconstruct my band. It took me about a year to get the band back in form and working again. But in the meantime, I convinced Massuci to let me record a jazz project, and one night, from midnight to 6 a.m., we recorded the album The Other Road. After it was released, many people who bought it thinking that it was a salsa album returned it to the stores because it was a jazz project. Years later, it was praised for being one of the pioneering recordings of the so-called Latin jazz movement. It became a cult classic, but the masses, the media and the music industry totally overlooked it. So, after weathering the storm I came back to the Latín scene with the album Con Sangre Nueva, and reestablished my new band and myself.

For my following album I used two young singers, Tito Gómez and Rubén Blades. The album was called Guararé, and it was my second best Latin seller ever; Quitate La Mascara was the best overall. But like Tito Allen had previously done, Gómez and Blades moved on as well, after one album.

RM: How long did you play Latin music?

RB: My Latin music career had its course for about 30 to 35 years. We made some very good albums, leaving our mark in the history of this music and then the music started to change. About 12 years ago, I realized that I was becoming a dinosaur, so I decided to go back to doing the music that I truly love and so I went back to jazz. I signed with the Concord Jazz label and put this band together, which I called the New World Spirit. The direction of the band was somewhat uncertain. The only thing that I was certain of was that we were not going to be playing any type of dance music. We recorded three CDs, the last one titled Taboo, but after some personnel changes and taking inventory, it wasn't quite working. I was trying to achieve as close to jazz music as possible but because of the instrumentation at hand it was not happening. I am tired of the Latín jazz formula bands that continue to coexist these days.

RM: You do not like the term Latin jazz?

Of course not, it means nothing. You play either Latin or you play jazz. The late Tito Puente, may he rest in peace, had one of the best bands on the planet, but the music they played which was called Latin jazz was only an instrumental extension of Latín music. The same is the case with the music of Poncho Sánchez and most of the others in the business. I continue to swim upstream for the sake of sounding different and I'm proud of that fact.

RM: Is this the case with your latest release, Homage to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers?

RB: You bet! I finally put together some young players who have the same vision of jazz as I do. We have been working together for the past couple of years and are finally ready. I have two Latino players, Miguel Zenón from Puerto Rico and Luis Perdomo from Venezuela, who have no accent in their interpretation of music and are true jazz musicians. That's what sets them apart from other players. The rest of the members are 100% jazz players: John Bailey on trumpet, Hans Glawischnig on bass, and Vince Cherico on drums. And I'm back to playing my little conga drum like in my early days. This band really cooks. It's not about making people get up and dance, but about having a person enjoy good music, good arrangements and excellent musicianship, while improvising and speaking the language of jazz at any given time.