The Year of Irving

Irving Fields is a favorite of ours We used to play the Star Liner cruises with him and would never miss a night of his piano melodies at the Waldorf. We still try to catch him at Nino’s in Mahattan when we can– nothing goes better with spaghetti bolognese than Irving doing “Blue Danube” as a pasodoble. The finessed piano stylings on Bagels and Bongos are only a taste of what Irving has done over the years– everything from horn-honking sock-hop twists and velvet mash-ups of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky to odes to Davy Crockett and Costa Rica. There’s also this 70s sizzler, “West Indies”, a tight bit of electric, Fender bass funk fom his 44th LP (!) Caribbean Cream, released on the Ford label. The congas come courtesy of one of Latin jazz’s top players, Bobby Matos. The copy of I have was signed by Irving in 1977: “To Mary and Rod, two wonderful people!” Irving has always been all about his public and in 1960 he even tried to teach his fans how to play piano on an E-Z Learn LP. If you follow the eight steps and practice on the piano keys sketched on the LP’s back cover, you’ll be playing “Mary Had A Little Lamb” as a rumba in no time. Give it a try, and let a little Irving in your life.

The Jewish Atlantic

Edmundo Ros was something like England’s Cugat, a skilled, kitsch-friendly bandleader schooled in Latin rhythms and committed to making them popular with the mainstream. Ros was born in Trinidad and raised in Caracas before moving to London in the late 30s and becoming the UK’s leading advocate of rumba mania. But the tune that put Ros on the Latin exotica map was his 1949 version of “The Wedding Samba,” which was Yiddish songwriting chief Abe Ellstein’s “Der Nayer Sher” dressed up in bananas and maracas. No wonder then that Ros would try to repeat the formula by making a few more Jewish nods later in his career. This is him doing a spooky, horn-blasted take on Friday night’s most-requested hit (originally for Decca), “Latin Shalom” and then him heading to California to go south of the border to go north of the border with a version of “Spanish Flea” the Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass smash (penned by Mexmeister Sol Lake) that was supposed to evoke a make-believe Mexico and ended up as the theme music to The Dating Game.

Genuine and Persuasive

Our favorite thing about Richard Hayman’s Genuine Electric Latin Love Machine album is the use of the word “genuine.” As if there were a slew of fake “electric latin love machines” flooding the market. And who better to offer a maraca-shaking Mexican robot in a sombrero as genuine than a Jewish arranger who started off as a harmonica guru before heading for the Boston Pops. Maybe that’s why the LP was subtitled “Persuasive Electronics.” There was some convincing to do. Hayman recorded this gem of Moog antics well after his stint with Borrah Minevitch’s Harmonica Rascals, a group which also produced Johnny Puleo, the harmonica shortie who would go on to do his own Jewish-hits-on-harmonica album. Love Machine was a first (and a last), a contribution to two crazes at once: the Moog craze and the Latin craze. As far as I know, it was a one-of-a-kind analog electro experiment, applying the tonal kaleidoscope of Moog oscillations to “The Peanut Vendor,” “La Comparsa,” and why not, “Hare Krishna.” Hayman lulls us with a version of “Scarlet Ribbons” writer Evelyn Danzig’s “Melody #2″ and goes hardcore on his own “Samba de Victoria”. Flip the album cover over, though, and you learn that even the latin love machine has limits, not to mention a whole history of stereotype to uphold. Unplug the robot and all you’re left with is another sleeping Mexican.

That Levy Boy

There were plenty of Jews who got tangled up in the Latin music scene in the 40s and 50s, but only a few went for the name-change masquerade (think radio man Dick “Ricardo” Sugar). Alfred Levy could have become Alan Land but instead opted for Alfredito and morphed into a top percussionist on the NYC mambo scene. He gigged with Tito Puente and Joe Quijano before cooking up his own mambo unit that eventually got signed up to Tico Records (run by two of his lantzmen, George Goldner and Art “Pancho” Raymond). Early on Alfredito’s insider-outsider status produced tracks like this one, Chinese Cha Cha Cha which first appeared on Rainbow Records’ Alfredito Plays Mambo! 10″ and later as one of the “tantalizing rhythms” on Tito Puente’s Latin Spectacular LP showcase alongside cuts from Puente, Machito, Tito Rodriguez, Joe Loco, and Martino Savanto. In 1966, Alfredito went boogaloo for a Cotique release that showed him dabbling in Latin soul and R&B and even grabbing the mic. Here he does Sweets For My Sweet a classic from Doc “Jerome Felder” Pomus that was first made famous by The Drifters (even then it had a Latin shuffle to it), then covered by a host of folks including dubnaut Lee “Scratch” Perry.