As legend has it, Joe Bataan fashioned his first band when he walked right into a rehearsal of younger musicians in his Spanish Harlem neighborhood, plunged a knife within the grand piano, and declared himself the chief. It was a characteristically daring transfer made bolder by the truth that Bataan hadn’t but sang professionally, was nonetheless a relative newcomer to Latin music, and wasn’t truly Puerto Rican (born Bataan Nitollano to Filipino and African-American dad and mom in 1942). However what Bataan deeply understood had been New York Metropolis’s streets – having run with Nuyorican gang the Dragons, performed time upstate for stealing a automobile, and sang doo-wop and R&B beneath lamp lit corners – and he dreamt of a life past them. He idolized Frankie Lymon, grew to become enamored by the conjuntos in style uptown, and envisioned an genuine musical synthesis of those types.
Order the vinyl model of Joe Bataan’s Gypsy Girl now.
Adopting the stage title Joe Bataan and rehearsing his band, the Latin Swingers, till their standing as a stay act eclipsed any lingering reminiscence of his thuggish rep, Bataan signed with then-fledgling Latin music powerhouse Fania Information and launched 1967’s Gypsy Girl. It might be the primary in his collection of traditional LPs for the label. The title music, his breakout hit, encapsulates the unbridled pleasure of his sound. Ostensibly it’s a canopy of The Impressions’ exquisitely genteel Curtis Mayfield-penned ballad of the identical title. In Bataan and firm’s arms, nevertheless, the unique is merely a fleeting reference level for his or her good rhythmic and melodic reinvention – a storming boogaloo punctuated by double-time handclaps, the Swingers’ roaring dual-trombone entrance line, and staccato shouts of “Hot, hot – she smokes!” Bataan’s phrasing – no-nonsense clean with a contact of vibrato holding the top of every line – exudes a brand new faculty cool straight outta El Barrio. In title and type, this was certainly Latin Soul.
The rest of Gypsy Girl captures a performer and band giddy with the boldness that their single was no fluke. It alternates between equally infectious showcases for Bataan that trip the favored boogaloo wave of the day (the jubilant “So Fine,” an homage to 1st trombonist Joe “Chickie” Fuente, “Chickie’s Trombone”) and conventional Latin mambos (“Campesino”) and guagancos (“Sugar Guaguanco”). On the latter tracks, Bataan defers to Joe Pagan’s Spanish lead vocals. But he stays the engine of the ensemble on piano, as evidenced by a nimble solo that turns the warmth all the way in which up on the album’s most frenzied quantity, the appropriately titled “Fuego.”
For all of Gypsy Girl’s dance ground hearth, the closing ballad, “Ordinary Guy,” would have essentially the most lasting affect on Bataan’s profession. The lament of a fella who lacks the fancier issues in life to win again a misplaced love, he’d re-record the music a number of occasions through the years. The unique iteration right here is all wee hours introspection – the right choice to queue up for final name. Its bridge evokes lonely-in-a-crowd metropolis life with remarkably efficient simplicity: “Subways take me downtown/My apartment is my home/I spend weekends with friends/Otherwise I’m alone.” Much more so than seamlessly bridging Latin and Soul, Joe Bataan’s most extraordinary achievement could have been exhibiting us how the roughest avenue robust can sing with such a young coronary heart.
