¿Conoces este disco de papi con Johnny Rodríguez y su trío?: Ansonia Records and Puerto Rico [Part II]
“At the home of Ralph Perez.” Justo A. Martí Photographic Collection, 1948-1985. Archives of the Puerto Rican Diaspora, Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, CUNY.
Editor’s Note: The following essay belongs to a series exploring the history of Ansonia Records, an independent, family-run music label which was founded in New York City in 1949. The Ansonia catalogue, recently digitized, boasts an impressive and influential collection of Puerto Rican jibaro music, Dominican merengue, and other folk and popular music genres from throughout Latin America. Further research will no doubt uncover the role Pérez and the Ansonia label played in the development of Latin music within the recording industry. See below for the full series:
¿Conoces este disco de papi con Johnny Rodríguez y su trío?: Ansonia Records and Puerto Rico [Part I] by Dr. Mario Cancel-Bigay
Ansonia Records and Dominican Merengue’s Place in Latin Music History by Jhensen Ortiz
The Latin Music Legacy of Ralph Pérez and Ansonia Records by Néstor David Pastor
Author’s Note: With much gratitude to my mentor Kevin Fellezs, Souraya Al-Alaoui, Jhensen Ortiz and Néstor David Pastor for the many exchanges of ideas, my wife Edline Jacquet for her support and kind feedback, and Millito’s family for their love.
As I continued to explore Ansonia’s catalogue, I realized that it went beyond jíbaro music, and that artists who performed other musical genres, had also had a bearing on my performances with Millito. This was the case of the prolific Afro-Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernández, a widely-known figure throughout Latin America whose earlier contributions to jazz as a band member of James Reese Europe’s Harlem Hellfighters should not be overlooked (see Serrano 2007: 95-119). While Millito and I used to play “Campanitas de cristal” occasionally, it was “Lamento borincano” and “Preciosa” which we played more often. The latter two, recorded in the 1930s by RCA Victor and Sony Discos respectively, felt particularly contemporary to me insofar as they explicitly condemned US imperialism and economic exploitation in a Puerto Rico that remains a US colony today. “Preciosa,” more recently popularized by salsa icon Marc Anthony, went as far as calling the US a “tyrant.” Puerto Rico would be “precious” regardless of the ill treatment received by the “tyrant,” a word that censorship would see changed for “destiny” in some versions of the song. With Ansonia, Rafael Hernández released two albums: Recuerdos del pasado (1956) and El auténtico by Cuarteto Victoria (1963).
Millito and I would also frequently play Rafael Alers’s “Violeta,” a beautiful Puerto Rican danza released by Ansonia in Bajo las sombras de un pino by Rafael Alers y Su Orquesta (1959). Its paseo or introduction was always such a challenge to play.
The danza, a genre born in the mid nineteenth century, is characterized by its memorable melodies, its rich harmony, its structural complexity (it is divided in four sections and a coda), and the use of the emblematic Afro-Caribbean cinquillo rhythm. The latter though, an aspect that was quite audible when Puerto Rico was under Spanish colonial rule, has become less audible. If Spain had prohibited the danza on account of its Blackness, a history of whitening has virtually muted this aspect of the genre in the popular imagination (see Manuel 1994; García 2012: 80; Thompson 2002: 57-60). Rafael Alers’s album also included other danzas which were a part of my repertoire with Millito. Among these, Juan Morel Campos’s playful “No me toques,” “Recuerdos de Borinquen” and “Impromptu” by Luis R. Miranda, and “Bajo la sombra de un pino” by Juan F. Acosta. It is also worth noting that Ansonia released at least two additional albums of danzas as sung by Julita Ross, which have yet to be digitized.¹⁵
If the danza had left an indelible mark on me, so had several plenas released by Ansonia. Among these was Mon Rivera’s “Karacatis Ki” released in En Karakatis-Ki (1964), where the mayagüezano showcases his virtuosic and emblematic scat singing—"Karacatis Ki” being an onomatopoeia for the laughter of an old woman. I was also familiar with his “Alo! ¿Quién ñama?” recorded in A Night at The Palladium with Moncho Leña y los Ases del Ritmo (1957).¹⁶ Manuel “Canario” Jiménez’s plenas “Llegó de Roma,” “Cortaron a Elena,” “Cuando las mujeres quieren a los hombres,” “Tanta vanidad,” and “Santa María” released in Plenas by Canario y Su Grupo were also a recurrent sonic event throughout my life in Puerto Rico. One could hear these songs during Old San Juan’s carnival las fiestas de la calle San Sebastián, on the radio or in different venues performed live. “Santa María,” in particular, was quite salient, or rather, it has become so in the light of the devastation caused by hurricane María in 2017. Every hurricane season, the terrifying beast that had “the face of an ox, the chest of a bull, and the legs of a mare” [my translation] would be transformed into the hurricane of the day: “Santa María, líbranos de todo mal/ampáranos señora de este terrible animal” (Holy Virgen, deliver us from evil/protect us from this terrifying beast”). Following in the footsteps of others, Millito and I used to play it in a potpourri that included “Temporal,” a plena that was specifically about the pending threat of a hurricane: “Temporal, temporal/allá viene el temporal/Qué será de Puerto Rico/cuando llegue el temporal” (Hurricane, hurricane/the hurricane is approaching/What will become of Puerto Rico/when the hurricane arrives?). I also remember being familiar with César Concepción’s plenas, particularly “A Mayagüez” and “En Ponce” released in Plenas Favoritas with Joe Valle in 1961. I heard “En Ponce” for the first time in a potpourri of César’s plenas sung by Tony Croatto, an Argentinian singer-songwriter and founding member of the most commercially successful Puerto Rican nueva canción group Haciendo Punto en Otro Son.¹⁷
Mon Rivera, Canario and César, it should be noted, all developed a plena that was distinct from one another. Mon Rivera’s plenas, as a solo artist, were characterized by the overpowering timbre of the trombones—a sound that was a major influence in Willie Colón’s salsa (Guadalupe Pérez 2005: 225). Manuel “Canario” Jiménez, had added the piano, the bass, and the horns, and become successful by commercializing and recontextualizing the genre “within a broader musical career” that made it popular in New York City during the 1920s and 1930s (Glasser 1995: 182). César Concepción, for his part, had developed the “plena de salón,” which was characterized by sophisticated big band style musical arrangements reminiscent of the Cuban mambo (Díaz Ayala 2009: 101). If the plenas of this trio were distinct from one another, they were also clearly different from the original plena.
An Afro-Caribbean musical genre born at the turn of twentieth century largely the product of Puerto Rican black and mulatto urban workers and migrants from the British, French and Dutch Caribbean, the plena was usually played with panderos (a handheld frame drum), the sinfonia (button accordion), the güiro and the guitar, though the instrumentation was not standardized (Allende Goitía 2018: 342). According to Emanuel Dufrasne González, the cuatro was also featured in this music, and in occasions, the trumpet, the flute and the clarinet (2003: 129). Juan Sotomayor concurs, adding that the marimbula, a plucked box musical instrument of African origins, was also used playing the role of the bass (2013: 193; see also Murray Irizarry 2014: 275-294). Differences in appreciation apart, it is clear that the plena, as sounded out by earlier figures such as Mateíto Pérez and Joselino “Bumbún” Oppenheimer, had a different sound (García 2012: 151) than the one developed later by the aforementioned singers.
If Canario, Mon Rivera and César repurposed the plena, so did Rafael Cortijo and Ismael Rivera “Maelo,” who in addition, brought to the spotlight the much older Afro-Puerto Rican music known as bomba—whose origin can be traced back to at least the eighteenth century. A music performed by two drums (the lower pitched buleador and the higher pitched subidor) and the cuá sticks, during the nineteenth century bomba served as the language of rebellion and conspiracies among the enslaved Blacks in Puerto Rico. As noted by Benjamín Nistal Moret, for example, in 1826, the enslaved Blacks Joaquín Quiñones, a “creole” from Puerto Rico, Juan de Bautista from Haiti, Julián, from Guinea and Llán Fransuá from Martinique were whipped, imprisoned and ordered to be sold out of Puerto Rico because they had conspired to escape to the Republic of Haiti during a baile de bomba/bomba dance (2004 [1984]: 228). If bomba carried these connotations of rebellion, it was also heavily stigmatized for other reasons. In the 1920s, for instance, a local newspaper described a baile de bomba as an “act of savagery,” and bomba dances were banned in the capital (Román 2003: 216).
It was thanks, in part, to Maelo and Cortijo that such a prejudicial assessment of bomba began to change, though others, such as Los Hermanos Ayala and the Familia Cepeda should not be overlooked. While Maelo was “the first Black singer to perform popular Puerto Rican music on T.V” being featured as well in the film “Maruja” (1959) and the European films “Calypso” and “Mujeres en la noche”; Cortijo had been “the founder of the first formal orchestra of Black musicians during the mid-twentieth century” (Guadalupe Pérez 2005: 5, 185). If bomba is alive and well today, as the work of the Taller Tambuyé and other groups testifies to, it is in no small degree to the aforementioned artists.
But Cortijo and Maelo’s music embodies as well one of the points of origin of what would later be called salsa (see Quintero Rivera 1998; 2009). And in the cocolo Old San Juan where I spent my youth, salsa was everything. Maelo, with or without Cortijo, was constantly being blasted in Old San Juan in nightclubs like the Nuyorican Café, Café Seda, and Rumba, where I would gravitate every weekend to embrace my Afro-Caribbean roots. When my favorite bomba group Son del Batey would take a break, Maelo would reign supreme through the loudspeakers (and they were loud!). Little did I suspect that more than ten years later, when Puerto Rico’s decaying economy forced me to leave for New York City, I would end up playing and recording with the maestro Rigo Malcolm, one of Maelo’s percussionists, as part of an ongoing workshop/recording project called Viento Vital Boricua with poet Yarisa Colón Torres and Puerto Rican nueva canción and salsa singer-songwriter and producer Frank Ferrer (see Cancel Bigay 2021: 303-345).
Both Maelo and Cortijo released several albums with Ansonia Records: Noche de temporal (1970) by Cortijo y su Combo, with lead singer Johnny Vega; Ritmos y Cantos Callejeros (1970) by Cortijo y Kako y sus Tambores, with lead singer Rafael “Chivirico” Dávila; and Lito Peña’s Orquesta Panamericana (1961), which included Maelo among its lead singers.
Related to this repertoire was Ansonia’s release of albums by tres¹⁸ player and composer Mario Hernández. This Afro-Puerto Rican was admired by no other than Arsenio Rodríguez (Ramos 2019: 181-182), the blind Afro-Cuban composer, bandleader, and tres player known for “his unique son montuno style” who became quite influential among salsa musicians in El Barrio and the Bronx (García 2010: 187). The Puerto Rican tres player would eventually record the amazing solo of “Las caras lindas,” a song of Black pride composed by Tite Curet Alonso and popularized by Maelo (Ramos 2019: 181-182) released by Tico Records in 1978. Among Mario’s albums with Ansonia were: Bello Amanecer Vol. 2 by Mario Hernandez y sus Diablos Del Caribe(1976), and El Auténtico Vol. 1 by Sexteto Borinquen.
There were also the cases of Noro Morales and Joe Loco. Noro, described as the “Latin Duke Ellington” and as “the ‘dean’ of Puerto Rican Latin jazz pianist[s]” and a precursor to salsa (Serrano 2015: 140-141), released His Piano and Rhythm with Ansonia in 1960. Though most of the songs are boleros, Latin jazz influences are perceptible, particularly, in the piece “María Cervantes.” Pianist Joe Loco also released an album following a similar concept entitled The Music of Gonzalo Curiel and Consuelo Velázquez (1959), where he played boleros composed by the aforementioned Mexican composers.
The Cuarteto Marcano and Claudio Ferrer also embraced an Afro-Caribbean sound. The Cuarteto Marcano, founded in the 1930s by Pedro “Piquito” Marcano, first as a trio and later as a quartet, released several albums for Ansonia, some of which are digitized. While the boleros are quite salient in their albums, so is the more obviously Afro-Caribbean Cuban son, a key component of salsa. By the time Ansonia and the cuarteto had crossed paths, the group had performed in New York City, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Colombia and Venezuela releasing various albums with different labels (Malavet Vega 2015: 225-230). The eponymous album by Cuarteto Claudio Ferrer (1971) reveals similar aesthetics. Not surprising considering that Claudio Ferrer had been a member of the Cuarteto Marcano; his song “Santo nombre de Jesús” has been recorded by myriad artists among which Daniel Santos, El Gran Combo and Domingo Quiñones.¹⁹ It was also a song that Millito and I would play every Christmas season.
It is worth emphasizing that the aforementioned Afro-Caribbean genres (plena, bomba, salsa, Latin jazz) should not be understood as standing in stark opposition to the previously discussed danza and jíbaro music. As Angel Quintero Rivera and Manuel Alvarado have shown, the syncopations of the latter two are informed by the rhythms of bomba (see Quintero Rivera 1998: 201-251). Furthermore, salsa has often borrowed from jíbaro music. Héctor Lavoe, Willie Colón, Ismael Miranda, and band La Selecta, among others, all experimented with a jíbaro aesthetics (Quintero Rivera 2015: 217-236). So did Puerto Rican nueva canción and salsa singer-songwriter and producer Frank Ferrer (Cancel Bigay 2021: 303-345). In addition, Chuíto el de Bayamón, along with Ramito, and Odilio González, had a huge influence in the singing style of Héctor Lavoe (Guadalupe Pérez 2005: 33). Never mind that Rafael Hernández, who composed rumbas, cha cha chas, and boleros—and one ought not to forget that the bolero is informed by the Afro-Caribbean cinquillo rhythm emblematic of the Cuban danzón and the Puerto Rican danza (Loyola Fernández 1996:26)—was an admirer of Ramito (Bloch 1973: 25).
But Ansonia also gave a voice to instrumental music or music with minimal vocals. In addition to the already mentioned Nieves Quintero, Noro Morales and Rafael Alers, the list also includes the requinto player Miguel Alcaide, who, according to Miguel López Ortiz from the Fundación Nacional para la Cultura Popular, accompanied Elvis Presley in “Mama” and “We’ll Be Together” in the film Girls!, Girls!, Girls! (1962), and in other songs featured in "Fun in Acapulco" (1963).”²⁰ Miguel recorded Noche de Ronda for Ansonia in 1983. Ansonia also released the album Melodías criollas en sinfonía by button accordion player Ismael Santiago, an album that has yet to be digitized.
Ansonia also released albums with a nueva canción sensibility, the music that is at the heart of my research as an ethnomusicologist. Radio host, producer, author and actress Gilda Mirós released Poetisas de Hispanoamérica in 1986 (under the related Superior Records label). Based on the information offered in the LP—it has yet to be digitized—she declaimed poetry by Julia de Burgos, Juana de Ibarbourou, Gabriela Mistral, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, among other Latin American women poets, including herself and her mother, to the accompaniment of guitar player and orchestral arranger Francisco Navarro. In the 1980s, Ansonia also released an album called Canta mi pueblo by the group Alba, where most of the songs are labeled as “nueva trova,” a synonym for “nueva canción.” Incidentally, the latter, contrary to most of the albums thus discussed, was recorded in Puerto Rico and not New York City as part of Ansonia’s “Serie Internacional.”
But assessing Ansonia’s legacy in Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican diaspora also requires listening for its bolero repertoire with its rich harmonies, vocal timbres, its sophisticated arrangements and virtuosic solos, and at times, poetic lyrics. And here I come full circle.
Among the highlights in this genre, in addition to the aforementioned Rafael Hernández and Johnny Rodríguez y su trío—and bearing in mind that these artists often also sang other musical genres—was Daniel Santos, Julito Rodríguez, Lucy Fabery, Carmita Jiménez, Blanca Villafañe and Myrta Silva. Daniel Santos, a widely renowned figure throughout Latin America and a committed anticolonialist (see Ramos 2016 [1989]), released at least three albums with Ansonia of which Vol. 1 by Daniel Santos has been digitized. This album includes three original songs composed by the singer-songwriter: “Cautiverio,” “Me extraña mucho,” and “De castigo.” Julito Rodríguez, also recorded at least sixteen albums with Ansonia, a handful of which have been digitized and can be heard via Ansonia’s bandcamp page. These recordings represent his work after having ceased to be the lead singer of the famous Mexican trío Los Panchos, with whom he performed from 1952 to 1956 (Mac-Swiney Delgado 2007 [1998]: 148). The Afro-Puerto Rican singer Lucy Fabery also recorded La Fabulosa with Anibal Herrero y su Orquesta for Ansonia in 1964; this, after having performed in Cuba quite often between 1954 and 1959 where she learned to master the style of singing known as feeling (Alén and Casanova 2007 [1998]: 102). Carmita Jiménez, for her part, recorded her debut eponymous album with Ansonia in 1961, whereas Blanca Iris Villafañe released at least seven albums with Ansonia of which Con Guitarras, Vol. 1 has been digitized. Myrta Silva, in turn, who “spent four years in New York City producing, hosting, and performing on the pioneering and critically acclaimed TV show, The Myrta Silva Show, for which. . . she won the prize for Best Variety Show in the New York Area in 1965” (Fiol-Matta 2017: 52), released at least two albums which have yet to be digitized. Other bolero singers who are a part of the Ansonia catalogue were Cheíto González, Rey Arroyo Y Su Trio, Carlos Pizarro Y Su Trio Los Tropicales, and the famous Trío Vegabajeño, though most of their albums have yet to be digitized.
Conclusion
Throughout this reflection I have shown some of the ways in which Ansonia shaped my own life and Puerto Rican popular culture broadly speaking. I would like to stress, though, that the artists highlighted recorded with many labels before and after encountering Ansonia. That is, their success is not necessarily due to the label, although it is clear that Ansonia played an important role in this. Also, insofar as many of the singers and musicians who recorded for Ansonia had begun their professional careers in Puerto Rico before migrating to New York City— jíbaro music artists, in particular, had a major outlet in Rafael Quiñones Vidal’s local radio program and T.V. show Tribuna del Arte—Ansonia’s catalogue sounds out not only the history of the diaspora but that of the Island, and the encounter between the two. It should also be underlined that Ansonia’s contribution to Puerto Rican culture on the Island and the diaspora is much vaster than what I have been able to unravel. As noted, there are still many records that have yet to be digitized, and there is a need for deeper archival research concerning the label, the artists involved and their relationship. Assessing the legacy of Ansonia founder Ralph Pérez is also paramount. Prior to Ansonia, as stressed by Néstor David Pastor, in the 1930s, Ralph had worked for Decca Records, where among other things, he recorded artists from Trinidad, thus contributing toward the Caribbeanization of New York City in yet other ways. Unveiling how his wife, the Guatemalan singer Perla Violeta Amado contributed to the label—beyond writing liner notes for several albums—also remains an important task. So does reflecting on how Ralph’s daughter Mercedes and her husband Herman Glass kept the company alive throughout the 1970s and the1980s after Ralph’s death in 1969. What I have offered is but a general assessment of a multilayered story that has yet to be told in its full scope and complexity.
Coda
I am listening to “Sara,” a danza composed by Angel Mislán and mistakenly credited to Juan Morel Campos in Johnny Rodríguez y su trío. I hear Johnny singing the lyrics that he wrote for this Puerto Rican classic but it is to Millito that I listen to as he plays sophisticated arpeggios, scales and ornamentations on the requinto. These sounds transport me to a more recent past when I would play Johnny’s part with my cuatro, and Millito would play the accompanying guitar. It was not that often. “Sara” was a difficult danza for me, and we preferred the somewhat similar “Impromptu” whose paseo Millito had taught me to play using chords. Years later, though, living in New York City, I obsessed over “Sara.” I practiced relentlessly until I mastered it. Then, using an electric five single-stringed cuatro made by Puerto Rico-based artisan Freddy Burgos—instead of the more conventional five double-stringed acoustic cuatro—I did a home-recording of my own rock-psychedelic version of “Sara” adding as many effects as possible in Garage Band. Millito would have been so…disappointed. He disliked rock almost as much as I did boleros. And yet, throughout the twelve years that we did music together, we also played The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and “Michelle.” Granted, in Millito’s rendition these 1960s classics sounded more like bossa nova or jazz but I liked bossa nova and jazz as well.
“¿Conoces este disco de papi con Johnny Rodríguez y su trío?” The last time I saw Millito it was his birthday. I was not alone. Our friend Lily, who had sung “Yo era una flor” in countless occasions while Millito strummed chords during those seemingly endless bohemias, was also with me. But this time, there was no music.
Millito couldn’t play. He had forgotten how. There is the photo: an emaciated Millito, his eyes filled with boundless sadness.
I still don’t like the bolero, it is true. But I do love this album released by Ansonia Records in 1959. Then, Millito had his whole life ahead of him, and a world without music was simply inconceivable. And when I listen to Johnny Rodríguez y su trío, Millito becomes strong and his eyes are filled with everlasting joy. And I know that if he could read this, Millito would be so…PROUD.
Footnotes
¹⁵ See: https://www.discogs.com/release/19296781-Julita-Ross-La-Borinqueña, and https://www.discogs.com/master/1802695-Julita-Ross-Con-Claudio-Ferrer-Y-Su-Conjunto-Canta-Danzas
¹⁶ Mon Rivera was also the featured singer in Dance recorded by Moncho Leña and His Orchestra (1958).
¹⁷ Croatto’s potpourri can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whi4OFBDyJo
¹⁸ The Cuban tres is somewhat analogous to the Puerto Rican cuatro. It is Cuba’s stringed-instrument par excellence and is widely used in son and salsa, usually playing montunos (very syncopated arpeggios) and solos.
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Ethnomusicologist, singer-songwriter and poet, Mario Cancel-Bigay was born in Puerto Rico in 1982. He learned to play the Puerto Rican cuatro, the archipelago’s national guitar, at age twelve at public music school Libre de Música in San Juan. In 2005, he earned a B.A. in Modern Languages (Portuguese and French) from the University of Puerto Rico; in 2014, an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies at New York University; and in 2021, a PhD in the ethnomusicology program of Columbia University. His dissertation was entitled “Sounds that Fall Through the Cracks, and Other Silences and Acts of Love: Decoloniality and Anticolonialism in Puerto Rican Nueva Canción and Chanson Québécoise.” Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Music of Columbia University. He is happily married to his Haitian-American wife Edline Jacquet, and is the proud father of a Puerto Rican-Haitian girl named Gabriela.