# The latin side of Chick Corea: Videos, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2021/02/20/the-latin-side-of-chick-corea-videos-photos/
- Published: 2021-02-20T15:05:53+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Chick Corea accomplished so much, and traced so many paths, in his long career—
but to truly understand his artistry, it’s essential to consider his connections
to Latin music.**

Indeed, the pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader Armando Antonio “Chick” Corea
first came to the public’s attention as the pianist with legendary conguero Mongo
Santamaría.

Listen to Latin Jazz Cruise at WBGO this Friday, 9 to 11 p.m., as Bobby Sanabria
celebrates Chick Corea

Steeped in tradition but forward-thinking in its concept, Santamaría’s band was 
a Latin jazz school unto itself, one that yours truly is also proud to have graduated
from; it existed in a parallel universe to Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.

Speaking with Billboard in 2019, Corea admitted that Latin music had never been 
on his radar growing up, until he encountered a dance band in New England led by
Phil Barboza, a Cape Verdean trumpeter. Through a recommendation, Corea got the 
gig.

“And all of a sudden I’m in a band with a conga player and a timbale player, and
I knew nothing about those rhythms,” he recalled. “The conga player, his name is
Bill Fitch and is a great, great conga player who later played with Cal Tjader and
did a bunch of other stuff, fortunately sat me down and introduced me through recordings
and he played a little piano himself. So he showed me how to play those montuno 
grooves on the piano and played me some Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri records. 
And I was really captured, because it was a great complement to this seriousness
of the jazz that I was into up until that point.”

When Corea refers to “the seriousness of jazz” there, he means a certain mode of
stage presence, as he explained in conversation with his friend Christian McBride,
for a 2019 episode of Jazz Night In America.

[[

Chick Corea and Christian McBride at the Montreal Jazz Festival

“Before I discovered Latin dance music, I was into the way bebop musicians were 
presenting themselves,” Corea explained, going on to single out the “cool” of Miles
Davis as a guidepost. “Then I got this gig with a Latin group in Boston, and we 
played at dances. And wow, it was the first time it really extroverted me into seeing
how the music affects people. ‘Cause they’re out there dancing. I thought, ‘Wow,
what a nice effect.’ I love to make people dance, look at that, they’re all happy
and stuff. It showed me that the rhythm and the way the music is has a lot to do
with the emotion that you’re conveying.”

Corea’s subsequent move to New York City led him to discover a world that was engulfed
by mambo madness. Its vortex was The Palladium, located on West 53rd street and 
Broadway — one block away from Birdland, the city’s epicenter of modern jazz. Corea
became a frequent visitor, often dashing over during the breaks on his own gig.

At that time, the relationship that the city’s straight-ahead jazz scene had with
Latin musicians, and vice-versa, was deeply collegial. Latin and jazz musicians 
frequently crossed into each other’s scenes. It wasn’t a strange sight to see trumpeter
Joe Newman working with saxophonist and future Alegre records founder Al Santiago’s
Chakanunu Boys, for instance, or Doc Cheatham with the Machito Orchestra, or Nuyorican
drummer Santos Miranda with Herbie Mann.

This atmosphere was further nurtured by the vibrant jazz and Latin music club scene
in Manhattan — exemplified not only by The Palladium and Birdland but also The Village
Gate (and Top of The Gate), where Latin music stars like Machito, Tito Puente and
Tito Rodríguez would also appear. That vibrant scene extended to the South Bronx,
where on any given night — at spots like the Blue Morocco, Goodson’s, The Hunts 
Point Palace, Savoy Manor, and the legendary 845 — you could hear Helen Merrill,
Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis or Art Blakey alternating with Mongo Santamaria, Willie
Bobo, Herbie Mann, Pucho and The Latin Soul Brothers, Joe Cuba’s Sextet and more.

For Corea, who had played snare drum as a boy in a drum and bugle corps, the rhythms
of Cuba that ruled New York’s Spanish Harlem and South Bronx were fuel for a fire
that would burn his entire life. It was through this incredible musical cauldron
that he eventually got the gig as Santamaria’s pianist.

Marty Sheller, a trumpeter and Newark native who served at one time as musical director
for Santamaría, recalls an encounter with Corea around this time. “It was 1959 and
I was studying at Columbia College in New York City,” he says. “It was the summer,
and I was staying in the dorm. My room was on the second floor and I was listening
to an Art Blakey record. All of a sudden, I hear a knock at the door. When I opened
it, I see this young plump guy with glasses and fat cheeks. It was Chick. He had
been walking by and had heard the music. We listened to records all afternoon. We’ve
been friends ever since. He quickly started making a name for himself on both the
Latin and jazz scenes.”

Through his association with Santamaría, Chick went on to work with the _crème de
la crème_ of the city’s Latin music scene: percussionists Cándido Camero, Julito
Collazo, Manny Oquendo and Carlos “Patato” Valdés; trombonists Mark Weinstein and
Barry Rogers; bassists Cachao and Bobby Rodriguez; saxophonists José “Chombo” Silva,
Al Abreu, Mario Rivera and Dick “Taco” Mesa (who he had played with him in Boston);
and trumpeters Ray Maldonado and Puchi Beulong, among many others.

In other words, Corea wasn’t a musical tourist; he was a part of our family. This
along with his later exposure to Brazilian music, and the Flamenco music of Southern
Spain, would become a continued source of musical inspiration for him throughout
his career. And Chick paid it forward, making the love he had for all things Latin
a major part of his musical world.

Here are six musical selections, spanning 30 years, that show Chick’s deep ties 
to our community.

**Mongo Santamaría, “Chombolero” **(1962)

By 1962 Chick had become Mongo’s pianist, performing not only in jazz clubs but 
in dance venues as well. “Chombolero” was composed by Brazilian pianist João Donato
in dedication to Cuban tenor saxophonist José “Chombo” Silva. Harmonically and melodically
it exudes bossa nova. But here it’s played to the cadence of Cuban _bolero_ as Mongo
percolates on the bongo. Chick begins his short solo with a subtle quote of the 
standard “That’s All.”

**Herbie Mann, “Let’s Boom Chitty Boom” **(1965)

On this album Chick Corea split the piano duties with Eddie Palmieri’s older brother,
the legendary Charlie Palmieri. On this funky minor blues in a cha-cha-cha/Latin
boogaloo groove, you hear one of the first recorded examples of Chick playing electric
piano.

**Cal Tjader, “Oran” **(1966)

Chick continued solidifying his reputation in the worlds of jazz and Latin jazz,
leading to his work with vibist Cal Tjader. Although based in San Francisco, Cal
would frequently come to New York City to perform and record. Chick composed and
arranged this jazz mambo for a 1966 date dedicated to the Algerian city of Oran.
Notice the chord voicings he uses, which would become signatures of his playing,
and his use of three flutes in the arrangement. His love of that instrument would
manifest itself later in the first incarnation of Return To Forever.

**Chick Corea and Return to Forever, “500 Miles High” **(1972)

Chick’s embracing of the Fender Rhodes electric piano is rooted not in the legendary
1970 Miles Davis _Bitches Brew _sessions, but in the Herbie Mann track above. The
sound of the instrument exuded the spirit of the music he was writing, and the group
he had assembled with legendary Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira and his wife,
vocalist and percussionist Flora Purim. Along with saxophonist and flutist Joe Farrell
and acoustic and electric bassist Stanley Clarke, they explored Brazilian rhythms
with a freer approach. Notice Chick’s use of the wah-wah pedal attached to the Rhodes
at the very end of the tune. It would be the harbinger of things to come.

![](https://i0.wp.com/www.wbgo.org/sites/wbgo/files/styles/medium/public/202102/
chick_corea_looking_up.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

**Chick Corea and Return to Forever, “Captain Señor Mouse” **(1973)

Inspired by guitarist John McLaughlin and his Mahavishnu Orchestra, Corea and Clarke
reformed Return To Forever after Airto, Flora, and Farrell left to start their own
groups. Besides the added fire power of guitarist Bill Connor, Corea added to the
Fender Rhodes a battery of synthesizers, and with them a dramatic sonic change. 
Abandoning Brazilian rhythms, he explored rock, funk, and even disco with occasional
hints of Afro-Cuban rhythm interspersed in extended complex compositions — as in
this example. Listen to when new drummer Lenny White plays the cowbell along with
overdubbed percussion (often played by Chick himself). It’s a style of Cuban rhythm
with a New York City interpretation called _Mozambique_.

**“Tumba,”** Chick Corea Trio at Blue Note Tokyo (1992)

Chick Corea explored Afro-Cuban, Brazilian and Flamenco traditions throughout his
career, even in a straight-ahead context. Here we see him draw on all of these in
a trio with bassist John Patitucci and drummer Vinnie Colaiuta. Corea starts tapping
a _bembé _rhythm rooted in West African culture. Because the sound of the piano 
is generated by hammers that strike strings, it is considered a percussion instrument.
But here he really plays it like a giant drum! The song could be considered an audiovisual
representation of Chick’s life. From his early childhood as a drummer to his work
in Latin jazz to his use of electronics with Fender Rhodes then back into acoustic
swing and a songo feel — before returning to the _bembé, _representing the ancestral
homeland of rhythm.

![](https://i0.wp.com/www.wbgo.org/sites/wbgo/files/styles/medium/public/202102/
chick_corea_facing_left.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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