Super Sonido

Soul-sides.com is perhaps one of the top reasons I started an audio-blog in the first place. So to have Oliver Wang ask me to do a guest post really came as a huge honor. Peep O-Dub’s post. We’ll be doing a few guest swaps in the future so be sure to check back. Word! – Franko

1. Perez Prado: Que Es Lo Que Pasa? From Now (Contour, 1974)

 2. Afrosound: Jungle Fever From Joint (Fuentes, 197?)

3. Luciano Luciani Y Sus Mulatos: Al Ritmo Del Bump From El Hitometro Mag Vol. 1 (Mag, 197?)

One of the pleasures in reading other people’s blogs is using their ideas to spark my own. Maybe that seems a bit unoriginal but honestly, when you have a gazillion songs swimming through your head (or, at least, iTunes library), sometimes it takes a nudge from someone else to remind you, “oh yeah, this other song by them is awesome too.”

That’s what makes reading Super Sonido such a constant treat. Given my ever-deepening appreciation for Latin tunes, I’m constantly learning from sites like this and re-evaluating/revisiting records in my own collection as a result. I guess it’s apropos then that all the songs I ended up picking are, themselves, covers, i.e. riffs on other people’s songs. Everything is connected.

Case in point: I really enjoyed the recent post on Perez Prado. It’s somewhat confusing to realize that there were two different Perez Prado’s recording concurrently (brothers) and that most (though not necessarily) all of the funkier Prado material came from younger sibling, Pantaleon, and not the elder, more famed brother, Damaso. Not sure which brother did Mexico ’70but I’m fairly certain “Que Es Lo Que Pasa?” was recorded by Pantaleon. Now is a UK pressing of the Italian-release of Escandalo, widely admired as Pantaleon’s best work (so much so, it’s been re-released several times over).

Here’s the thing about “Que Es Lo Que Pasa?”…isn’t it basically an instrumental version of Assagai’s Afro-funk classic, “Telephone Girl”? Maybe there were songwriter credits given on the album but if not, that’s a pretty brazen bite. Either way, good stuff with the percussion and a nice bank of complementing horns.

Afrosound is no stranger around these parts though I had scarcely heard half the albums Franko had posted. One round in my chamber of Colombian funk though has been this cover of the Chakachas’ massive smash, “Jungle Fever.” If you were expecting Afrosound to put this through a cumbia conversion, you’ll be surprised to hear that they stick mostly to original script here, even down to the salacious moans of the nameless woman. I wish I had a scan of the cover handy; it’s one of the all-time great Fuentes covers, of a giant joint smoking tantalizing on the cover. Take a long pull…hype.

Lastly, we come back to the August post on the “bump” fad that briefly whipped through Latin music. Heck, I didn’t even realize it was a genre until reading that post but it made me think of some of the Peruvian albums I have, all of which include a variation on the song, “Al Ritmo Del Bump.” I think the best known version is Otto De Rojas’ though I seem to recall Enrique Lynch had his own version too. I can’t be completely sure how much this “bump” has in common with the other “bump” but what I am absolutely certain of is that this song heavily “borrows” from “Soulful Strut” by Young Holt-Unlimited. It’s not a cover, I don’t think, but it liberally interpolates some key melodies from it.

–O-Dub