Poncho Sanchez
biography and CD Latin Soul Get
it from Amazon.com Music is a matter of taste. Poncho Sanchez, a
Latin jazz and salsa singer and percussionist, has won a Grammy Award in 1999.
In the German edition of January/February
Cosmopolis has published a not so favorable review of his latest CD, Latin
Soul.
Poncho Sanchez is a Mexican American from the Southwest of the
USA. As a teenager he was influenced by the Jazz Crusaders and their hard hop
and post-loop in the 1960s. There sound was unique thanks in part to the striking combination of
Henderson's trombone and Felder's tenor. In hard hop, front lines have often consisted of trumpet and sax, but tenor/trombone front
lines that excluded the trumpet were quite a rarity. Though The Jazz Crusaders had been greatly influenced by Art Blakey's Jazz
Messengers, there was no confusing the two, as Poncho Sanchez explains. The
Jazz Crusader later became The Modern Jazz Sextet. Poncho Sanchez listened to
the Jazz Crusaders at the famous Lighthouse club in Hermosa Beach. To young to
get in, he listened from the outside. Sanchez first worked with Henderson and Felder
when they revived the name Jazz Crusaders for 1995's Happy Again.
Poncho
Sanchez was born in Laredo, Texas on October 30, 1951, but raised in L.A. He was the youngest of eleven kids - some of them
hardcore jazz enthusiasts, and all of them devoted salseros. Sanchez was exposed to
the music of Latin stars like Tito Rodriguez, Tito Puente, Machito, Celia Cruz, and Ray Barretto
as well as to the jazz sounds of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown
and The lonious Monk. Sanchez absorbed a lot of Afro-Cuban styles: mambo, son,
cha-cha, rhumba, guaracha, in short: salsa. Another primary inspiration of
Sanchez was the late vibist Cal Tjader, who did a lot to popularize Latin jazz in the 1950s. 23-year-old Sanchez
joined Tjader's band in 1975 and stayed with him until his death in Manila in the Philippines on May 5, 1982, at the age of 56.
Sanchez
recorded his first albums as a leader in 1979. Over the years, his albums would employ some distinguished
guests, including Tito Puente, Freddie Hubbard and the late Eddie Harris. His
album Latin Soul (1999) has been recorded with the help of solid
musicians. But Poncho Sanchez' singing is not convincing and the band
interpretations of classics like Watermelon Man and Listen Here/Cold
Duck Time are poor performances. As said in the beginning: music is a
matter of taste...
Poncho Sanchez' new CD: Latin Soul, October
1999
Pncho Sanchez: congas, percussion, lead vocals, timbale solo(track 8);
David Torres piano; Ramon Banda timbales, chekere; Tony Banda bass, vocals,
chekere; Jose "Papo" Rodriguez bongos, chekere, congas; Sal Cracchiolo
trumpet, flugelhorn; Scott Martin tenor saxophone, alto saxophone, baritone
saxophone, flute; Francisco Torres trombone; Mike Whitman baritone saxophone
(tracks 6 & 8); Jose Rizo emcee (KLON radio).
