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.

An Afro-Cuban Blessing

Havana, 1941

In a wooden shed that was mostly an altar of some sort, with much of the open sky for a roof, lived the most highly respected Santero in all of Cuba. He lived among a jumbled botanica of wax flowers, unrelated plaster saints of various sizes, and framed deities. Small sacks with secret contents were handing from the trees…. In short, I found myself visiting an authentic sanctuary in a spiritual jungle. Nevertheless, I felt strangely at ease in this unlikely garden, in this absurd theater, in this unfamiliar makeshift environment.

All this had actually begun a few nights earlier, when after an all-night party, I had left Miami for Havana to study at the University of Havana with Professor Bustamonte. On the way to the Hotel Inglaterra with my hangover, I kept my eyes shut against the Cuban sun. Being siesta, the empty streets seemed uninteresting. Once in my room, I fell onto the bed and into the arms of Morfeo. Around seven o’clock, I was slowly awakened by an approaching musical alarm. From the balcony window came sounds from the street. Unaccustomed to balconies, I grasped the railing to steady myself. Down below ran a river of colored lanterns gyrating among ruffle-skirted and ruffle-shirted dancers. With ceremonious authority, a parade of intensely disciplined congueros passed by as if in review. When the spectators below stood on their chairs, no doubt the highlight of the spectacle was approaching. Los Dandys de Belen were strutting by, New Orleans–style, with tails, spats, twirling canes and top hats. “Sient’ un bongo, mamita me’ta llamando, sient’ un bongo…”

I had arrived in Havana, unaware that it was Carnival. This was not mere touristic, theatrical display. Imagine my amazement. This was more than theme floats and majorettes…this was serious universal harmony…the splendor of a joyous humanity. The fireworks were in the eyes of these people. Where did the individual begin and the rhythm begin, since they were one? Overcome, and like an espantaneo, I ran down and plunged into the delirium of it all, falling in step with the elegant/primitive fantasy. I had gone from a stupor that hot afternoon, arriving in Havana for the first time, to the sobering sudden discovery of one of life’s true amazements: a bounteous gaiety ready to be shared with the whole world. Like winning the lottery of felicity.

Several days later, I mentioned casually to a student friend that I had been having difficulty reading Dr. Fernando Ortiz and Orifiche. I was struggling with the Lukumi vocabulary and negligible Spanish. He suggested crossing over to Regla to meet Juan Beson. There may still be people who remember this most influential babalao, with his tall, thin noble stance and his solitary front tooth that, like a badge, evinced a certain sincerity.

“What is he up to?” I wondered, as I stood back watching him light some candles. “He is invoking La Virgen de Regla, asking for protection for your house,” said my friend. The babalao was responding to the answer I had given him when he asked me, “Why have you come here?” (This is the same question a psychologist asks a new patient.) I was unprepared with a reply and with Ñañigo proverbs traveling Quixote-like around my brain, I was about to confess that it was not my intention to come…that my friend had suggested it…when I stammered…“la…la música.”

At that moment, the night surrounding us seemed to physically withdraw itself in respectful silence. From this tableau of a babalao, a young American and his Cuban friend, a trinity emerged like three magi in a holy night. As I received his blessing, I felt that he knew very well why I had come to Regla. “You will carry this music around the world,” he said. Was this a prophesy, or a command of sorts? Was it an example of his psychic insight? Whatever the meaning, it has influenced me all my life…of that there is no doubt. Knowing absolutely nothing of the technicalities of music, but now much imbued with the workings of its mysterious power. Was I to go forth like a neophyte apostle, an evangelist proselytizer?

Much shaken by this truly religious experience, I wondered: Was his odd statement merely an example of lyrical rhetoric? And example of pastoral eloquence, an embellishment of a ritual, a divinely inspired assignment? A fortuitous indoctrination, a revelation that made me a propagator of this music? A step toward my greater spiritual education, a sacred covenant, an oracular portent? An inescapable aesthetic responsibility that made me involved, indebted, privileged? A canonization witnessed by invisible Orishas, an unexpected imposition that made me an instrument of the music itself? Was the santero a channeler between Yemaya and a new convert?

After this encounter, one fact emerges from the overall picture of my life. I can see that I have faithfully “carried the music around the world.” Returning from Cuba in 1941, I opened dance studios all along Miami Beach; performed with the La Playa Dancers around the United States; exhibited rumba with the USO in Samar, Phillipines; run the Champagne Dance Contests aboard cruise ships; lead the immensely popular conga lines of the 1950s; taught with Tony and Lucille Colon at Grossinger’s; lectured oral history of the music at the Smithsonian; and donated my poster collection of Latin orchestras to Boys Harbor. I was given a dream in Regla that today I see slowly materializing into reality, like a plant I have watered. Surely we make the world a better place with this happy music…a duty that is set before all mankind…is it not? So it was foretold that I would one day write this for you to read.

“Blessed is he who has found his work.” —Thomas Carlyle

Mamá Inez in Tokyo

There was no dancing in the streets when the Instrument of Surrender was being signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor. But a week later, they were dancing the rumba in a club just off the Ginza.

Aside from the usual black market activity and swapping chewing gum for sex, there was little in the way of entertainment during the early days of the Occupation. True, the porn shops were reopening, but there was no music in the night air. Tokyo needed a hot spot badly—one to cater to the GIs who didn’t get into the only game in town: the “off limits” Marunouchi Hotel Restaurant, that had been taken over entirely by officers and journalists.

When I met a young Japanese circus acrobat speaking understandable English, who had worked in the States before the war, we teamed up to open the Tokyo Officers Club. We named it that defiantly, hanging up our sign in an alley off the Ginza. The club had no furniture except for a chair and an unstable table, so no one would be just hanging out. But it did have—amazingly—a vintage windup Victrola that survived the bombing, a solid-enough floor, two scratchy pre-war records from the States and some Japanese recordings that were not danceable. On the table were large-size bottles of excellent Santori scotch plus very large bottles of fine Japanese beer.

Opening night was slow but the Victrola was the drawing card in an otherwise silent night. Like the Israeli State Symphony signaling the return to normalcy after the Israeli-Arab War, this music was carrying a clear message to the curious passersby, who stepped out of the bombed streets and into another world. The GIs were there to drink, and the thin, bashful girls that entered, whose curiosity had overcome their shyness, were made welcome—no longer the enemy, they were the main attraction that brought the soldiers in their army boots onto the floor to dance with the girls in their gaetas (wooden platforms to avoid the muddy streets). One record was entitled “Little Grass Shack in Kahala Kahula, Hawaii,” but it was the second one that got things moving: “O Mamá Inez, O Mamá Inez, Todos los Negros Tomamó Café.”

If Japan is loco for salsa today, you can thank Mamá Inez.

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.”

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!

Dirty Dancers: Miami Beach, 1940

When the 1940 winter season ended and the Carousel Club closed, Miami Beach was expected to await the arrival of Thanksgiving 1941, when tourists would return. Instead, a building boom took place beginning with the National Hotel and continuing up Collins Avenue from 16^th to 23^rd Street, with the Rooney Plaza Hotel.

The rumba dancers that performed at the Five O’clock Club, the Beachcomber, Club Bali and Carousel either went north or remained for the summer, out of work. When we learned that the new hotels were installing dance studios to serve guests, and welcoming teachers, we joined the new National Hotel. In return for performing at the pool with free rumba lessons for hotel guests, we had the use of the studio, free of charge. A business was born.

Miami Beach and rumba and conga became synonymous. Bathed in Latin rhythms from nearby Havana. A chain of dance studios—one in every new hotel—would have paid off very handsomely we thought except that there were not enough dance teachers to fill the growing demands. Furthermore, the hotel owners were now asking for a percentage of the take and were thinking of charging for dance studio space. To hire teachers or to work on a percentage basis without contracts was clumsy since they could make deals with the hotels eliminating my partner and me. Things were up for grabs.

Since the National Hotel was number one in 1940, our studio was well known. And considered the pioneer in this dance studio business: in hopes of dealing with more sound (read: honest) establishments, we approached the venerable Tatem Surf Club, and Anglo-Saxon private club for the old guard Floridian “aristocracy.” At the entrance, a sign read Restricted. The management agreed to permit a trial studio seeing that we had run the Conga Nights at the prestigious Coral Gables Country Club. When there were absolutely no customers from the Tatem Surf Club membership, we quit. No doubt the rumba was considered ethnically incorrect: “Jewish.” The Anglos scorned the dance and today they are seen at a loss on the dance floor trying to learn the box step

The Great Noro Morales

The dance floor, like the bandstand at the old La Conga nightclub, was the size of a postage stamp. Performing during the popular rumba matinees of the early forties, Noro Morales had to sit sidesaddle at his piano due to his corpulence and the cramped angle. The patrons came from the nearby fur market, garment center and millenary district. These were Jewish bosses with their Italian models. Four huge “palm trees” dominated the décor. Twenty-four round tables seating four were set so closely that conversations and casual comments overlapped, adding to a close congeniality even among business competitors.

“Rumbambola” had just ended. The perspiring dancers wriggled their way back to their tables like bouncing balls. In spite of the AC on full blast, everyone in the club was wringing wet. With a clever change of pace, Noro went into “Rumba Rumbero,” causing the exhausted couples to gulp down their drinks in order to hurry back onto the floor. One might say this was bad for business in a way. As soon as you sat down, you were up again like puppets on a string, manipulated by the cords of a musical magnetism: You were still jumping in bed that night.

When it became time to clear out for the dinner crowd (who had come to see Carmen Amaya, Diosa Costello, Jose Greco, Pedro Flores or Pedro Ramirez or Tondaleyo), the patrons were slow to leave. It was like emerging from a theater into sunlight. You were a performer! A star! One felt a reluctance, a disbelief like a shocking conclusion. You felt that “I want more” feeling until the rhythm slowly evaporated as you walked distractedly down Broadway. These were the same people who arrived early when the doors opened and while the band had not as yet shown up. The same people who would brave the heaviest rainstorm to dance carrying umbrellas into the club. Once settled, they would watch the musicians come in carrying their instruments over the heads of those at the tables. They would watch the band assemble. Testing, tuning, talking and turning to one another, the musicians were godlike, a congregation of talent. When the bongocero lit his Sterno, you knew you were in for a hot time. Noro, seated calmly at the piano; the dancers hushed at the tables—it was full artistic appreciation to watch things fall into place. This performance reached its climactic moment when Noro would raise his hand as if to say, as they do at the Indy 500: “Gentlemen, start your engines.”

(photo by William Gottlieb, 1947)