Salsa music rivalries and battles: Part II

Latin Beat Magazine, Sept, 2003 by Max Salazar

The acceptance of the mambo by non-Latinos in 1951 was the incentive ambitious musicians needed to become bandleaders. For years there was confusion as to who created the mambo. In 1954, Obdulio Morales, a respected Cuban music historian, quoted Cuban flutist/bandleader Antonio Arcaño as being the first to play the mambo in 1943. Arcaño said that after he saw the North American movie "Stormy Weather" in 1943, be was inspired by it to create the mambo. While experimenting with a tonic and dominant chord he invented flute variations which became the mambo. The third part of his danzones recorded during the forties include what is considered the mambo, although he never uses the word mambo in these early recordings. In 1947 (at the time he was an 18-year old musician), Charlie Palmieri recalls seeing the word mambo on sheet music which Cuban pianist Dámaso Pérez Prado composed and arranged in México. Rudy Zervigón, violinist for Orquesta Broadway, said that he saw the sheet music of Arcaño's repertoire and the word "mambo" was written in.

There are Cuban oldtimers who are dogmatic in their belief that Arcaño was the first to play the mambo at the time Pérez Prado was the pianist for Casino de la Playa in Havana. There are also a few oldtimers who insist that Arcaño first heard the mambo in Arsenio Rodríguez's sones molltunos. Most North Americans first became aware of the mambo through Prado's 1949 RCA recording of Mambo #5. Latín musicians were aware of it years before. The progressive arrangements of Tito Puente and Joe Loco made Pupi Campo one of the most popular bandleaders during the late forties. Pérez Prado, whose mambo breaks were followed by grunts and groans, was hailed as the King of the Mambo.

The New York bands had their own version of the mambo and it subsequently became the locally accepted one. Tito Rodríguez's Mambo Del Monte, Alfredito Valdés' El Mambo de Broadway and Encanto Cubano, Miguelito Valdés' Harlem Special and Mondongo, Tito Puente's Ran Kan Kan, El Yoyo and Abaniquito, Damirón and Chapuseaux's Anabacoa, Noto Morales' 110th Street & 5th Avenue, and Machito's Asia Minor are the recordings that kicked off the mambo craze in 1950 for Latin New Yorkers. These tunes were so overwhelming that they stopped people in the streets and compelled them to listen to the music that blared from the speakers above the entrance to record stores.

In addition to the Tito Puente, Tito Rodríguez and Al Castellanos recordings, Tico Records began to expand in 1951 with the acquisition of the red hot Joe Loco. Immediately after the release of the North American pop favorite Tenderly, Loco became a headliner with top billing status. His recordings of Blue Moon, Love For Sale and other North American pop tunes in mambo tempos enabled him to build up a large following. Puente's Abaniquito slowly grew in popularity and it was one of the reasons non-Latinos packed his dances in Brooklyn and Long Island.

When Tico Records released Puente's Babarabatiri and Tito Rodríguez's Desert Dance, the Anglo market was so[d on the mambo. Tico recorded the Luis Barretto band (1952), La Playa Sextet (1952), Machito (1956) and Pete Terrace (1956). The Tico record catalog grew rapidly with a number of other bands and vocalists who never rose to stardom. Furthermore, the Latin music industry was thriving with other record companies. In addition to the existing labels SMC, Coda, Verne, Seeco, Alba, Ansonia, Continental, Mercury, Columbia and Decca, those of Rainbow Rival, Fiesta, Tanga, Mardi-Gras and Fantasy were added in the 1950s.

In 1953, when the mambo was soaring each day to new heights in popularity, the well-known bands were those of Tito Puente, Tito Rodríguez, Joe Loco, La Playa Sextet, José Curbelo, Johnny Conquet, Emilio Reyes, Ramón Argueso, Monchito, Marcelino Guerra, Johnny Següí, Noro Morales, Arsenio Rodríguez, Machito and the newest at the time, the one led by Alfredito (Al Levy).

There were performing venues such as the China Doll, Havana-Madrid, Chateau Madrid, Park Palace, Hunts Point Palace, Tropicana, Happy Hills Casino, Audubon Ballroom, Roseland, Birdland and the mid-town hotels, the Broadway theatres, Bill Miller's Riviera on Englewood Cliffs on the New Jersey side, and a number of popular night spots along Broadway. Most bandleaders preferred to work at Max Hyman's Palladium Ballroom, the mecca of the city's most progressive dancers--"Killer Joe" Piro, Pedro "Cuban Pete" Aguilar, Millie Done, Augie and Margo, Carmen Cruz, Marilyn Winters, Mike Vásquez, Mike Ramos, Freddie Rios, Mike Terrace, Cookie, and the fabulous Mambo Aces.

Machito, Tito Rodríguez and Tito Puente became the house bands, since their weekly new charts, swing arrangements and undeclared rivalry were the magnets that attracted dancers from all over the city to the ballroom which is remembered as "The Home of the Mambo." Dancers began to sense a heated rivalry when the two Titos didn't speak to each other of introduce each other's name as the next band up. The only way another band could perform at the Palladium was to replace one or more of the house bands who had commitments elsewhere.