cibaeño75 previously said:

Guarocuya previously said:



Bolero (Ball-eros)



Where are the connoseiurs of fine good old time Latin? Anybody out there?
Is Old School out for good?

Back to the music, this was the all time slow-jam:



*A bit of trivia: Of the previous songs two of the singers/bandleaders were (are) not Latins, Harvey Averne Jewish-American and Joe Batan Afro-Filipino. Goes to show you that Latin Music NY Style was a native Tri-Boro phenomenon.

Mirabal4ever
Joe Batan ended up being scorned after everyone found out what his true origins were in an article that i read on Latin Beat magazine. It seemed as if the Boricuas ethnic bigotry played a role in this. Poor guy because Batan will always be remembered as a great showman.

Joe Bataan in Spanish Harlem, New York City) is a Filipino-American Latin R&B musician from New York. He was born Bataan Nitollano and grew up in the 103rd St. and Lexington Ave. part of East Harlem where he briefly lead the Dragons, a local Puerto Rican street gang, before being sent to the Coxsackie Correctional Facility to serve time for a stolen car charge.

Upon his release in 1965, he turned his attention to music and formed his first band, Joe Bataan and the Latin Swingers. Bataan was influenced by two musical styles: the Latin boogaloo and African American doo-wop. Though Bataan was neither the first nor only artist to combine doo-wop-style singing with Latin rhythms, his talent for it drew the attention of Fania Records. After signing with them in 1966, Bataan released "Gypsy Woman," in 1967. (The title track is a Latin dance cover of "Gypsy Woman" by The Impressions.) He would, in full, release eight original titles for Fania which included the gold-selling "Riot!". These Fania albums often mixed energetic Latin dance songs, sung in Spanish, with slower, English-language soul ballads sung by Bataan himself. As a vocalist, Bataan's fame in the Latin music scene at the time was only rivaled by Ralfi Pagan and Harvey Averne.

Disagreements over money with Fania head Jerry Masucci lead Bataan to eventually leave the label. While still signed to Fania however, Bataan secretly started Ghetto Records, a Latin music label which got its initial funding from a local gangster, George Febo. Bataan produced several albums for other artists, including Papo Felix, Paul Ortiz and Eddie Lebron.

In 1973, he helped coin the phrase "salsoul," lending its name to his first post-Fania album. Along with the Cayre brothers, he co-founded Salsoul label, though later sold out his interest. He recorded three albums for Salsoul and several singles, including "Rap-O Clap-O," from 1979 which became an early hip hop hit. After his 1981 album, "Bataan II," he retired from music-making to spend more time with his family and ended up working as a youth counselor in one of the reformatories he himself had spent time in as a teenager. In 2005, Bataan broke his long hiatus with the release of "Call My Name," a well-received album recorded for Spain's Vampisoul label.

Atabey previously said:




Pure excellence