The Park Plaza

When one steps outside the circle of the family and by doing so, encounters the true world for the first time, whatever knowledge gained in that way has a tremendous impact on the future course of one’s life. Americans taking le grand tour of Europe returned home with a cultural concept with high values. Thus, we became a society interested in learning. Parents today who send students off in mass to Cancun, Jamaica, Nassau for instance, expose these young minds to other influences. The students quickly adopt as part of their formation unrefined behavior, mediocre interests and less sophisticated lifestyles.

Next to visiting a foreign country is the familiarization gained through the literature that country produces. Visiting the West Indies, literary achievement is scarce, and it is music that has the power to influence and formulate the direction of one’s life, perhaps more than parenting.

What has this to do with the Park Plaza? Like a first time encounter with a foreign country, for me the Park Plaza dance hall in 1937 and 1938 helped to fashion a more salutary individual, thanks to the free musical education it offered. Very much unlike “Youth Gone Wild”—more contented with life.

***

I traveled to the Park Plaza searching for music of a certain flavor: Afro Cuban. I couldn’t dance a step, I didn’t know a soul, couldn’t understand a word, couldn’t play a note nor could I spare, during the Great Depression, the carfare and admission. At a time when there was little joy in the world, the music gave me the reasoning I needed to set off from Ft. Hamilton, Brooklyn, up to Harlem, when it was dangerous to do so.

I found what I was searching for the moment I heard the Happy Boys orchestra, while paying my twenty-five cent admission. The ticket window was grilled, like a Bronx bodega’s cashier. The only bandstand was a lighted area as I sought a chair near an exit sign. The ladies, young and old, were lined up facing the young and old men, all sitting on the rows of chairs along the walls. For the first few numbers that the band played, I felt no need to do other than sit and listen, filled with satisfaction at having found what I needed and had accomplished.

I was not destined to remain a wallflower for long, for after my second visit, I was approached by a girl who came and asked me to dance, something unheard of at the time. I wisely declined, feeling foolish—but better to feel foolish than to look foolish on the floor. What I needed now was the ability to dance rumba. On my third visit a tall black fellow came up to me. “I see you sitting—why don’t you dance?” “I don’t know how,” I answered him. “Show him how,” he said to his partner.

So it was that Rene and Estella, the top Afro-Cuban dance team perhaps of all time, got me dancing. That brief encounter was the first step that led me around the world on cruise ships, to hotels, nightclubs, dance studios and lectures, carrying Afro-Cuban rumba with me for others to learn. To popularize it was what became necessary, to pass its joyous content on to others.

***

There was no band stand or microphones at the Park Plaza, no amplifiers or spotlights, though alarm bells were visible in two opposite corners to signal to the bouncer where to hurry to in the room in case of need. Nor was there fire-safety equipment evident. The fire exit led to an alleyway that was shared with the neighboring Teatro Hipsano and its fire exit, both leading onto Fifth Avenue.

The Happy Boys band, with Doroteo Santiago singing, did not take long breaks. Their two-minute numbers allowed frequent changes of partners. Particularly favorite pieces would be repeated. To tease dancers, the band employed a mock break, resulting in chairs being thrown to the middle of the floor—in jest, not in anger. (This display of bogus protest was inspired by barroom fights popular in cowboy movies of the 1930s.) The music resumed with prostrate suppliants rising up off the floor to continue dancing.

As one of the only sources of gaiety during 30% unemployment in America, the Park Plaza’s rumba world was vital. At a time when, elsewhere, you would be asked to “Please leave the dance floor” if your dancing was considered indiscreet, here these behaviors were encouraged as an ingredient of joyful exuberance. The piropo, that titillating, sexy, verbal innuendo of everyday Cuba, manifested itself in the physical activity on the dance floor, like intimate paintings springing to life.

Four iron columns supported the ceiling. The one in the far darkest corner served, in addition to holding up the ceiling, to provide support for the girl while her partner pressed into her, grinding away at her body while the music accompanied a clandestine, sexual-outburst performance. Couples would take turns using this structure for gratification. This was not acceptable behavior, nor was it condemned—it was conveniently ignored.

When the management of the Park Plaza installed a very large upright fan, the admission went up to thirty-five cents. It was set at the top of the stairway that led up from the basement, where the toilets and men’s latrines were located. Currents of air carrying male and female pheromones floated over the dance area. In this way ethereal substances, sex steroids, were blended into the suggestive lyrics, the flirtations in progress, the orchestral vibrations, the sweet-smelling tobacco, libido Latino, overlapping perfumes floating in the congested intimacy of a room one-third the size of the Palladium, filled to the brim with sensuality.

The large fan added spice to the feverish environment, increasing body temperatures to the maximum. The latrine windows were open to allow cold air to enter the building. A communal urinal there, like a trough found on animal farms, served to allow a constant flow of water that kept the pipes from freezing in winter.

No one lingered long, for the glare of the white tile walls disturbed one’s mood. You returned at the sound of the first note of the rumba to the darkness of the dance floor, the music and your partner, buttoning up as you ran. If someone were to yell “Fire!” the dancing would continue until flames might be seen.

***

Electrico was a “live wire,” to use a post-Edison label. He was “greased lightning” with his spasmodic quebradas, razor-sharp style, top speed, and dead-pan (cara fea) showmanship. His solos were the highlight of an evening of highlights. Every part of his body was in complete synchronization with the music. Perhaps it helps to envision Killer Joe at the Palladium, except that Electrico was closer to a style of rumba called columbia, which was closer to true Afro-Cuban ritual, including hitting the floor with the flats of your palms and your feet off the ground.

Midnight, negro como el telefono—black as a 1930s telephone—was the only dancer who challenged Electrico, the dance master of the Park Plaza. He would hurry out on to the floor while applause for Electrico was still resounding, so as to cut into Electrico’s performance appraisal. Midnight dressed entirely in black, including a rare vest that was an encumbrance but which gave him a more full contrast to Electrico’s string-bean frame. Midnight had a “down and dirty,” “solid man” quality that contrasted with Electrico’s height advantage (a four-inch difference).

Where Electrico flew, Midnight was glued deep into the music: “heavy, man.” Electrico was “far out.” He had the whole place stunned, shocked. Like two road runners, their movements risked stress fractures. Amazingly, neither seemed to be out of breath off the floor. It was the audience that was left breathless.

***

The trumpets of the Happy Boys brought down the walls of the Great Depression. They were the pipers we followed to recovery. From a low-key, romantic locale hidden away in El Barrio, they raised the level of intensity in their choice of more cheerful melodies such as “Ahora seremos felices.” Most Park Plaza patrons were from W. 114th St., “the most dangerous street in New York” at the time. Many of them did not own a radio. They went home, singing along the dark streets love songs that sweetened the dreams of their sleeping neighbors.

In 1937 the Puerto Rican and Cuban population in the neighbor I estimate could not have been more than three or four hundred. Why was there never a long line waiting to enter the Park Plaza? It was due to the fact that money was so scarce that they were too broke to pay the admission. Even today, Latin nightclubs are less numerous and struggle to survive (long gone are the La Congas and Havana Madrids; house parties in Washington Heights, for example, fill the need for the desire to dance).


My partner Catin, short for Catherin, and I were standing on the stoop of her building on W. 114th St., about to enter. A screaming woman exited with a furious man grabbing at her. They fell to the gutter, where the beating continued.

Catin calmly showed me her razor blade, wrapped in a rubber band. “We women all carry one,” she said, pulling it out from her stocking as we entered to go to sleep.

One of the songs heard at the Park Plaza was “Camina como Chencha,” written for Chencha, a lame girl who danced every dance. She showed determination, spirit and courage to enjoy life, inspiring everyone present during those dark days of the Great Depression. Everyone at the Park Plaza was great in their own way. Puerto Ricans, in the 1930s and 1940s, were seen as inferior to us. Today with what has happened to US culture, they are superior to us. We are put to shame by them.

***

In summer months, the Park Plaza offered what one only found in the tropical islands of the West Indies—and that was the opportunity for a “quickie,” a quick “dip,” by going out on the Harlem Meer, the lake opposite the dance hall. In the islands it was the sandy beach, in Harlem it was on a rowboat during the band’s break.

Three rowboats lined the shore of the lake. We untied them, rowing them out into the darkened privacy, in the middle of the lake and under the stars. When we heard the band playing across the water, we hurriedly towed back to shore.

Sex finds a way. In the Dominican Republic, at the Club Taino, were shacks with mattresses. In Montevideo’s waterfront dives, there were curtained areas with mattresses on the floor landings of the buildings. Modern cruise ships can be called floating bedrooms, with comfortable cabins near discos. These convenient arrangements go back to Roman baths, and up to Bangkok brothels with dancehalls. The rocking rowboats were more naturalistically romantic under the open sky, with an element of danger and stolen pleasure that’s unlike Amsterdam’s walk-in, walk-out policies, that by comparison seem more sordid. These images remind me of that iron column at the Park Plaza—it was almost part of the festivities.

One night I arranged for a party from the Village to visit the Park Plaza. With Antaole Broyard in one taxi and me in the other, we escorted two loads of people up to Harlem. (During the Depression, taxi meters made a loud ticking noise, not unlike the tracks on subway travels of the 1930s. The standard tip to the driver, no matter the distance, was ten cents.) The barricaded ticket window was unknown downtown and served to make our friends uneasy as we entered the narrow hallway entrance, typical of many old buildings. Normally it was safer inside than outside, in El Barrio.

As we were approaching the cashier, a rush of people came at us, running, frightened, pushing their way through our group of ten (cabs could legally carry five persons during the 1930s). We had, before leaving the Village, briefed our party about acceptable and unacceptable behavior but had never expected the wild demonstration that we were now facing. Was it a fire? I knew it was a fight, and did not stop the Village crowd from returning to the taxis, leaving just four of us—Anatole and his lady, me and mine—to enjoy the evening once the matter settled itself peacefully, inexplicably.

***

To enjoy the Park Plaza entirely, one had to arrive early and leave last. To watch things evolve from start to finish—good to the last note. The musicians as well as the locals began by embracing happily, and ended not happily but embracing sadly—it was over too soon. The band would slowly dissolve itself, leaving only the piano playing, as an honor perhaps, the last notes, as the trumpeter and the rest tiptoed off individually, softening the departure. It was a merciful ending, for outside on W. 110th St., the waiting world was like Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End.

What we call “cool” today, in the 1930s, was called “hot.” The mainstream bandleader Paul Whiteman’s “get hot” was picked up as “hot tomato” (a cool gal), “hot spot,” “hot shot,” “red hot mamma.”“Hot dog!” meant “great!” as did “hot stuff.” “Put hot peppers on it” is “twisa mdungu” in Kongo, “échale salsita” in Pineiro’s salsa, and “get hot” in Whiteman’s jazzy era.

Today we are both hot and cool, one could say, like the dancers at the old Park Plaza.

Two Years in the Life

1939: Winter audition for Major Bowles Original Radio Amateur Hour, at Ed Sullivan Theater. Buyú, Julio Andino and Ruben Berrios, piano, two brothers on guitars. I managed the band (with rhumba shirt); clavero. No luck. Tried at Chin Lee’s Restaurant, near the Latin Quarter Night Club. No luck. No money.

1939: Went with Julio to meet Machito at the Half Moon (one flight up, Broadway and West 81st Street), after aforementioned audition for Major Bowles. Passed out from rum. Julio put me in the subway, Fort Hamilton local to the last stop.

1939: Met Katherine Dunham dancers and Jack Cole dancers and hung out at the Cuban Village amusement area, New York World’s Fair. As an understudy, I learned el diabolito and la mula and el sacraficio, Nanigo dances. I was fired for shooting dice in the dressing room.

1939: At the Café Latino, Greenwich Village, shot crap with Buyú in the cellar (now called One If By Land, Two If By Sea, an expensive restaurant).

1939: Met Nino “the Great” Yacovino. Joined his troupe, three couples. Worked at the Rhumba Casino at West-End, Long Branch, New Jersey. Did solo with my partner, Gloria Cook (“Cookie” was Al Jolson’s mistress). Have photos and clippings. Joined La Playa Dance Troupe and worked the Wonder Bar on Woodward Avenue in Detroit (great show town!). Met Raoul and Eva Reyes there. Cugat at the Statler Hotel in Detroit, on tour. Frank Sinatra was at Ross Fenton Farms in New Jersey.

1939: Stayed at the Kingsley Arms Hotel, Asbury Park, NJ, where I had my studio in the solarium and taught Rhumba.

1940–41: Received wire to go to Miami Beach to join Cuban Troupe, three couples, plus Pepito and Carmen at the Carrousel Club cum revolving bar, featuring the craze: La Conga! Taught dancers around Miami Beach hotels, in my own studios: Bali Club, Hotel National off Lincoln Road, and at the Tatem Surf Club (exclusive Christian “No Jews” policy). Also at Coral Gables Country Club (restricted). Orchestra Ina Ray Hutton, all-girl orquesta. Attended University of Miami; exchange scholarship to University of Havana.

Dance Floors I Have Known

We were dancing the conga on the roof of the Semiramis Hotel in Cairo in 1958, when suddenly all hell broke loose. The Egyptians began shooting off fireworks celebrating the British evacuation of the Sudan. Cheers and laughter greeted explosions until sparks, smoke and flames began to fall at our feet. The band kept playing and the drummers accented each burst as we began to hop and leap with every dangerous blast, like rabbits. You could say the place was really jumping that night.

More peaceful and relaxed moments on the dance floor were spent at the Rainbow Room where society behaved properly, unaware that they were dancing on turf owned by the Mafia management of that time. In Miami Beach at the famous Beachcomber Club, I asked a young lady to dance after requesting permission from the two gentlemen she was seated with at ringside. Little did I know that I was dancing with Virginia Hill and that the two gentlemen were Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. When she told me her name, I was careful to dance well “apart” during the slow sexy number. Speaking of dancing apart—as disco dancing prefers—it was in Singapore in the fairgrounds that I first witnessed hundreds of young couples artfully dancing without touching. It required some skill and restraint….

New York’s Havana Madrid, with an entrance down a few steps, featured a small bar seating six, overlooking a truly small dance floor that was raised when the floorshow was to begin. The patrons, so eager to dance, convinced the management to leave the dance floor raised rather than waste the time it took to retract it back under the bandstand again. It was at the Havana Madrid that I saw Rene and Estela—he, performing with a glass of water on his head and one balanced at the end of his extended foot as he did the tornillo without spilling a drop. He also performed a somersault, picking up a handkerchief off the dance floor with his teeth. At the Park Plaza on 110^th and Fifth Avenue in 1938, Rene had made me get up from my chair so that Estela could teach me to one/two/three/pause, when I didn’t even know how to foxtrot. What I learned on that dance floor that night served me for a lifetime.

Like true fanatics, we ran from La Conga around the corner to the Havana Madrid and back, not even ordering a drink, in order to keep dancing while each of the clubs’ respective bands took their breaks. We might be hearing the same songs in either club. It was almost like not missing a step. Since the clubs were building up their businesses, the managements didn’t stop good rumberos from getting on the floor, even though they weren’t paying customers.

At Fe Fe’s Monte Carlo on the east side, where I seem to recall Enric Madriguera’s upscale café society orchestra playing, I had the nerve to walk in cold with less than a dollar on me, since patrons would invite rumba dancers and teachers to join them. That scene ended abruptly for me when, at one matinee, an inebriated Tommy Manville, the asbestos millionaire, loudly objected to my rumbaing with his young blonde companion.

At the Waldorf-Astoria’s Empire Room in 1943, Xavier Cugat presented Miguelito Valdez singing “Babalu” from behind a curtain. By doing so, Miguelito had just broken down the strict hotel policy of “no person of color.” When he emerged onto the floor, with the slowly brightening spotlight on him, his perspiring rendition of a truly astounding number served to make musical and racial history. I got on the dance floor doing a wild rumba with my partner. The management asked me to leave the floor even though I was dancing, and wearing a U.S. Army uniform at a time when soldiers could take liberties.

Today Beacon, New York, has a very large Latino community that’s mostly Central American, but back in ’38, the gringo audience at the Beacon Theater had never seen the rumba, tango, samba or merengue. (The routines we did were set by the Davalo’s Dance Studio upstairs on Broadway and 48^th.) This was most fortunate, that is, because the sold-out crowd did not recognize that we, three couples, were not performing correctly since one partner, when the band began, was still searching for his jacket in our dressing room. This meant the routines went on with three girls and two men—which was of course chaotic! The fact was that when he finally appeared, no one in the audience seemed to notice anything had been amiss.

Dance studios in Miami Beach hotels were unknown until the rumba and conga craze began in 1940. From that time on, all the mushrooming new hotels lining Collins Avenue had to provide for a studio, usually just off the lobby, that served to add a note of “tumult.” The elevated stage that was also the dance floor at the new Carousel Club on 20^th and Collins Avenue was so large that although we were not three but four couples doing Latin, we still couldn’t fill the stage. The American all-girl band was led by Anna Ray Hutton. Other clubs, like the Five O’Clock (drinks on the house at five), managed very well with just three couples, and the small Club Bali in Miami, a clandestine gambling joint, hardly held three. The big song was “Tonight We Love.”

Speaking of tumult—a “Jewish” idiomatic expression meaning gaiety—we taught on the polished dance floors of Tony and Lucille Colon’s dance studio at Grossinger’s in the Catskills in 1947. We would also hop over to the rival Concord Hotel to dance the new Perez Prado mambo to the great Curbelo Orchestra. Curbelo also played at the Embassy Club on 57^th Street, and at La Martinique, 57 West 57^th Street (owned by Dario and his brother), where we danced on the crowded Saturday “Rhumba Matinees” in innovative air-conditioned comfort.

There was no air-conditioning at the Teatro Municipal in Rio in 1952, where we joined hundreds of high Carioca society perspiring—not in the Carnival costumes that, because of Rio’s exhausting night temperatures are the scantiest to be found anywhere, but in strict formal wear. At one point, when all the house lights were extinguished, hundreds of sparkling diamonds flashed at us as the huge spotlights swept back and forth over the gigantic dance floor. I imagine that one does not even experience that at a Hollywood Oscar night or even on the celebrity Mediterranée red carpet in Cannes. When I close my eyes, I can still see their mirrored brilliance.

The most enormous dance floors were those in Havana at the Palacio Asturias and Palacio Gallego. Since dancing is as much a part of Cuban life as breathing, it is clear why the floors were not only so spacious, but located not on one but on two floors of each building, with one floor for the more conservative dancers. Much simpler, in a much poorer country, we danced in an open field under strings of Christmas lights during Panama’s Carnival. Dancing in total darkness on the sandy beach in Saint Martin was cool, followed by a plunge in the surf to continue embracing in the water.

Many drug stores in the fifties had soda fountains. The one under the Palladium’s dance floor risked flakes of paint and plaster falling down on customers. To enter the Palladium, you climbed two flights, stopping to pay your dollar admission on the first floor. There was Cuban Night or Puerto Rican Night until it became everyone’s night. Jimmy La Vaca’s drums were set up next to a two-story iron staircase exit that he told me someone was thrown down. The universal exhilaration came at you from the combined sound and scene (whereas the unwholesome melee years later at Studio 54 was basically artificially drug-induced).

These too well-lit barn-like dance halls lacked the romantic intimacy and almost familial environment of smaller spots like the Park Plaza, that one could label a neighborhood institution. The tiny ticket window at the entrance resembled today’s barricaded bodega cashiers. Primitive toilet facilities at the Park Plaza featured a very long communal trough with constantly running water, visible to the ladies who passed by on their way to the ladies’ room. Bells sounded for rare disturbances. (In Washington Heights, at the Audubon Ballroom, the venue of Malcom X’s assassination, Anatole Broyard and I witnessed a senseless murder while people kept dancing. I called it a triumph of life over death.) Chairs lining the walls, separating women and men, were thrown onto the dance floor as mock protest when the band appeared ready to take a break. This playful demonstration was inspired by the popular cowboy movies of the 1930s.

The dancehall was safer than West 114^th St. called the most dangerous street in Harlem, before it was torn down for a housing unit. Between Lenox Avenue and Fifth Avenue, West 116^th was the main street, along with 125^th Street. Fifth Avenue was a two-way street, ending downtown inside Washington Square Park, for the wonderful wicker seated double-decker buses.

The sloppy bar with its wet floor and beer bottles underfoot didn’t speak well for the Palladium. Nell’s, on West 14^th Street, had an awkward floor, causing entrants to pass through dancers on their way to tables. The Corso in Yorkville, 205 East 86^th Street, upstairs and “open ’til 6 a.m.”, had great music but a bad reputation until standards were lowered, as would be the case at Studio 54.

When the building was sold and the Palladium was gone, a second Palladium was attempted on East 14^th Street in the 1960s but its location defeated it. The venerable Roseland continues providing pleasure, having offered names like Hector Lavoe, Milly y Los Vecinos, Orchestra La Sensual, Angel Canales, Machito, Santiago Ceron and Yomo Toro, Davilita, along with veterans like bassist Leo Fleming, conguero Candido, and timbalero Manny Oquendo.

Going back to the 1930s, we would memorialize the Park Placa (now La Iglesia Cristiana Pentacostal) that we can call the progenitor, with our heads bowed in recognition of the past and present genius that is alive still as it was performed by, for instance, Doroteo Santiago, Pagani's Happy Boys, Panchito Rizet, etc. Que dios los bendigan todos.

It wasn’t Madison Square Garden, the New Yorker Music Center or at the Audubon Ballroom where we personally found our most supreme dance experience. It wasn’t El Liborio, Tropicana or even in the bateys of Havana. It wasn’t at the Casino Intrnational in Port au Prince, the Silver Slipper in Nassau, the Scheherazade in Paris.

It was under a canopy riddled with billions of diamonds, where a carpet of low hanging stars danced along with us. Out on deck in the darkness, off the coast of Bahia while crossing the equator under the Southern Cross, where we frolicked with gravity, rolling with the ocean, rocked in the cradle of the ship while land was a thousand fathoms beneath our feet. We were dancing on the ocean.

Nací Para Bailar, or: If it wasn’t for the rumba, I wouldn’t be here

Latin entertainment has always found a comfortable climate in New York. Carmen Miranda’s samba, Valentino’s tango, José Greco’s and La Argentinita’s flamenco, Lecuona’s piano and the romantic boleros of Mexico’s Tito Guizar, Cuba’s Arsenio and Puerto Rico’s Rafael Hernandez found a home here.

Although Latin talent remained unaffected, a change occurred in the nightclubs. The business began to distance itself from its “Spanish” identity. This was due to the fascists’ Spanish Civil War victory—a factor that caused club owners to avoid the correlation by adopting French names for venues featuring the hottest Cuban and Puerto Rican orchestra. The matchbook advertisements for the Havana-Madrid club shows only the Moro Castle and conceals the “Madrid” image. The owners, the Lopez brothers, opened a second club called Chateau Madrid at 42 W. 58th Street, just two blocks from the swanky Copacabana, when it was located at 10 E. 60th Street, in a less liberal-minded neighborhood. This matchbook showed only a French-style chateau. They obviously were aware of the political variance of the times. By their new location, they now could continue to enjoy the “Spanish” Madrid aspect, as well as their liberal West side Broadway image.

The very popular La Conga was forced to change its name to China Doll due not to the Spanish Civil War outcome, but rather due to competition from Chin Lee’s. With Machito y sus Afro-Cubanos, it still called itself “New York’s only Chinese nightclub.” This in spite of its tropical palm tree décor and shows.

El Libario left the upscale area of W. 57th Street in order to open at 884 Eight Avenue, a more liberal-minded area. The décor of El Libario changed from a very elegant raffinée display to one of jibaros and sugar cane fields, and featured the very young Celia Cruz. This move was not so much due to fickle political sensitivity as it was to better situate its accessibility to the rumba crowd.

Continuing the trend towards contrived French-titled clubs in the 1940s was the elegant Versailles at 151 E. 50th Street, where upper-crust café society enjoyed the best Latin Saturday rumba matinees. At FeFe’s Monte Carlo, 49 E. 54th Street, you found excellent rumba. “Styled and designed by Dorothy Draper,” Hollywood’s interior decorator. This interest in novel décor was inspired by the flashy zebra-striped walls of Club El Morocco. As part of an artistic awakening after World War II, it caught the attention and imagination of the club-going public, as well as the general public.

Two other Latin clubs with French inclinations were the popular La Martinique at 57 W. 57th Street, featuring José Curbelo, and the Embassy, also on 57th Street, but east, featuring Fausto Curbelo. La Martinique, owned by Ramon and Dario, two brothers, captured the rumba crowd by turning its air conditioning up more than its rivals at a time when air conditioning was just arriving on the scene in congested dance clubs.

The Latin Quarter, upstairs at 200 W. 48^th Street, had the largest dance floor and the largest Latin bands. It called itself “America’s Smartest Night Club,” with branches at Palm Island Casino, Miami Beach, and Boston. Today, you can find it presenting great bands on Madison Avenue, where you might run into Larry Harlow.

While top rumba bands played for shows that at times featured average Apache dancers from France at Gaston Edourd’s Monte Carlo, the club scene became ever more a mixed bouillabaisse. In spite of its West Houston Street location, S.O.B.’s proved that it’s not always “location, location, location.” The music is the draw. Originally Brazilian, S.O.B.’s offers West African, Haitian drums, Portugese fado, a cappella, jazz and great salsa among other attractions. The kitchen is challenged nightly to prepare menus for a variety of palate demands. With a prime location on the corner of the Empire State Building at Fifth Avenue and 34^th Street., the Riverboat, with excellent salsa, couldn’t survive with an after-work crowd, since at 11pm, the building closed for the night, discouraging attendance. Son Cubano, on W. 14^th Street, comes alive in the late-hour meat market locale, with Marin’s Latin band. The Corso, with another excellent location on E. 86^th Street, upstairs, could not survive its sordid suspicious activities. (The location of the 1940s Yumuri, with authentic Cuban sounds, was in a bad area that even great music couldn’t hide.)

A split-level club called One If By Land, Two If By Sea, situated in a coach house once owned by Aaron Burr at 17 Barrow Street, was once a restaurant called 17. In 1939, when it was the Café Latino, I shot dice in the basement with José Mangual, Sr., and the conjunto members. The very exotic Middle Eastern, early 1970s stylish Ibis Supper Club, 59 E. 54^th Street, had top Latin bands. On top of the World Trade Center, a rumba band played nightly at Windows on the World. The music from Africa Lejana had reached, in a way, its zenith.

The lowly throwaway matchbook, which is disappearing with less smoking, preserved the history of some long-gone dance clubs. At a time when a room with bath in the heart of Times Square at the new Astor Hotel charged $3 a night, there was a Latin club called Gold Coast at 249 Sullivan Street. It was advertised as being “around the corner from 50 Washington Square South. ¾ lb. Delmonico steak: 65¢; Spaghetti: 35¢.” It was there on the dance floor during a slow rumba that my father proposed to my mother. That’s the night I was born…to dance.

El Muerto Se Fué de Rumba

At East Harlem's Julia de Burgos Cultural Center, I attended Carmen and Rafi’s wedding recently. La musica got me up to dance with two girls as I had seen rumberos do at the Park Plaza and in many dance halls. To see two women dancing for lack of partners was like seeing a woman in a restaurant eating alone. Since I never met una puertoriqueña who didn’t know how to dance, I was not hesitant to twirl the two gals around in a fine salsa. What was to be a short dance turned out to be a performance by an 87-year-old bailarín with two gals, whose combined ages didn’t equal mine.

The same thing happened at St. Paul’s Apostle Church during the annual affair sponsored by the IPRPM. Aurora Flores with Dario at the piano and Papote gave me a big welcome, and I had to do something to deserve their recognition. Two elderly ladies were, in this case, dancing off by themselves and not together. I took the nearest one first, then the second one, and the three of us did the plena. One thing about this music—unless you’re drunk or a clown, age doesn’t stop Latino parejas or personas mayores from doing well on the dance floor. You rarely see that in an Anglo-crowded disco, sorry to say.

What is this “dancer” doing in a list of thirty-five musicians that included Dave Valentin, Cachao and Rene Lopez, all legendarios? Especially since all he could manage to play were maracas and the campana? It was at the Smithsonian Institute’s Museum of American History that I was honored to lecture to a small audience on my donation of posters, and then a bit about the very early days of la musica: the Cabarojeño Club in the Bronx in 1937, the Teatro Cervantes, the ’39 Cuban Village at the World’s Fair, the Café Latino in Greenwich Village in 1937 with Jose Mangual Sr., the Miami Beach dance studio and La Conga craze across the nation in 1940, the La Playa dancers at the Wonder Bar in Detroit in 1938, Tony and Lucille Colon’s studio at Grossinger’s, and talk about Anselmo Sacassas, Julio Andino, Electrico, Rene and Estela, the Havana Madrid. Everything I mentioned there involved bands, conjuntos, grupos or espantaneos. Musicians.

When we paint the picture of los veteranos de la musica Latina, los bohemios, little note is given to the rumberos like Raul and Eva Reyes, who performed, taught and carried the flag around the country. I can add that they fought for it as well, since it was threatened by forces like Arthur Murray’s and Fred Astaire’s studios. Those operations may have helped a bit to bring la danza before the public, but it just wasn’t the real thing, lo nuestro.

What’s a six-foot Italian-American Brooklynite who didn’t speak la idioma doing playing “Bruca Manigua” on a harmonica for the audience at the Teatro Cervantes in 1937? What is he doing in the company of the greatest musicos, allowed into their dressing rooms, back stage and in their homes, invited to bautizos, weddings, birthdays like Louis Mangual’s 54^th in Yonkers?

Never was I made to feel unwelcome, out of place or intruding. On the contrary, the abrazo fuerte bien puertoriqueño was the greeting, like two hermanos de leche. It’s more than hospitality, good manners and friendship—it is the affection, the gran afecto, that one feels like a mano, like the looseness I felt while singing a duet (“Tu no comprendes,” a song our long-gone friend Doroteo Santiago recorded in ’38) with Leo Fleming Jr. in my kitchen. How come he could greet you with “Ecobio monina boncó,” an amigo de pecho, could do a tornillo and ate chicharones de Bayamon?

How come he knew the lyrics to “Ofelia tenia un platito,” “Niebla del riachuelo,” “Vereda tropical,” “Pare cochero,” “Negro de sociedad,” “Un poquito de tu amor,” “Fufuñando,” “Santa Barbara bendita,” “La ultima noche” and “Timba timbero”? How did he find himself dancing along with Los Dandy’s de Belén? He was even digging Candido at El Kursal in La Vieja Habana in 1940, and in Maestro Lecuona’s dressing room at the Teatro Payret, opposite Sloppy Joe’s. He danced to Trio Caney on the patio of the Beachcomber, hung out with Louie Varona and “Jack, Jack, Jack” Bolivar at the El San Juan Hotel. He stayed at the Normandi Hotel, swam in El Convento’s small pool and had a shoeshine at the corner of Calle Luna.

Uneraseable reflections…stories behind the music that will be with him, not in la blanda cama, but while dancing with his nurse to “Chacumbele, el muerto se fué de rumba.”

Chinese Rhumba

When the old La Conga on West 51^st Street became the China Doll overnight, the “rhumba-nik” crowd became quite concerned. Was their favorite club losing its Afro-Cuban flavor in favor of some Oriental concoction?

What happened was this: Beginning in early 1940, the Jewish community discovered chop suey, chow mein, egg foo yung, et cetera. They began to abandon Toffinetti’s Italian cuisine on Times Square in favor of Ruby Foo’s Chinese cuisine. Ruby Foo’s itself was inspired by an unknown upstairs restaurant crowded with customers at 49^th and Broadway. The place was called Chin Lee’s.

Lucky Mr. Lee had a gold mine. It was not in the same order as other Chinese restaurants operating at that time. His offered a “revue,” with “no cover, no minimum.” He gave customers free tea refills unlimited and the free fortune cookie gimmick. His matchbooks published prices for a general public that mistrusted nightclub price tactics; he portrayed his establishment in this way as being forthright and honest-dealing. His matchbooks stated: Lunch. 40¢. Dinner. 80¢, except Saturday evenings. Lunch, Saturdays and holidays. 45¢. After-theater supper. 85¢. Wholesale and retail. For your health and good food. Use Chin Lee coupon books for free meal. With Chin Lee's list of twenty or thirty choices on an exotic menu, big servings of steaming hot or sour, mild or spicy rice dishes, using cheap labor and an amateur hula-hula girl revue, it was clear to Mr. Harris that his La Conga had to do something.

Chin Lee’s restaurant came to life at the end of the Great Depression’s baked beans and chili bill of fare at Horn and Hardart’s automat. He was a breath of fresh air. Furthermore, Mr. Harris saw Lee opening a second spot called Chin’s at 44^th and Broadway, lit up with enormous Chinese lanterns. Even Ruby Foo’s had opened a second larger place down in South Beach, Florida, for the winter crowd. Chinese restaurants around the city were installing entertainment, finding that music and dining went well together, like corned beef and cabbage.

When it became clear that the Jewish public—comprising the majority of La Conga’s music-loving clientele—and Chinese food had discovered each other, Mr. Harris was forced to save his place by giving birth to the China Doll, if only in name. He boldly advertised it as “New York’s only Chinese nightclub,” with “shows at 8, 12 and 2:30” and “never a cover charge”—omitting reference to a minimum. “Deluxe dinners from $2.50,” giving his address as “East of Broadway,” rather than West 51^st Street.

His menu was still steaks and chops, but without the Latin rice and beans plates. He had difficulty finding English-speaking help among the Chinese, and Orientals couldn’t mix drinks at the bar. Chinese food filled you and later you were still hungry—people still came to the China Doll now to dance to Machito or Noro Morales, but not to eat. Harris tried putting acts like the José Greco Dancers that broke away from the strictly Afro-Cubans…acrobats, Mexican, flamenco and Los Chaveles de España.

One night after the last couple left, he and I sat at the bar with only the bar lights on—to save electricity, I surmise. It was a somber moment even with the conga craze in full swing all over the country. He poured us double shots of his strongest rum and added, “Here’s a drink you can’t get—.” He never spoke the words “Chinese restaurants.” (The sudden growth of “Chinese” can be compared to the pizza phenomenon of the 1970s.)

He toyed with the idea of broadcasting nightly, using top personalities of stage, screen and radio, or giving free conga lessons, but his competition was getting stronger day by day. The Chinese were winning the market. Perhaps this sounds familiar, but fortune is fickle.

In 1941, Sam and Joe Barker opened the Beachcomber in Miami Beach featuring spicy dishes, tropical drinks, strong Zombies, air-conditioning and Xavier Cugat with Miguelito Valdes, “Mr. Babalu.” The Copacabana opened on East 61^st Street with Carmen Miranda–type beautiful show girls all over the place. Chin Lee couldn’t compete with the “rhumba” bands and Tony Martin and Jerry Lewis floor shows. Then World War Two put the lights out on Broadway. The Chinese Chin Lees are gone now, while the Copacabana is still around.

Looking back to that era, perhaps if Mr. Lee had foreseen the future, had recognized the potential of a Chinese/Latin jazzy combination for his restaurants on that afternoon when Julio Andino, José Mangual and I with other guys were auditioning there for a “job on Broadway,” playing “Cachita” as a wild rumba for the happy customers, perhaps Mr. Lee would not have come up and asked us, “Please play American fox trots.”

Invitation to the Dance

For many years, dance hall posters could be seen on corner lampposts around the city. They added a bright note to an otherwise grey concrete world. Some communities were awash in colorful invitations to the dances. Many remained visible long after the event they served, but with the beginning of the Quality of Life policy they were outlawed, along with stale election campaign slogans, eyesores and graffiti. Post No Bills was enforced. Climbing a lamppost to get at one of these disappearing treasures became increasingly risky. The sponsors became aware of a thief and began to secure their posters ever higher and more securely with tape, staples, glue and nails. Soon these cheerful placards became a dying artifact, replaced by handbills distributed at dancehall entrances like throwaway circulars, or leaflets arriving by third-class mail.

During the 1890s, announcements of events took the form of playbills, especially along the 14^th Street’s theatrical district. Unlike Europe where paper was expensive, “towns in America were covered with posters lacking artistic value,” wrote Jules Cheret in The Poster by Alain Weill. Nineteenth century posters advertising many various products such as bicycles or soap were “puns in design,” similar to the 1980s Roseland poster, “Women’s Lib Dance.”

The scope of the exhibit portrays the growth and expansion of Latin music from 1970 to the present. A portion of it displays classic Anglo festivities such as Thanksgiving Day, Memorial Day, Sadie Hawkins Day and the Fourth of July. When the first “Latino Music Festival” opened at Madison Square Garden in the early ’70s, admission was $7 and it featured ten bands. Today, general admission is $45 and may show one band. If ten top celebrities are billed, they will appear on stage only to receive applause but not to perform. Like the baseball fan, loyal to his sport, the Latino is devoted to his joyous music. “Rumba for breakfast, rumba for lunch, rumba for dinner,” as the saying goes.

Historically important is the Corso poster. This dancehall marked the “crossover” from East Harlem’s barrio to the German-American neighborhood of Yorkville. It played top bands from “9pm to 6am.” Latino valentinos came down Lexington Avenue and kept going. It awakened communities to the pleasure of “going dancing” on Saturday night. Beyond the borders of the barrio, Latinos felt free in this Home of Latin Music. Before this, La Conga, China Doll, the Martinique and the Embassy were nightclubs and not dancehalls. They avoided using street corner posters. The venerable Roseland and the theatrical Palladium lacked the intimacy of the darkened ambiance of the Corso, where black and white blended and bonded. The Corso can be said to have begun the disco scene in New York.

In third world countries, where there are no movie houses, people attend dances in a local schoolhouse. Open air makeshift dirt floors serve quite well. In the ’30s and ’40s, along Havana’s Malecon, street floor apartments served as dance “clubs.” An improvised bar on the kitchen table sold shots of rum for cinco kilos (five cents). Usually, the family were the musicians together with neighbors who helped round out the modest conjunto. These spots catered to the average Habenero or to the after-work passerby who would step in for a precisos bolero, to relax or to pursue a romantic interlude.

Latin bands produce beautiful music with powerful basic discipline and synchronous relaxed movement. While sustaining the values of traditional holidays, these dancehalls celebrate life in spite of linguistic separation. Abre paso! (Give way!) is a popular dance floor expression along with Dale aire! (Give me air!…Give me room!…to show my stuff). These words may well symbolize the Latino’s cry for fuller recognition of a melodious culture. Allow Babalu to become Negro de Sociedad.

Thousands of people come to Times Square seeking “something.” Unfortunately, they ignore the colorful posters on the corner lampposts with their odd names: Buyú, Mongo, Corso, Caborojeño.

Although there is much electricity in the air, like the rush you feel as you begin to dance your way onto a crowded dance floor, the crowds should accept the invitations extended by the posters. The Audubon, the Park Plaza, the Broadway Casino…these salones de baile, where musicians give you the very air in their lungs, the nimbleness in their fingers, their sweating talents. They will send you dancing off into space, they will satisfy your wish to fly. Seek no more.

That famous Broadway ballroom, the Palladium, was a barn-like showplace that could hold a dozen Park Plazas. The modest Park Plaza served to compact the dancers. It concentrated the impact of the music that shook the building. Like the famous Cuban sala, the “salon” is where one goes to dance and not to see a show with dancing to follow. The salon is not the elite “room” or the unwholesome disco. It is where in an atmosphere of overlapping perfumes one might hear lyrics like, “Nacieron las flores cuando naciste tu.” Where one can find a more romantic stimulation outside of “la blanda cama” (the soft bed) or the frenzy that makes sensuality a graceful art form?

“You will carry this music around the world,” a Babalao once told me. Was it a command or a prophecy? So I solicit you, who carry this music in your hearts: Go forth, propagate this gift…invite the world to dance!

¡A bailar!