Marty Sheller Salsa & Latin Jazz Hitmaker

Latin Beat Magazine, Nov, 1999 by Max Salazar

For the last 50 years, salsa and Latin jazz aficionados have enjoyed and danced to Mongo Santamaría's recordings of Para Ti, You Better Believe It, Last Tango In Paris, Midnight & You, and Sofrito, The Bad Street Boy's Cheek to Cheek and The Lady Is A Tramp, Willie Colón's Son Guajiro De Encuentro, Celo, Copacabana and Ipanema Leblon, La Lupe's Canta Bajo, Tito Puente's Baila Mi Son, Manigua, Guantanamo, and Encantado De La Vida, found in Puente's 1978 Grammy winning LP Homenaje A Benney Moré. In addition to these tunes, there are well over 300 tunes for several orchestras which were orchestrated by MARTY SHELLER.

Sheller's long list of hits has enabled him to join the venerable René Hernández, Chico O'Farrill, Israel "Cachao" López, Orestes López, Tito Puente, Joe Loco and Louie Ramírez, recognized as Latin Music's top arrangers of the last 30 years. Sheller's face and name remain unknown among music lovers. But record company executives, bandleaders and vocalists such as the Fania All Stars, Andy Harlow, Joey Pastrana, jazz trumpeter Jon Faddis, jazz guitarist George Benson, Conjunto Clásico, Roberto Torres, Ralfi Pagan, Manny Oquendo's Libre, Santiago Ceron, Rubén Blades and Graciella demand Sheller arrange their music.

Sheller's tools are his imagination and a pen. He is an artisan in the art of music orchestration, a field in which the orchestrator imagines the sound in his mind as he blends the different tone colors; what he writes and how he writes it are part of his way of imagining sound. The first acknowledgment of music orchestrators came from bandleader Ray Barretto in 1976 during the first Latin New York magazine awards at the Beacon Theatre when he stated, "Music arrangers are the unsung heroes of this business." Yes they are. For decades these unsung heroes existed in oblivion while their pens made record company owners wealthy. Without top notch arrangers, many bandleaders and vocalists would remain unknown.

In March, 1954, Cal Tjader became the first in Latin music to list the names and photos of sidemen. Before the decade was out, Tjader listed music arrangers.

On June 6, 1986, while he lived in the Bronx, New York, I placed a tape recorder on a table and Marty Sheller revealed his life: "I was born on March 15, 1940, in Newark, New Jersey. I came to New York in 1958 to enroll at Columbia University. I started playing the trumpet in grammar school and in high school took trumpet lessons. In college I had no idea what I wanted to major in. I enjoyed music but I never thought about it as a livelihood. While in grammar school there was a fluteophone class which interested me but then I asked for a change and ended up with the trumpet. I admired Harry James and Louie Armstrong I started Columbia University as a liberal arts major with a possibility of a law career. I spent my first year living in the dormitory and by the second year was living in an apartment at 106th Street & Broadway.

"During my first year I was playing with the college band at football games. During my second year I met a student named Bob Porcelli who was also a musician. We looked for gigs and landed a $44 a week gig in the Catskills (summer resorts). We backed the stage shows and played for dancers. During our leisure hours we listened to jazz recordings of John Coltrane with the Red Garland Trio, Art Blakey's Messengers and other combos. Our gigs usually ended at midnight and we would remain in the ballroom and play jazz. When the summer ended and we headed back to school, I knew I was going to be a musician.

"When I began college in 1958, I was not aware of the Latin scene. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday I would head to the musicians union to get gigs. The union, Local #802, was located at the Roseland Ballroom. On one side were the musicians who wanted club dates. On the other side were the Latin musicians who always needed a trumpeter and the job was always given to a jazz man. I could read and that was the requirement. As it turned out I got to meet two Latin musicians who would have a tremendous influence on me, Louie Ramírez and Frank Malabe. I worked with Louie's band and with Pete Terrace's group in which Malabe played conga. Louie and Frankie got me interested in Latin music. They would lend me records and give me a list of records I should listen to. At this time Bob Porcelli and I spent many hours listening to recordings.

"Almost every day of the week we were listening to the newly released jazz recordings at the Record Shack in Harlem. Our school work suffered... we had a hard time getting decent grades. Instead of studying at night, Bobby and I were playing in several jazz clubs just to gain experience. Working at Count Basie's and the Zanzibar was a thrill. I never took a class in arranging music. I became an arranger by trial and error, just used my ear. Then I would ask questions.

"After a while, I realized there were some things I just couldn't do by myself. I would listen to a pianist then urge him to show me what he played and other related questions. I learned much from Louie Ramírez. Louie had a hot little group--two trumpets, pianist, bass, conga, timbal and bongo. Manny Roman was the vocalist. Louie got me other gigs with the groups of Pete Terrace and Harvey Averne. Louie's group was a hit at Brooklyn's Silhouette Club. Thanks to Louie, Bobby and I got to record Sabu Martínez's Alegre LP Jazz Espagñole in 1961. Sabu saw Louie on a Bronx Street and told him he needed musicians for Al Santiago's Alegre recording session. Louie offered his band and this became my first recording. The band lasted about one year. Sabu was undependable. At times he wouldn't show up for gigs. There were times he told us we had a weekend gig and wouldn't tell us where it was. The musicians drifted away. I kept gigging with several jazz and Latin groups.