Big Band this week - actually Big Latin Band this week. Xavier Cugat and his orchestra performing live at the Last Frontier in Las Vegas (not sure if the announcer meant The Frontier but . . .) and recorded by NBC on November 30, 1953.

Xavier Cugat is probably best remembered as the band leader who brought Latin Jazz to the U.S. - dubbed The King Of The Rhumba, he put Latin Music pretty much in the mainstream from the 1940's onwards and paved the way for a lot of artists to expose their work to the American audience and turn on a lot of Jazz people on to the heady style of Cuban and Afro-Cuban music.

Towards the end of his set he plays the iconic Mambo #5 which was made an international hit by another Cuban bandleader, Perez Prado around the same time - so if it sounds familiar but not quite, that's the reason.

Something just a bit different this week - but swingin' nonetheless.

I wasn't planning on it tonight, but this record flew off the shelf and hit me in the head, so I took it as a sign. Los Chakachas were a mostly Spanish/Belgian group of studio musicians who fell in love with the Afro-Cuban genre and further got into it when they landed Cuban singer Kari Kenton (aka: Mrs. Tito Puente) and their fortunes took off.

Huge in Europe during the height of the Cha-Cha frenzy of the late 1950's, Los Chakachas (or Les Chakachas depending on which country you bought their records) made inroads to the international market and tonight's track, Guapacha is off their debut American lp for RCA Victor International (a short-lived imprint of RCA where everything RCA couldn't figure out what to do with went). They continued to record and perform throughout Europe into the 1970's, climbing into the Disco genre and, even though they are far from a household name these days, were nonetheless riding the crest of a very popular wave and made a substantial contribution to it.

Throw your shoes off and get frantic.

Continuing our Post-World War 2 Jazz excursion with the immortal Dizzy Gillespie, the man who turned Jazz inside out and freed everybody up in the process. Tonight it's his 1947 classic for RCA-Victor Manteca, a track he co-wrote with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo, a primary figure in Gillespie's exploration of Afro-Cuban rhythms. Pozo was only briefly with the band, as his untimely death in 1948 robbed the Jazz world of a major contributor. But Pozo's influence carried on for decades and it was this new aspect of Jazz that stayed with Gillespie. And this 1947 original explains why. Incidentally, it's off an original 78 and not from the CD reissue, so it might sound a bit different.

It's been recorded by Dizzy Gillespie many times over the years - but this is the first one, recorded on December 1947 and it features Chano Pozo on percussion.

Some live Afro-Cuban Jazz tonight, compliments of the great father and son combination Bebo and Chucho Valdes, recorded live in concert during the 32nd Vittoria-Gasteiz Jazz Festival in Spain in 2009 by Radio 3 of Radio Nacional Espana.

Bebo Valdes is one of the most prominent pianists, arrangers and composers from the Golden Age of Cuban Music. Having migrated from Cuba first to Mexico and then to Sweden and most recently to Spain, he is still an active practitioner in Cuban music and Latin Jazz and films like Calle 54 by Fernando Trueba which feature his work have spread his message to a wider audience.

In this concert he is joined by his son Chucho Valdes, also a prominent pianist and band leader in Cuban music and Jazz. Together they recorded the well received Juntos Para Siempre for Sony in 2008.

The concert is a little under 90 minutes and well worth the listening. Because it was live, there was a lot of dead air between numbers and some banter which I cut down from the original two hour concert. In any event it's a nice way to end out the weekend and get ready for Thanksgiving.

Enjoy.

(Esperanza Spalding - the Jazz world just took a turn for the wow)

I had heard about Esperanza Spalding for the past few years via some colleagues in Europe, mostly Spain. In her comparatively short time on the scene she has created an enthusiastic word of mouth and has been playing sell-out concerts all over Europe.

So of course I was blown away when I finally had a chance to hear her and doubly blown away to find out she's from Portland Oregon and still in her early 20's.

This track, Ponta de Ariea is off her 2008 album, Esperanza available on Heads Up Records. It's a nice change of pace and a pretty good one for a Monday night.

It just goes to prove if you keep an open ear, there is amazing music everywhere.