The story behind puzzle No. 57
Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra · Single · Victor · 1947
A Cuban conga player hums riffs to a bebop big band, and Latin jazz takes one of its first big steps.
Dizzy Gillespie's big band first recorded Manteca on December 22, 1947, with Chano Pozo on congas and vocals, Al McKibbon on bass and an arrangement by Gil Fuller.
Gillespie, Pozo and Fuller share the writing credit. The record was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2004.
Pozo was a self-taught Cuban musician, famous in Havana as a dancer and percussionist in the Carnival street bands. He came to New York in the fall of 1947.
According to Gillespie and McKibbon, Pozo worked out the riffs for the bass, trombones, saxophones and trumpets while the band toured California, and Gillespie added a bridge. Pozo was killed in December 1948 after a dispute in a Harlem bar.
Manteca was the first tune built rhythmically on clave, the core pattern of Afro-Cuban music, to become a jazz standard. Listen to how the layered riffs lock together over Pozo's drums.
Then listen for the bridge Gillespie added, where the tune opens up for the horns before the Cuban riffs return.
Who's on it
Keep listening
Go back to A Night in Tunisia (puzzle No. 41), where Gillespie was already mixing Latin rhythm into bebop.
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