Requiem to a Pachuco

Latin Beat Magazine, Oct, 2004 by Jesse Varela

REQUIEM TO A PACHUCO: It was on a Monday morning (August 2) that I heard Don Tosti had passed away. His sister Marilyn Martinez Wood tearfully spoke about visiting him a few days before he lapsed into a coma. He died peacefully at his home in Palm Springs, California at age 81.

I met Tosti in the early 1980s, while 1 was hanging out with ace Bay Area Cuban music collector Emiliano Echeverría. I was just getting into collecting 78s, so he took me to Jack's Record Cellar in SF, where we scoured bins, looking for Cuban music. In a corner there was a miscellaneous box with all kinds of ethnic music.

As I went through the box, I saw Pachuco Boogie, Wine-O Boogie, Guisa Guaina and other discs that I brought to Emiliano's attention. He advised inc to buy them if they looked interesting because I might never find them again. So I bought a stack and we went to his house to record them on reel-to-reel. I could not believe my ears!

As Tosti went into his infamous pachuco talk on Pachuco Boogie I tripped. I began playing the tapes on La Onda Bajita, a lowrider Chicano pride show on KPFA in Berkeley where I spun oldies for many years. Every now and then some veteran who couldn't believe what he was hearing would call. A little later, Chris Strachwitz at Arhoolie Records turned me on to Lalo Guerrero y sus Cinco Lobos, and of course, Luis Valdéz's play "Zootsuit" helped to inspire this search.

As my public radio career progressed, I became a reporter at KPFA's news and public affairs department. I began to produce freelance stories for National Public Radio and got a gig to do a documentary for the NPR series Horizons. "Those Oldies but Goodies Remind Me of You" was about how jazz and rhythm-and-blues impacted Mexican-Americans from the Pachuco to the hip-hop eras.

I began my search in Los Angeles, where I tracked down Raúl Diaz, the drummer with Tosti's Pachuco Boogie Boys. He had lost touch with Tosti but told me about their glorious days as a result of the success of Pachuco Boogie. As polished musicians that could swing and improvise, they slowly evolved into mambo and played for Chico Sesma at the Hollywood Palladium.

After the documentary aired on NPR, Oakland Tribune historian Steve Lavoie found photos in the Tribune archives that supported what I researched and wrote about it. Enter Marilyn Martínez Wood, the daughter of Ramón Martínez, a pioneer Latino promoter in the 1930s and '40s. She connected me with Tosti.

His real name was Edmundo Tostado Martínez, bur he claimed that a promoter changed it to Don Tosti to fit it on to a dance poster. A proud musician with a crusty exterior, he appeared arrogant but he had good reasons to, as I soon found out. Don Tosti was a well-educated acoustic bassist who could read and write music. He started performing professionally with Jack Teagarden's orchestra at the age of 19, before playing with Charlie Barnet, Les Brown and Jimmy Dorsey (the best man at his wedding). As he settled down, he established himself as a session player at Gold Star Studios in L.A.

Tosti's work with Pérez Prado on Voodoo Suite (RCA Victor, 1954) displayed how well he adapted Afro-Cuban music into his vocabulary. Growing up with pianist Eddie Cano (a legendary Latin jazz pianist who played with Miguelito Valdés in the 1940s), Tosti was a big fan of mambo and Cuban music. He loved Tito Puente and adapted his percussive brass ideas when he started recording for RCA Victor.

In the 1990s, pachuco boogie all but disappeared. I had been bugging Chris Strachwitz about putting out a collection of these Chicano jump blues for years. An outspoken purist with a love for acoustic folk music, he wasn't into it until around 2000-01. When he said, "Let's do it," we began to search through his extensive archives and my collections for pertinent material.

The release of Pachuco Boogie in 2002 gave legitimacy to Tosti's legacy as a pioneer in urbanizing a previously rural Mexican society. But it was not a typical assimilative transition, instead, it marked the birth of a unique blend of Latino and North American cultural influences that developed in the barrios of California among the sons and daughters of immigrants.

What Tosti began continues today in the music of celebrated L.A.-based bands and musicians like Poncho Sánchez and Los Lobos. He was the forefather of Chicano music and generated a lineage that includes the Rhythm Rockers, Little Julian Herrera and Richie Valens. But perhaps his greatest legacy might not be musical at all. His ability to improvise non sense raps in the Chicano "calo" dialect adapted by gangs in El Paso (Texas) and the barrios of L.A. are illustrated on one of the few recordings of this underground "pachuco talk." His idols were bass players like Jimmy Blanton (Duke Ellington) and Walter Page (Count Basie). Tosti was a jazz musician who could play with the best of them.

Last November, we brought Don Tosti up to perform with Dr. Loco's Rockin' Jalapeño Band at the Day of the Dead Festival in the Oakland Fruitvale District. He was in his element, shining with seasoned charisma and a magnetic smile. Next year, he will be heard as part of a recording Ry Cooder is doing on the saga of Chavez Ravine, the L.A. barrio that was gentrified and demolished to build Dodger Stadium. Tosti was a natural entertainer who loved people and tried to make them feel good with his music and one-liners (What's the Mexican key? The key of "Si.").