Mongo Santamaria
Mongo Santamaria’s Greatest Hits
(Columbia / Legacy)

Mongo Santamaria
Afro-American Latin
(Columbia / Legacy)

Mongo’s Santamaria’s Greatest Hits?!? In a pig’s eye. In fact, what Columbia Records did to Mongo Santamaria is a textbook example of how big corporations masquerading as record companies truly destroy the work of great artists. Descended from Cuban slaves, Mongo Santamaria represents a relatively pure line of inheritance direct from Africa through the deepest part of the Afro-Cuban culture. At the age of 17, he jumped onto the stage of Havana’s famed Tropicana Club, and from there straight to the heart of American music-making, emigrating to Manhattan in 1950 and hooking up, first, with “Mambo King” Perez Prado and then with the great Tito Puente’s much-loved Spanish Harlem orchestras.

By the end of the ‘50s, Mongo had moved to the West Coast where he set about, with bandleader Cal Tjader, perfecting the recipe for Latin modern jazz, and in the process contributed his first classic to the jazz repertoire, composing “Afro Blue” for the then-emerging John Coltrane. By the early ‘60s, Mongo was recording for the independent Battle label when he struck on a combination that practically blew apart the existing pop charts. Picking up on a catchy melody crafted by a very young Herbie Hancock—based on the evocation cries of street vendors and, at least in part, a tribute to the first, big Afro-Cuban hit in America, 1931’s “Peanut Vendor”—Mongo parlayed a boogaloo version of “Watermelon Man” into a monster crossover hit, establishing a mainstream market for Latin sounds that has not stopped growing.

Which is when Columbia Records signed Mongo to a multi-record contract and began releasing one piece of empty confection after another, all with either tempting food or gorgeous semi-clad models on the cover, and titles like “Hey! Let’s Party” and “Workin’ on a Groovy Thing.” Meanwhile, the real deal was going down across town at Verve Records, where the late, great Nuyorican percussionist Willie Bobo, a gifted protégé of Mongo’s—aided and abetted by the late, great New Orleans cornetist Melvin Lastie—was carving out some truly funky grooves. (For a graduate seminar on how boogaloo is supposed to sound, check out the double reissue Spanish Grease/Uno Dos Tres; you can also hear the first stirrings of hip-hop in there, but that’s another story altogether.)

Nevertheless, the marketing formula at Columbia seemed to be working, at least according to the liner notes, which claim Mongo had become a big seller for the company. In 1969, toward the end of Mongo’s stay, the label paired him with David Rubinson, a young producer who understood Mongo’s real worth and suggested an unprecedented project. Why not take the rhythms learned from Mongo’s homeland—where the music is very much connected to spiritual practice—and mix them with some of the Latin jazz and pop strategies Mongo had helped to innovate in the U.S.?

The pair considered the project so potentially controversial they scheduled a live run-through on the road—in saxophonist Sonny Fortune’s hometown of Philadelphia—and commandeered some studio time in New York under the cover of another project. When the record company executives heard what Mongo and Rubinson had done, they took immediate action, putting the project on the shelf and leaving it there until now. Why? Because it wasn’t what they expected. Brilliant! But what Columbia had been holding onto until now turns out to be probably the best and most powerful Latin fusion record made up until that time, a cornerstone that set the stage for Rubinson’s next few career moves—from producing the Latin rock group Malo, to overseeing Santana’s mid-’70s return to soul on Amigos, to working on all the 1970s Columbia releases of Herbie Hancock, beginning with ’73’s classic Headhunters.

The program, as originally conceived, begins with a simple percussion and chant theme on “Obatala” that builds slowly into a horn-driven riff, adding the unusual element of Fortune on baritone blowing a deep breath of wind into the song’s rhythmically propelled sails; the opening riff of the second cut, “Mi Reina Guajira,” resembles nothing less than a close cousin to the riff that drove Santana’s “Smooth” to the top of last year’s charts; by the third selection, “Mambo Leah,” Mongo Santamaria has taken us so deep into the rhythmic fabric of AfroCuban culture we might as well apply for a passport.

Then comes the record execs’ section of the program, three sterilized Latin-funk numbers each featuring a guest turn by either flutist Hubert Laws, saxophonist Mario Rivera or vocalist Ronnie Marks. The commercial-trash level here is pretty high but at least seems bearable; on second thought, check out Laws’ amazingly silly flute solo on “Sheila,” the album’s fourth cut, or the half-hearted chorus work on “Boogaloo Wow,” the only non-star-studded “commercial” selection—not even the veteran band musicians can take this shit seriously. And the English-spoken “funky boogaloo” lyrics to “Me and You Baby”—the only cut on the entire album Columbia saw fit to release—are just appallingly embarrassing.

Thank God the last two tracks—“Mama Papa Tu” and “Afro-American”—bring us right back into the heart of Mongo country: muscular, expansive boogaloo riffs riding supercharged percussion decorated by superbly restrained, firey solos.

Framed at either end by extended-jamming, ten-and nine-minute rippling cuts, the album-as-planned would have made—and still makes—for a fine release. But add the live performance taped as a rehearsal for the studio sessions, and you’ve got something beyond just excellent. Beginning with a live take of “Naked If You Want To,” the only convincing cut from Afro-American’s “commercial” numbers, the handful of live selections (taped at Pep’s Lounge in Philadelphia before a suitably enthusiastic audience) prove Mongo’s band even more capable of tight, no-bullshit, hellfire boogaloo, with Fortune’s keening solos—prized throughout the jazz world for their “African-sounding” tone—fearlessly leading the way.

On a jam designed strictly in Fortune’s honor (Mongo introduces him “the hometown boy!”), the alto saxophonist turns it up a notch, and then another, and then take it up over the top—and I mean, Over the Top. Make no mistake: the live 1968 recording included here could easily have won an award that year, or any year. And by packaging the studio sessions with the live show, Afro-American Latin could easily be the best Latin release of 2000, reissue or no. But just imagine if it had come out in ’69; as producer Rubinson says in the liner notes, “I think it would have changed Mongo’s whole career, and his life.”