“Nague, Nague, Nague”

Machito would begin the Rumba Matinees at La Conga singing his theme song that immediately identified his Afro Cuban roots. This was a dividing departure from the “Allá en el Rancho Grande” format that Anglos had become accustomed to hearing from orchestras. Machito blazed a trail, along with Noro Morales who preceded him at La Conga but who played more bolero and a more toned-down rumba, so that when Machito broke onto the scene, it was a momentous turn in sound: more the real thing that had been waiting in the wings.
Mario Bauzá’s insistence on a jazz hookup is understandable in terms of improved Anglo public exposure and money-wise, as well as a musical innovation. But Machito had his ears and his pulse tuned to the minority, his loyal following at La Conga that barely tolerated the mixture that was forced upon them by Bauzá. I recall the dancer and listener reaction around the room as Mario and Machito acted uncomfortably with each other on the bandstand, with Mario struggling to get the band behind his efforts as he stood off to the right-hand side, leading rather desperately (and rather obviously to us all) while Machito stood in front of the band playing along with his maracas with cool confidence in his Afro-Cubanos. Perhaps the orishas were on his side, and he seemed to know it—and so did Mario.

Machito correctly understood the reaction of befuddled dancers when Mario sprang “Tanga” on them. They had come to dance, not to stumble over Latin jazz. Jazz is great for the brain and the ear, but Latin is for the feet and the heart. Minus dance floors, the Blue Note, Birdland and the old Granada in the Village never enjoyed the crowds of the Copa.

One can call jazz sophisticated or (forgive me) a subtle, contrived snobbery that is at home in vaporous, smoke-filled darkness, demanding respect from its audience. Latin is for extroverts, for public spectacles and displays of exuberance. It applauds mobile ability—but where would it be without the dexterity of all the musicians? Jazz is musical embroidery, ingenious, involved in amazing trickery. Both are infectious with shock potential and as creators of artifice, both can cleanse us of demons while employing intriguing style. Both transmit a lingering presence—a rush, a charge, an afterglow, a satisfaction like an intoxicant that enlarges our spirits.

Perhaps most of all, jazz, Latin, Afro, et al, are best described as testimonials to one’s artistic and very human individuality. They are demonstrations of mankind’s God-given sensitivity, and of his struggle to excel. Music is not only a fact of the natural world—as sentient creatures with creative instincts, it is embedded in all of us, like love.

When I met Graciela in 1941, playing with Anacaona in front of the Capitolio, I knew that her Afro sound would someday reach Broadway. It was Cugat and Miguelito Valdez who brought “Babalu” to America—first heard at the Beachcomber in Miami Beach, in ’41 and then in ’42 at the Waldorf-Astoria—and first teased the ears of those of us who wanted more. Machito filled that gap when he shook off Cugat’s refinement, which had constrained the authentic (often nañigo) roots, and finally pioneered the remarkable Afro-Cubano phenomenon. We can compare Cugat’s motivation, a financial consideration, with Arthur Murray’s manipulation of the authentic rumba, as well as Bauzá’s surrender to jazz influences. Music sounds “right” when separated from money, as in the desperately poverty-stricken areas of Africa where it comes from the soul and not from the pocket. That holds true for jazz as well as for Afro. All musicians are brothers, but not all music is harmonious. Music is a large familia that doesn’t always get along, even for reasons other than money. It is saddest when music itself, to soother of beasts, is the cause and the public suffers.

The last time I sat with Machito and spoke of the happy times we knew, it was at Roseland where he, in the late ’70s, played to a small crowd of mostly senior citizens and old widows—the music that they could manage to dance to. The gloom that was evident weighed on us. Latin jazz and hip-hop would be coming to Broadway. Bauzá had triumphed—but back in New Orleans, you can still hear some of the folks singing “Give me back that old time rhythm.”

Vince in the Brooklyn Rail

Read the feature story by Alan Lockwood about Vincent Livelli -- "Man of the Village, Man of the World." It appeared in the Brooklyn Rail in April, 2008.

Salsa on the High Seas (Salsa Sobre las Olas)

Two octaves below A-major, the ship’s horn of the Fiestamarina signals the sailing from Miami. Un crucero con sabor latino, con tumbao y rumbon, nace un nuevo concepto en la industria maritima, un idea que iba cerciendo paso a paso.
Music has accompanied man’s voyages throughout history. The major naval forces of the world all have their bands; Tito Puente played in one. Roman galleys rowed to the beat of a drum, and King Ludwig floated on a barge in his castle with Richard Wagner. Back in 1807, opulent pleasure boats plied the New York waterways featuring cotillions with large orchestras aboard, ending with fireworks. On whaling ships during months-long hunts, seamen danced to chanties. The French ship Jean Mermoz featured symphony cruises. In Venice, gondoliers row to arias. Circle Line boats have cruises called “Mambo on the Hudson” and “Merengue on the Hudson,” and in Paris the bateaux-mouche sail until dawn playing porros and excellent salsa. From the lone accordionist on the ferry crossing New York Harbor, to the Fiestamarina, with its musical emphasis and Latin musical heritage—a powerful combination. Salsa sobre las olas…salsa on the high seas.

Back in 1948, three ships called the Good Neighbor Fleet sailed from Pier 32, New York, on 38-day cruises to South America. The orchestras of the Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay struggled with Latin rhythms. They played fox trots from New York to Port of Spain, calypso from Trinidad to Bahia, then samba as far as Santos and then from there to Buenos Aires…the tango. Along the coasts of the Caribbean islands, gyroscopic proto-salseros danced on the waters that served as the ideal conductors for the electricity found in Latin music.

It was after the passengers retired that the true Latin spirit manifested itself in the form of the crew conjunto that formed every night on the aft end of the ship. The espantaneo-type band might feature such artists as “Hot Lips” Garcia from El Barrio, and Doroteo Santiago, who popularized “Amor Perido,” “Tu No Comprendes” and “Dolor Cobarde,” right from the Happy Boys at the Park Plaza on 110th Street. Earlier each evening, Hot Lips had played “Malaguena Salerosa” to call the passengers to dinner each night. His trumpet replaced the gong, mournfully echoing in half-time down the long companionways of the ship, from deck to deck.

Musical Mission of Mercy

At the turn of the century, Asbury Park and Sarasota Springs were the gambling meccas of the northeast. The Depression put an end to their heydays. An attempt was made to place gambling on the Jersey Shore at Long Branch. The Rumba Casino, where I worked with the Tony (Nino) Yacavino troupe, was chosen as an experiment to see if it could offer gamblers what they needed. Jimmy Pellecchia was the owner and Harry Kilby was the front man. Harry booked the shows together with his wife and daughter, who came down from New York. Jimmy was boxing commissioner of New Jersey, and Nino had been a boxer before becoming an accomplished dancer.

Similarly, in Miami Beach, Lou Tendler, a champion boxer from Philadelphia, was part owner of the Carrousel Club, with its revolving bar and air-conditioning in 1940. I caught pneumonia dancing and sweating, due to it, and my colleague Pepito became very ill as well. We were not accustomed to it, and Pepito used to stand with his back to a large fan during rehearsal breaks. I also suffered severe hearing loss partially due to the blasting trumpets just behind me as I performed night after night. We liked our music loud even then, I guess.

Gambling interests figured that Asbury Park would be a more suitable location but that didn’t take off, and of course today you have them at Atlantic City. 1952 found me on a 90-day round-the-world cruise, escorting 17 Brazilian millionaires. One of the passengers on the ship was Filipino who owned the Manila Herald and the Jai Lai Fronton. He persuaded me and my ex-wife to perform after seeing us giving dance lessons during the trip.

For the many years spent on ships, the Champagne Hour was one of my favorite evenings, when I MC’d the show. Passengers could chose their own dance selections and a bottle was awarded in each category. We did the conga line bit to begin each sailing, off with a big happy start to the cruise…and did it at the last night as well. On the S.S. Oceanic, we had four bands which were placed at intervals among the participants (which meant everyone aboard, just about). Going from salon to salon, one would hear different orchestras overlapping, as was the case in Havana at the Palacio Gallego, on different floors of the building.

In 1940, the danzon was the most played style, except at the sidewalk cafes in front of the Capitolio, where bands like Anacaona played mostly rumba. Here again, the music would overlap since the bands were adjacent to each other. In the afternoons, along the Malecon, there were small bars indoors that had 3 or 4 musicians playing on concrete floors for dancers. Rum was cheap and the dancers were poor, but happy, made so by the combination of two sweet forces at work.

Sunday mornings we went to the Bosques de Almendares to drink and dance, and some to swim, later. We also rode horses in the cool of the early morning, at El Encanto. The perfume wafted out into Calle Nettuno (or was it Calle Luna?). Havana was a rare mix, a garden of earthly delights, which was irresistible to all…a conspiracy of seductive temptations. It was as though one had been imprisoned all his life, and suddenly released in a gay and friendly world…so unlike anywhere else on earth. To bring the Cuban spirit to the rest of the world by means of its music is today a mission of mercy to a beset planet.

The Journey of a Thousand Dollars (Begins with One Box Step)

The seeds of many of the philanthropies that benefit Cuban and Portoriquen communities today were planted in Miami Beach in the 1940s. Jewish charitable organizations had been busy assisting arriving immigrants from European ghettos at the beginning of the twentieth century. They later became involved in the labor movement where many Italians worked for slave wages. After WWII, attention was turned to the blacks of the South. Today, Latino families are being favored with parks, playgrounds, pools and programs sponsored by the many Jewish philanthropies.

In 1940, vacationers from Bensonhurst and Flatbush found paradise in the sun of South Beach, where they were exposed to the delightful music of nearby Havana. Soon entranced by the rhythm of the rumba, they helped give rise to the clubs along the beach such as the Five O’Clock Club, the Carrousel and the Patio at the Roney Plaza, that featured Latin spectacles and free conga lessons. New hotels going up along Collins Avenue had to include, usually off the lobby, a dance studio that added the essential tumult. There being few professional dance teachers, those wanting to perfect their box step appealed to the nightclub performers for instruction. The five or six teachers that were taking pupils were soon overwhelmed by the dance mania that had developed seemingly overnight. Former wallflowers were seen doing tornillos by the pool with their slick-haired Latinos.

The similarity between Jewish and Latino cultures, both being family oriented, made for bonding so that the unison persisted even up into the Catskills in New York during the summer months. New clubs sprang up in New York City following the venerable Havana Madrid, named La Conga, Versailles, Yumuri and Fe Fe’s Monte Carlo, offering Saturday and Sunday rumba matinees. In such close proximity to the Garment Center, it was natural to find “our crowd”: the furriers, clothiers, milliners, cloak and suit boys with their models.

While I will always credit fully the magic of the music, I sometimes feel that my old dance studio in the lobby of the National Hotel on the beach contributed the first step that helped bring today’s descendents of my original pupils, the original rumbaniks, to center stage in the Latino-oriented Jewish philanthropies.

A Dancer Is Born

Singers want to be actors and actors want to be dancers, but none of them want to be prize fighter. But prize fighters make good dancers. With their speed, balance, endurance and courage, they are unequaled in performance before the public. Millions of dollars are paid to witness them in action and millions are wagered on the outcomes.

I was taught to dance by a prize fighter named Nino “The Great” Yacavino, but also how to be my best in managing my life with an emphasis on performance.

We were always attracted to prize fighters while growing up. All I had to do was look out my bedroom window to watch matches presented by the Bay Ridge Boxing Association, with the ring set up on the tennis court grounds that in the winter were used as a skating rink. I had a free ringside set to watch graceful boxers, ice skaters and tennis players.

My mother, who used to dance in her red dress on the top of a table at family gatherings, was a fight fan who in summer vacationed at Tony Cammonari’s training camp in the Catskills, and who took me to see Prima Carnera on stage at Loew’s Sheridan in the Village, where we lived while growing up. My dad, on the other hand, was less interested in pugilism and the fight crowd. Mom was a tough cookie, a fighter who beat the Great Depression.

Nino Yacavino was a Brooklyn fighter who wanted something better for himself than a brutal beating. He and his wife and sister-in-law organized a dance troupe that included a Latin dance teacher and his partner, and needed only one other member for his tall sister-in-law. My height got me the job, not my dancing ability, since I couldn’t even do the fox trot and had difficulty finding patent leather shoes to fit me. What I did have was a familiarity with Latin music and the rhythms of the 1938 Casino de la Playa orchestra from Havana.

Being tall for my age at 18, I tended to slouch so that when Nino contacted me, the first thing he did was teach me how to walk across the room balancing a book on my head. Since his nightclub date was fast approaching, he and his wife soon had me doing the box step and learning our routines, which included rumba, bolero and samba. To learn more, I went to the Park Plaza, where the best Latin dance team in America, Rene and Estela, taught me more basic movements so that a dancer was born!

During the ‘30s, the boxing profession was Mafia, as was horseracing and many of the nightclubs with “cut liquor,” betting parlors and gambling rooms. Nino may or may not have been involved with the Mafia but he did succeed where others failed by getting us a full summer’s gig at the Rumba Casino in West End, Long Branch, New Jersey. The place was perhaps a gambling joint but well concealed from us. It was owned by Jimmy Pellechia, boxing commissioner of New Jersey, who later served time for mortgage fraud (see the Daily News, 1938). When the club signed up a troupe called the China de Simone Dancers, there was among the girls Gloria Cook, an ex-mistress of Al Jolson with whom I did a duo act with fast rumba and lifts. When Jimmy Pellechia fell in love with my partner Gloria, he gallantly offered me a dance studio in the solarium of the Kingsley Arms Hotel in Asbury Park, which he owned. Food and board were on him for the balance of the summer season on the Jersey shore, since he broke up my act by taking Gloria to Hawaii.

Then, back in New York City, I teamed up with a dance student at Davalos Dance Studio on Broadway and 50th Street, and found myself in a Latin troupe formed by Davalos, for a performance at the Beacon Theater upstate in Beacon, New York. This led to my hanging around the Cuban Village at New York’s 1939 World’s Fair, as an understudy for the troupe that had been hired there. Whenever free, I frequented all the Latin dance spots around town: the Audubon Ballroom, the Park Plaza, the Masonic Lodge on 106th Street, the Caborojeno Workers Circle, Ben Mardes’ Riviera Club, and the more elegant nightspots such as Havana-Madrid, Versailles, Martinique and Embassy, until I was called to join Bob Conrad’s La Playa Dancers, booked into the Wonder Bar in Detroit in winter, 1939. Xavier Cugat was playing at the Statler Hotel there at the time.

My next gig was to be at the Carrousel Club in Miami, where I opened two dance studios at the new National Hotel and the Royal York in 1940, as well as at the exclusive Tatum Surf Club. While attending the University of Miami, I was working nights at the Coral Gables Country Club. It was in 1940 that I first visited Havana for a weekend, then again to attend the University of Havana in 1941 [see the blog entry “An Afro-Cuban Blessing”].

While in the military during the war, I performed Latin dance for US troops in the Philippines, then returned to the US to teach Latin at Grossinger’s Hotel with the Tony and Lucille Colon Dance Studio, along with Mike Terrace and Johnny Lucchese. In 1948, I began a long career on cruise ships as cruise director. Wherever travel took me, I spoke, danced and taught conga, bolero, rumba (fast and slow), plus the beguine and the merengue, samba, tango, pachanga, mambo (“Mambo #5” was a nation-wide hit and made Perez Prado famous) and the Mexican waltz—but still stumbled over a fox trot!

Prize fights and nightclubs during the early 1940s were gang-controlled turf that exposed me to people such as Santo Trafficante in Cuba, who invited me to be a “shill” with the tourists I escorted. I asked Bugsy Siegel for permission to dance with Virginia Hill, his gal, at the Beachcomber in Miami Beach. I asked Skinny D’Amato if he knew Jimmy Pellechia, the ex-boxing commissioner of New Jersey, jailed for fraud. The Musicians Union boss Petrillo may not have been “mob,” but I shook his pinky as he demanded.

My second nightclub gig was at the Carrousel Club in 1941. It was bankrolled with some of the money belonging to champion fighter Lou Tendler from Philadelphia. The Wonder Bar in Detroit, a city riddled with unemployed ex-Prohibition mobsters, was “mob,” as was the gambling joint called Club Bali in Miami, where I lost my paycheck every week. The 1939 Rhumba Casino, as we’ve seen, was Jimmy Pellechia’s, whose mob ties and gambling debts put him behind bars.

At the MGM, Las Vegas, in 1976, I ran into a friend, Wingy Gruber, the one-armed greeter from my old Club Bali days, not to mention from the crowds at the Tropicana in Havana. In the ‘70s, the cruise industry became big-time casino business, and I quit just as I could have made my knowledge pay off. Perhaps the African gods, the orishas, were talking to me about justice and the little man.

Fighters make good dancers, but dancers don’t make good fighters, as the following incident explains. One night at the Rhumba Casino, Nino Yacavino suffered a sudden appendicitis attack. He was throwing up bile and perspiring profusely. He pushed us away when we tried to restrain him from going out on the floor to perform. Coming off stage, he went to the hospital, semiconscious.

This was something Nino couldn’t teach me: how to be a true trouper, an average fighter who gets up off the floor to be a prize fighter, like my mom—who I taught to dance the mambo.

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