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.

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.

How Believers Are Born

If Leo in mid-heaven conjuncts Jupiter, they say you will be in the company of nobility during your lifetime. If celebrities are our present-day nobility, then I’ve known my share of such encounters. Here are some:

How else could I bump into the Duke and Duchess of Windsor one dark night in Portofino? They were exiting Il Pitsofero restaurant—he, wearing the same colorful Bahamian shirt as I was. We had to have engaged the same tailor since there was but one shirt maker there in 1952, who was making such shirts long before they were for sale all over the West Indies. Celebrities are ordinarily caught trying to run and hide, but with such an opening encounter, I felt that they might have enjoyed some conversation. However, with their two small dogs barking at my Maltese and disturbing the locals, who rose with the early tide, and with my starving stomach joining in the growling, we parted.

One morning at the Carlton, Mr. and Mrs. Ed Sullivan entered the elevator I was in: he, wearing a red jacket and pink pants, and I, a pink jacket and red pants. Mrs. Sullivan looked at us and said, “You guys ought to get together.” On another encounter, Carmen Miranda gave me a big kiss because I said “Excuse me” in Portuguese. Without such heavenly intercession, how else could I be doing a fast rumba with Virginia Hill in front of Bugsy Seigel at the Beachcomber on the same night that I met Miguelito Valdés, Mr. “Babalu”?

I was behind Orson Welles in the revolving doors entering the Hotel Cipriani. Had he not scurried across the lobby so fast—perhaps hurrying to the john or to the restaurant—I would have liked to have told him that I had been the gaffer at his Mercury Theater rehearsals of War of the Worlds, on Halloween 1938. I would have mentioned how, during the actual broadcast, I was having a drink around the corner, relaxing while all the patrons including the bartender ran out in panic into Central Park to look up in the sky.

It wasn’t a beach day at Maracas Bay, Trinidad, but whenever we docked in Port-of-Spain, I got out of town and into the surf. To get there on the Atlantic side, where the waves hit, meant a long but beautiful drive over mountain roads built by the Seabees (construction battalions of World War II). Except for a discreet pair of lovers off in the far distance, there was only one other person visible, jogging along toward me. Known for his love of swimming and keeping fit, it was Robert Moses. Since working on ships keeps you safely uninformed about events on land, I had no idea that he was being vilified for wanting to extend Fifth Avenue by cutting through Sullivan Street, where my family once owned Number 117. I had heard about Robert Moses Park, so that when he asked my opinion about the Village project, about which I knew nothing, I said I felt that he was doing much to improve the city, together with Mayor LaGuardia. No doubt this response made his day. Swimming against a rising tide, he lost his struggle with politicians, landlords, tenants, heritage groups and progressive Democratic party boss Carmine Disapio. Imagine tenants and landlords teaming up, and early environmentalists flexing their power!

The brilliant musical genius, Ernesto Lecuona, sent me a note via his first violinist. It read, “Please come to my dressing room.” I was sitting up front at the Teatro Payret, and couldn’t wait for the concert to end. I found him sitting at a small piano in his bathrobe. “You are the first to hear this,” he told me while playing “Estas siempre en mi corazon,” (“You are always in my heart”). “Come to my Sunday bar-be-COO,,” he said, pronouncing “cue” like the French word for derriere. I happened to be “busy” that Sunday, and backed out.

The most famous prostitute in New York in 1949 was Mickey Jelke’s (the wealthy oleo-margarine heir) mistress, Pat Ward. Before rising to fame, she would visit us to play with our baby until, one day, comedian Joey Adams came and took her bodily out of the apartment.

Speaking of nobility, that prince of the church, Cardinal F. J. Spellman, was on his way to the Eucharistic Congress, in Rio. At the captain’s cocktail party on board the S.S. Brazil, I introduced him to the captain and his staff. Later, on shore at a reception the cardinal offered, he shook my hand and held on to it a bit longer than necessary.

Petrillo, the all-powerful head of Musicians’ Union 108, was heading for Italy aboard the T.V. Leonardo da Vinci. In the receiving line, he extended his pinky to shake my hand, due to his fear of germs.

M. Louis Viutton and I once had a vocal disagreement concerning the quality of his luggage. The Istanbul airport, built on low ground, was flooded. My luggage lost its shape, having sat there for some time. I had expected some polite apology; instead he shouted, “Your mistreated it!”

Montgomery Clift was another difficult celebrity. He was staying at the British Colonial Hotel where Bess Meyerson, the then Miss America, and the Maharani of Baroda, were also installed. The actor was so shy that it soon became clear that he was effeminate, especially when I mentioned Greenwich Village.

Señor Wences, the ventriloquist, resented my asking him to take part in the amateur passenger show aboard the T.N. Raffaello, even though James Roosevelt had volunteered to be a judge. Jan Peerce was humorous and a true gentleman but Rudy Valee, I think, resented my introducing him while wearing a tartan dinner jacket of the style that was popular in the 1950s. On the same program was Jessica Dragonette at the end of her career. Rose Bampton Pelletiere offered to entertain our shipboard passengers very graciously.

Marjorie Merriweather Post raised hell with me over the dusty condition of her private railroad car that was to take her from Miami to Palm Beach. She was absolutely correct. But I had to offer many apologies.

Her Highness Princess Elizabeth Chulalonghorn of Thailand was amazed by the size of our double door refrigerator. “The light goes on when you open the door!” she exclaimed with delight, never having seen one.

These run-ins with the famous came and went, but one remains with me especially. In 1941, in Guanabacoa, Regla, across Havana Harbor, a santero, Juan Beson, blessed me, saying “You will carry this music around the world.” So it was that in ’52 I did just that, teaching Latin dances on a world cruise and continuing to hope that, in spreading a musical gospel of salsa before the public, I can help make this world a bit merrier, for others and for myself.

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.”

El Rey del Timbal: Tito Puente

One matinee at La Conga, a short, good-looking 17-year-old was seen cutting his way through the tables. He was carrying something half hidden on his way to the rear of the bandstand. He did this without disturbing the moment, which happened to be a romantic “precioso bolero.” No doubt he had come, not to sit in with the band, but to practice his bongos with Noro’s approval. He sat off the bandstand in a corner. It was the first time I heard someone say, “Tito Puente.”

The next time I saw him was at the Papagallo Bar at the Avila Hotel in Caracas. He played the carnival every year. We spoke of the Billo Boys and Venezuela’s growing musical influence. The third time was at the St. Regis Hotel bar. He was kind enough to greet me and my lady friend. Having Tito Puente embrace you in front of your date is indeed a cool occurrence, a fortuitous happenstance. The fourth time was at the Boys Harbor in El Barrio. He was on his way to give percussion lessons to the neighborhood kids with his manager, Joe Conzo. I complained to them that contributions to the Tito Puente Scholarship Fund were not going exclusively to Puerto Rican youngsters as I had been led to believe would be the case.

Last time I saw him, he was lying in state. He had risen to join the family of music’s historic nobility. From the silent, darkened chapel, I walked out into the sunshine. Looking up at the sky, there he was with his sticks, jamming “Ran Kan Kan,” segueing into “Mambo Diablo.”

I went to a bar across the street, where I ordered two añejos, one for Tito and one for myself.