Cuban Fire!

Another bold step forward for Stan Kenton—authentic Afro-Cuban rhythms and North American jazz, combined as never before…Johnny Richards’ imaginative new compositions, excitingly performed by a galaxy of Cuban instruments and the dynamic Kenton orchestra!

---

notes by Bill Cos, editor of Metronome and Jazz Today

There was unexpected break during one of the three days it took tor record this album. Some of the musicians, with an ear for the big boom of Stan Kenton’s laughter, had placed a makeshift candelabra on his piano in burlesque of another pianist who makes a great deal of money surrounded by such paraphernalia. During the confusion that followed—because as Stan laughed the candles fell back into the piano—most of the sidemen wandered from their places, grabbed a coke or a beer, did the dozens of things that seem unreal during the tension of a recording session.

Some of them drifted to one corner, where www talked for a while. “Some great things here,” one said, and it took no great gift for the vague specific to now that he was talking about the music the band was playing and not the local jazz scene. that was high praise considering its source—a musician who has played every kind of music currently available.

Stan had praised the compositions more eloquently earlier in the day as a kind of preamble to the meaning of the session. “We’ve experimented with actin instruments and instrumentals in the past,” he said, “and sometimes we’ve missed them…I think almost everyone has. Anyway, we’ve never done anything that was really authentic, not in the sense that this music is authentic.

“We made sure here. All of this music is based on a series of authentic Afro-cuban rhythms…that is. Johnny Richards selected the rhythms and then he wrote North-American music to them, so that he took the strength of Latin music—its rhythm—and then provided harmony and melody with his own great talent.

“That’s really an important point, you know, because the United States has never really had this kind of combination before. The people either liked the rhythmic complexities and didn’t mind the melody and harmony being slight, or they forget the whole thing. If you wanted to be dramatic, you could say that this album, besides being interesting in itself, really pints the way toward a new use of Afro-Cuban rhythms.”

It’s not such a dramatic statement in terms of the finished product, but it may seem to obscure the great amount of practical hard work that Johnny Richards went through before he began to set pen to paper. In part, his research goes back to trips that he had made through South America several years ago. The idea had already begun to grow then, although it had no real form until South American friends began to send him tribal records.

“These records,” Richards told me as we sat in the recording studio, “utilized instruments that hadn’t yet been developed here. That was when I really got interested, when I could analyze these things in the relative objectivity of my living room. Friends in New York took over then, and I’d like to pay some sort of tribute to people like Willie Rodriguez who seemed to anticipate just what I had to hear to fill in the gaps. [Willie led the Latin rhythm section on this date.] He and his friends took me to dances, weddings, festivals and quite literally introduced me to every aspect of the Latin American musical life available in New York City. I spent those several weeks not writing a note of music, just listening and asking questions. out of it all came the six ritual dances which we’re recording now, Ritual dances to which I’ve composed American music without losing the basis of the dances themselves.”

Naturally enough, authenticity by itself is no guarantee of excellence, nor is the presence of a crackling musical organization, nor of a dynamic leader, nor, even, a big group of exciting jazz soloists. But if the accumulation of those virtues seems overpowering to you, so will the culmination of their effect on one another which resulted in this album.

It’s doubtful that the Kenton band has ever sizzled before as it sizzles here, or that Johnny Richards has ever written so objectively and vitally, or that all the many gears inside the gears which go into making a record have ever meshed so cleanly and with such finality.

---

JOHNNY RICHARDS is perhaps best identifies to the jazz fan as the chief arranger for the Boyd Braeburn band during 1946, when the band’s performances were mostly confined to recording sessions. He’ll be remembered too as a contributor to the Kenton, Barnet and Gillespie bands. Born in 1911 of musical parents and almost immediately started on a musical education. He was laying several instruments in vaudeville by the time he was ten, went from there into professional dance bands until, in 1932, he spent a year in England writing motion-picture scores. From England he went to Hollywood, where he worked in the Paramount Studios as Victor Young’s assistant for the rest of the thirties. For the next five years he led his own dance band, employing such future Kenton arrangers as Pete Rugolo and Bob Graettinger. Since 1946 he’s free-lanced in and around New York, working, as mentioned above, for such as Barnet and Gillespie and Kenton as well as spreading the impressionistic web through the Braeburn band. Future writing about Richards will certainly list this album with the Kenton orchestra as representative of his best: relating personal concepts to traditional folk rhythms.

---

side one
Fungi Cubano (Cuban Fire), the title song, and a neat way to begin the album, is an introduction and bolero, the introduction a slow burn and trombonist Kent Larson a prime arsonist, playing an expressive, wide-sound solo. A second highlight, moving out of the percussion section, is Lucky Thompson’s tenor solo, at a high, moody level, moving persuasively into another climax. trombonist Carl Fontana’s reflections at the close of the dance become almost embers in melody and mood.

El Congo Valiente (Valiant Congo), is an abierta, the band played this during parts of its recent European tour, so that it’s probably the most precisely done of all these dances. Choir builds on choir, always above exciting rhythm figures, demanding a brace bull and getting four brave soloists; Lennie Niehaus, Vinnie Tanno, tenorist Bill Perkins and trombonist Kent Larson, who presides over the whipping end of the line as the band literally explodes.

Recuerdos (Reminiscences), is a guajira in rhythm, a slow, graceful, rewarding melody with additional thinking-back by altoist Lennie Niehaus before he goes into a more assertive chorus (these split by Stan’s restatement the line), a trumpet declaration by Sam Noto and, from Carl Fontana, a rolling search through his memory.

side two
Quien Sabe (Who Knows), a guaracha, has a reed-section figure that is darn near impossible to get out of your mind, attractive solos by Lucky Thompson, Vinnie Tanno (on fluegelhorn—an exotic touch with a questioning of its own), more frolicking Fontana, swinging Lennie Niehaus, and an over-all carnival mood.

La Guera Belle (The Fair One Dances), is an afro, which Johnny picked up at weddings where people would shout it as they eft the dance floor, finally leaving the bride to dance alone. Essentially it’s a trombone solo, Bob Fitzpatrick doing the graceful dance, bowing to Bill Perkins (the wailer in the crowd). trumpeter Sam Noto leads the Whirling finale of the fair one’s suite, all but for a final swirl from the trombone.

La Suerte de los Tontos (Fortune of Fools), a ñañigo, sustains to the last the mood of dancing and celebration. Lennie Niehaus is the first to leave. Vinnie Tanno is defiant to the end. The most Latin of these soloists, he meets the call for a pyrotechnic display as if he hadn’t already danced all night.