Late 1948: Afro Cuban Jazz, A Night in Tunisia and more

"The Cubans, we came here and changed your American music from the bottom up! And nobody knows this! He is shouting. 'AND NOBODY WRITES ABOUT THIS!'"
Mario Bauzá, quoted by Robert Palmer

 

Soon after the September 1948 sessions, his last for Savoy Records, Charlie Parker is already working with Verve/Clef and recording with the wonderful Machito's Afro-Cubans. This would be the first attempt by producer Norman Grantz (founder of Verve Records) to record Parker with different settings (from here would later come albums like "Parker with Strings" or "South of the Border"). 

Parker records three songs with the Afro-Cubans, the top Latin orchestra of New York City and the most important and advanced unit of Latin music in the 1940s: Mango Mangue and No Noise (Dec 20 1948), and Okiedoke (somewhere in January 1949):

Mango Mangue:

Okiedoke:

No Noise 

(the first sax solo is by Flip Phillips, Parker starts at 3:01)

 

This was one of the foundational moments of Latin Jazz. Parker and Machito's orchestra would go on to record the Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite of Chico O'Farrill in December 1950:

Machito and his partner, arranger and orchestra director Mario Bauzá commented with awe on Parker's musical genius: how he was humble enough not to want to record the world-famous "Manisero" (Peanut Vendor) because he wasn't comfortable with the rhythm; and how he had not heard the songs before the session but he would hear them just once and then be perfectly and completely ready to record them on the next take. 

From Peter Losin's chronology of Parker's recording sessions:

Referring to this session between numbers at the Roost several days later (January 1, 1949), [Club M.C.] Symphony Sid Torin says, "That new thing that you did with Machito was really one of the most sensational things yet... One of the most sensational things, recorded for Mercury on the bop series, it's received a lot of wonderful kicks... It more or less puts bop in a more or less commercial sort of a groove, don't you think?" Parker laconically answers, "Well, if you wanna take it that way, but I mean, 'bop' is just a title, I mean, it's all still music to me..." 

 

 

The other foundational moment in the birth of Latin Jazz (then called Afro Cuban Jazz is prior to this, but related also to Machito's Afro-Cubans: It's all due to Mario Bauzá, the musical director of the Afro-Cubans (and Machito's brother-in-law), who introduces Gillespie to conguero Chano Pozo. 

 

It's not the first huge favor, a career-changer in fact, that Bauzá does for his friend Dizzy: he had already gotten the trumpeter his first important gig in Cab Calloway's Orchestra about 10 years before! Thanks to Bauzá, Gillespie will become more and more interested in Latin music, an interest that bears a first clear fruit in his classic "A Night in Tunisia" (published 1942 and recorded in 1944). A whole new area is opening in jazz (or rather takes it back to its origins, since as Jelly Roll Morton used to say, jazz don't mean a thing if it ain't got 'the Latin tinge'). For a good analysis of what "A Night in Tunisia" means in music, this is a great piece on NPR).

 

Here's a recording of "A Night in Tunisia" by Parker with Miles Davis from 1946, featuring what's called the "Famous Alto Break", one of Parker's most celebrated moments (starting at 1:17):

Charlie Parker (alto sax), Miles Davis (trumpet), Lucky Thompson (tenor sax), Dodo Marmarosa (piano), Arv Garrison (guitar), Vic MicMillan (bass), Roy Porter (drums). 

Recorded at Radio Recorders Studios, Hollywood, on March 28, 1946.

 

Then, in the late 40s, Gillespie asks Bauzá about a conguero. He wants to try something new on that vein. Bauzá recommends Chano Pozo. Pozo does not speak English, Gillespie does not speak Spanish, "but we both spoke music", remembers Gillespie. It's a brave thing Chano and Gillespie co-write and record "Manteca" and "Tin Tin Deo," and a whole new genre explodes.

"Manteca" is recorded by the Dizzy Gillespie band, including Pozo on congas, on December 22, 1947:

 

 

 If you want to know more about this fascinating song, this is an excellent article about it:

 

https://www.sandybrownjazz.co.uk/TracksUnwrapped/Manteca.html