El Conjunto Caney

Latin Beat Magazine, August, 1997 by Max Salazar

In 1940, a fill-in tune needed to finish a Decca recording session enabled El Conjunto Caney to become a star attraction. At that time, the thirty-five year old bandleader resembled movie star Erroll Flynn with his handsome face, black wavy hair and black trimmed mustache. His Conjunto Caney had finally become a headliner after years of struggle. [At this time] Caney went on to sell thousands of Decca and Columbia 78 RPM discs featuring vocalists Machito, Tony Negret and Johnny López.

On Monday, June 24, 1974, I was at Gabriel Oller's Spanish Music Center located in the lobby of the Hotel Belvedere, off the corner of 48th St. and 8th Ave. In the store sat Caney listening to his old Coda recordings and reminiscing about his heydays. Caney was dressed in a gray shark-skin suit, blue sports shirt and a yellow fisherman's cap which covered most of his cotton white hair. The portly white-mustachoed Caney looked like Santa Claus on a summer vacation. He was passing through New York to upstate Lake George, a summer resort in which he would play his last gig. He mentioned he had reached the point where he could no longer tolerate the hustling for gigs in which he was underpaid. He was having a hard time locating three sidemen who would each earn $110 a week along with room and board until Labor Day. His cut would be $150 a week.

"Why," I asked him, "will you work for these low wages when you used to earn the same amount for a night's work during your peak years?"

"Used to," he replied in Spanish, the language he preferred to speak. "The music industry," he continued, "is similar to prize-fighting...you are a champ for a short duration...the competition is tough...a new rhythm sound emerges...a new trend is started and if a bandleader ignores it, he fades into obscurity...I know nothing else but music...music enables me to meet my daily expenses."

Caney is one example of how a musician lives when he is compelled into semi-retirement for lack of work. He drives his 1965 blue Mercury to entertainment spots where Latin music is featured. He organizes a four or five-piece group of local musicians. He gets paid, pays the sidemen, and hits the road again traveling the length and width of Florida looking for more gigs.

In addition to his conga drum and tres guitar, a musician makes certain he has his brown briefcase. He holds on to it as if it contains a million dollars. Inside the case are his links to yesteryear, a variety of mementos which permit him to relive unforgettable moments of the past. Feeding the nostalgia are a few yellowed, discolored photos of his several bands, faded and wrinkled Spanish and English newspaper clippings, a few faded music sheets and a 10" Decca LP whose yellow cover has CANEY across it in bold black lettering. These pieces of memorabilia are not only a passport to the past, they are bits of documentary evidence that Caney was once the musical director of a popular band.

Caney, who was born Fernando Storch on May 30, 1905, is a Cuban of German ancestry. In a proud tone he said, "I was raised in El Barrio Santos Suarez in Havana, Cuba." He first studied the saxophone at age sixteen when the big band of Los Hermanos Palau influenced him with their versions of American jazz.

At this time Calixto Ayende, a flutist, directed the most popular charanga. El Sexteto Habanero were the kings of Cuban music. In 1925 Caney formed a septet, Los Krazy Kats, and disbanded the following year when one of the sidemen died.

In early 1927, Caney left Cuba without his family and settled in the Bronx. A friend of his father's taught him to play "el tres" guitar. Late in 1929, unable to find work, he relocated to Wilmington, Delaware, for a factory job. Six months later he moved to Detroit, Michigan and worked for the Ford Motor Company.

In 1930 he returned to New York and made sure he rented an apartment at 111th Street on Lenox Avenue. Only Cubans lived on Lenox Avenue for a ten block stretch. A dance at the Park Palace Jewish Caterers at 110th St. and 5th Ave., a few months earlier, made it possible for many musicians to work steadily.

He formed El Quarteto Borinquen and worked every weekend from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. at house parties throughout Spanish Harlem. Puerto Rican and Cuban families staged house parties to help pay the rent and buy food.

"Upon entering the apartments," said Caney, "guests were pinned with a small strip of colored cloth to their clothing indicating they paid the 25-cent entrance fee.

"We played boleros, guarachas and tunes like Son De La Loma in a slow swing...the two guitarists would set the tempo and sing in unison...the muted trumpet, rattling maracas and clave rounded out the sound...we were paid with money collected from the sales of pastelillos, pasteles, beer, coquito and mavi. On good nights we each earned $5."

Before 1930 ended, Caney was directing a sextet, Los Echos de Cuba, and kept the group intact for three years until he met a transplanted Cuban from Tampa named Elio Osakar, one of very few musicians whose bass instrument was slowly replacing the marimboola. Together they persuaded Mr. Roldan, proprietor of El Toreador Restaurant, at 110th St. and 5th Ave., to give their newly formed Fernando Storch Quartet a chance to play at his establishment. Mr. Roldan did not like the name of the group and suggested it be named "Caney" as a tribute to a section at Santiago de Cuba famous for its fruit.