专辑简介

The great Machito was born as Frank Grillo into a family of six in Havana, Cuba. At a very early age he became very attracted to music, and as a young boy he liked to sing with his father’s employees. (His father was a manufacturer of cigars, who also owned a warehouse and general store.) Through his singing the young Machito got to be around some of the most famous groups of that time, the 1920s, such as the Sexteto Habanero, for instance. Later he began playing the maracas, the instrument that would be with him all through his life, having carefully observed one of the best maraqueros in all Cuba, Champito. From 1928 to 1937 he worked with several different groups, such as El Sexteto Occidente, Sexteto Agabama, Sexteto Universo, Sexteto Nacional etcetera. In 1937 he arrived in New York and quickly found work with a group that called itself La Estrella Habanera. Some time later he was a featured singer with Septeto Anacaona, in which Machito’s sister Graciela also sang; then for the next two years Machito recorded with Cuarteto Caney, Conjunto Moderno and the Orquesta Hatuey, as well as appearing as singer with the bands of Noro Morales, Augusto Cohen and Xavier Cugat. As Machito remembered it: “I first became inspired when I listened to Duke Ellington, and when I started my first band later on, it was a combination of the Duke and Glenn Miller. But we quickly went into our own style. You know, Afro-Cuban rhythm is one of the richest in the world! It has influenced our music today, even the popular things on the juke-boxes.” In reverse, Machito acknowledges that he himself has been influenced largely by two American bands. “From Count Basie and Chick Webb we learned to respect musical knowledge. When you join Afro-Cuban rhythm with good musical knowledge, the result is very exciting music”. In 1940 he decided to form his own band, The Afro-Cubans, with Mario Bauza as musical director. Bauza, a brilliant trumpet player, was an old friend from Havana who had arrived in New York in 1930, and had already distinguished himself in the bands of Don Redman, Noble Sissle and Cab Calloway, apart from his many appearances at studio sessions. When the band opened at the La Conga night club, it was an immediate success. The Afro-Cubans were on their way! After Word War II a new form of jazz was being played, Bebop, and Machito played alongside such jazz greats as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald, to name just three among many, also making some recordings. Bandleader Stan Kenton was quoted as saying that “Machito plays the greatest Cuban jazz in America today, and has been a major influence on the band and myself.” Machito’s orchestra appeared not only at major night spots, but also at the Palladium, Birdland, The Band Box and the Apollo Theater. The recordings presented here are among the most famous performances ever by the Afro-Cubans and, moreover, they were made at probably the most creative period of Machito’s long career, a time when the orchestra had reached a musical peak that clearly justified its world-wide fame and recognition.