One month before his death, Ray Barretto received the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship, the highest honor our nation bestows on jazz artists. Despite that, he is mainly remembered as a percussionist, bandleader, and Salsa trailblazer.
As Barretto’s biographer, Robert Téllez, points out, “To examine Ray Barretto’s musical origins, it is necessary to refer to jazz rather than Latin music. That is one of the main differences between his career and other notable Latin percussionists. Most of them started in Afro-Caribbean music and turned to jazz, but in Barretto’s case, it was the opposite.”
Various factors laid the groundwork for Barretto’s passion for jazz. In a 2003 interview with Latin Beat magazine, Barretto was asked, “What type of music did you listen to on the radio (as a child)?” “It was mostly jazz and the era’s popular music,” replied Barretto, “but mostly jazz.” He cites the big band sounds of Harry James, Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington as “part of his everyday life.” In addition, he listened to Daniel Santos, Bobby Capo, Trio Los Panchos, Frank “Machito” Grillo, and his Afro-Cubans, Marcelino Guerra and Arsenio Rodriguez, among others.
According to Robert Farris Thompson, “While serving in the US Army in 1952, Barretto happened to hear a record by (Dizzy Gillespie) and Chano Bozo, perhaps the most important Black Cuban drummer of the century. ‘That, says Ray Barretto, ‘turned my life around.” After that, he never looked back. When Barretto returned home, he visited clubs and participated in jam sessions, where he perfected his conga playing. One occasion, Charlie Parker heard Barretto play and invited him to play in his band.
In 1960, Barretto became a house musician for the Prestige Records, Riverside and Blue Note labels and appeared on albums with Gene Ammons, Red Garland, and Sonny Stitt, among many others, including Lou Donaldson, Kenny Burrell, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Jimmy Forrest, Yusef Lateef, Eddie Harris, Johnny Lytle, Herbie Mann, Sonny Stitt, Johnny “Hammond” Smit, Art Farmer, and Clifford Jordan, among others.
As these things go, Barretto’s name got around, and he was offered Latin gigs, and the rest is history. His success as a Latin percussionist, bandleader, and member of the Fania All-Stars is well-documented. Between 1961 and 1973, Barretto released twenty recordings as a leader, including Charanga Moderna, Acid, Hard Hands, The Message, and Que Viva La Musica, among others.
In 1973, an unanticipated turn of events allowed Barretto to take The Other Road. As the story goes, “In 1973, about half of my band left to form Tipica ’73, and once again, I had to readjust and reconstruct my band. It took me about a year to get the band in form and working again. But in the meantime, I convinced Jerry Massuci (the head of Fania Records) to let me record a jazz project, and one night, from midnight to 6 AM (at Good Vibrations Sound Studios, 1440 Broadway, NYC), we recorded the album, The Other Road.”
