By Rich Freedman/Times-Herald staff writer

Posted: 06/22/2009 12:59:01 AM PDT

Malo” is Spanish for “bad.” And that’s often the bottom line when record companies distributed profits to its artists. Or didn’t. Fact is, said Ron Sansoe, entertainers are often neglected when it comes time to paying up. It happened to the Latin rock band, “Malo,” said Sansoe, and that’s why he fought off lawyers and eventually recouped thousands of dollars for the band known mostly for its 1972 hit, “Suavecito.”

Sansoe, who relocated in April from San Francisco to Vallejo, remains actively responsible for the publishing rights for “Malo,” and heavily involved in the annual “Voices of Latin Rock” benefit in San Francisco that’s featured Carlos Santana, Pete Escovedo, Lenny Williams, Sheila E., Lydia Pense, Linda Tillery, Neal Schon, Jackie Greene, WAR and, of course, Malo.

Sitting at Napoli’s pizza with Green Valley promoter and long-time pal Jeff Trager, the animated Sansoe shared some eye-opening rock ‘n’ roll stories, many included in “Voices of Latin Rock,” a 300-page paperback he co-authored with Jim McCarthy. Santana wrote the foreword.

The book was going to be a Malo media guide celebrating the group’s 30 years, Sansoe said. But after a handful of interviews, the writers knew they were on to something bigger.

“We realized this was a piece of musical history, but American history tied to the Black Panthers, the United Farm Workers and other vital organizations of their time and we saw it as something special,” Sansoe said. More than 120 interviews were conducted for the book, released in 2004 and still selling well, Sansoe said. “It was a 61/2 year project,” he said. “Needless to say, you don’t make a lot of money in the book business.”

Sansoe and McCarthy’s devoted interest in Latin Rock “was the heartbeat of this whole project,” said Sansoe..

The book is now used in more than 40 colleges and universities as part of ethnic studies programs, Sanose said.

Little did the born-and-raised San Franciscan know he would ever have any part in a book. Though his brothers teach high school, Sansoe said his grades were never great.

“I wasn’t much in the education field,” he said.

Sansoe was in the bar business for about 12 years when, in 1985, he helped promote a concert. In 1990, he was asked to help resurrect some royalties for “Malo,” handling administration. Sansoe laughed that while “Sauvecito was a good song, I hated it.” Still, he joined the “Malo” team, helping promote a show with the group, Escovedo and Tower of Power at Fort Mason in The City. Though promoter Bill Graham was approached, he declined to do the show, Sansoe said. The show sold out. “Graham shows up and the security guy — an off-duty SFPD officer — didn’t recognize him and Graham couldn’t get back stage,” grinned Sansoe. “We made a chunk of dough that night.”

Sansoe said he only met the legendary Graham a few times before Graham died in a helicopter crash in 1991 near Vallejo. “I had nothing but respect for him,” Sansoe said. “I didn’t want to become a concert promoter. Nobody did with Bill around. If there was a show and it wasn’t his and he didn’t want it to happen, he would make it not happen. At the height of his career, he could stop anything from happening in Northern California.”

Sansoe got into the publishing end of the business as CDs emerged in the late 1980s.

“One smart thing Malo did was to keep their publishing rights,” Sansoe said. “That’s where the money is for the artist. And now, with the Internet, the artists are getting a better share than he ever got.”

Sansoe got into the ring battling lawyers in 1999 when “the heart” of “Suavecito” was used by another band. When Sansoe eventually got a nice check on behalf of the band, he doled out the money at a Christmas party.

“None of the guys knew this was happening,” Sansoe said, still gratified that “I beat an attorney. I told him, ‘I’m not getting off the Ferris wheel until we get our checks.”

Sansoe wasn’t done.

“I started seeing that artists were being taken advantage of,” Sansoe said, sifting through paperwork and realizing “where the bones are buried.”

Most entertainers are more creative musically than astute businessmen, said Sansoe.

“You get kids who are passionate about something and they’re thinking about the songs,” Sansoe said. “Then they get screwed and that’s when they lose their passion.”

Sansoe shakes his head.

“In what other business is the person who creates the product and the ability to create money the last one to get paid and never gets a fair share,” Sansoe said, blasting record companies. “That’s why the Internet is the best thing that ever happened. For an artist to make the same money selling 10,000 units independently, he’d have to sell 700,000 records by the record company. So you get your name out there and play.”

Because of Sansoe, Malo continues to accrue royalty payments.

“It’s like an old horse,” Sansoe said. “You keep riding it. It doesn’t always win, but it comes in place and show a lot.”

“The Voices of Latin Rock” benefit concerts were originally a book release party at Bimbo’s in San Francisco. It was so successful, Sansoe and the other promoters kept it going. Last year’s event included a letter from Mayor Gavin Newsom, praising Sansoe and McCarthy for “The Voices of Latin Rock” as “a dazzling document of modern American history.”

The shows, said Sansoe, “are never about the money. It’s about the feel of the ’70s. That’s a hard thing to recreate in today’s atmosphere. There’s something special here you don’t get in other cities.”

The same artists who initially feel they’re doing Sansoe a favor by doing the show, “are the ones who thank you at the end of the night,” he said.

The sixth annual concert, produced by Sansoe, Trager and Dr. Bernie Gonzalez, is set for January.

Of all the surprising developments to come out of San Francisco rock during the Fillmore/Avalon era in the late ’60s, none was richer in cultural wealth than the emergence of Latin rock after the success of Santana.
It was a short, golden moment for young Latino musicians, when things were possible that had not been previously dreamed of, and it coincided with the rise of Chicano culture – Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union and a growing sense of ethnic pride that took root in the Mission District.
Latin rock, like most pop music trends, came and went, but it left a lasting imprint on those who remembered. For the past four years, Mission District dentist Bernardo Gonzalez, also manager of veteran Latin rockers Malo since 1985, has been throwing a remarkable event called Voices of Latin Rock, which will take place Thursday at Bimbo’s 365 Club.
Without advertising or promotion, this annual benefit for autism sells out. Families buy entire tables, and old friends stand in the aisles talking, while a procession of the greatest Latin rock musicians take the stage.
Last year, the surviving members of the original Santana band played together at Bimbo’s for the first time in more than 20 years. The event began in 2004 as a publication party for a book, “Voices of Latin Rock,” by authors Jim McCarthy, a British music journalist, and Ron Sansoe, Gonzalez’s partner in managing Malo.
“We didn’t make any money the first year,” said Gonzalez. “In fact, it cost us a little bit, but the people wanted to have another one. Each year we expected to be the last.”
The original Latin rock bubble didn’t last long – Santana’s first three albums sold millions between 1969 and 1971 – but the effect on young Latin musicians throughout the country was incalculable. Conga player Michael Carabello and timbales samurai Jose “Chepito” Areas of Santana brought the fire of the Aztec gods to their band’s blues-rock foundations. It was flavored with a taste of their parents’ music, the mambo and rumba records by Tito Puente and Willie Bobo they heard growing up.
Gonzalez remembers seeing Santana’s groundbreaking performance in the Woodstock movie when he was 15 years old. “Talk about a life-changing experience,” he said. “When I saw that, I no longer wanted to be a baseball player or a football player. It still gives me goose bumps.”
Jose Simon played in country and western bands before he joined Sapo, the Latin rock band formed by Richard Bean after he left Malo. Bean wrote the Malo hit “Suavecito” when he was an 11th-grader at Mission High.
“Before that, I was just a musician making a living,” Simon said in an interview last year for “American Sabor,” the current exhibition at the Experience Music Project museum in Seattle. “No pride, it was just making a living, a good musician supporting my family, but when I played with Sapo, it was more than that. It was like ‘I’m proud to be Jose Simon playing to my people with my people and other people,’ and the sound, and it made me proud.”
Not since Ritchie Valens, an anomalous ’50s Latino rock ‘n’ roller, had music with a Latino accent been heard at the top of the pop charts. Latino rock musicians found themselves swept up in a cultural movement. The bands all played benefits for Chavez’s United Farm Workers. Chicano artwork decorated the album covers that could have come straight off the murals painted on Mission District walls.
But these young musicians were not just following the Afro-Cuban traditions of their musical forebears. They were fed by distinctly American tributaries. Jorge Santana, lead guitarist of Malo and younger brother of Carlos Santana, grew up with nine people living together in a two-bedroom Mission District apartment after his mariachi musician father moved the family from Tijuana.
“I can go right now to any Mexican restaurant,” said Santana, and “as soon as I hear mariachi, my heart just melts from the experience of having grown up listening to it, as well as my father having played it all his life. It’s built in me. I think it was the circumstances of my sisters, modern radio, Dick Clark and everything else that was taking place at that time – Motown, rhythm and blues, the English Invasion, everything. We had a different ear, or we were listening to this new music that we didn’t get a chance to listen to as much in Tijuana when we were there.”
The Santana band immediately became famous in its neighborhood. Musician and educator John Santos, who will also be honored at Bimbo’s and grew up in the Mission, remembered how inspirational the band was when he was growing up.
“They started talking about Carlos, because he was in high school at Mission High School with my older brothers and my older cousins,” he said, “and they started telling us about, ‘Hey, there’s this electric guitar player that is using timbales and congas.’ And we knew very well what the timbales and congas were because my grandfather’s band used that and we had grown up with those instruments.”
While Latin rock may not be hitting the best-seller charts today, it has never gone away. Musicians like Santos carry the Santana sound in their hearts. Young bands in the area such as La Ventana or Mestizo keep the sound alive. Los Lobos has carried the flag for many years, coming from East Los Angeles, where Latin rock musicians have a lineage going back to ’60s garage bands such as Thee Midnighters or the Premiers.
The people involved in the San Francisco Latin rock scene carried their pride with them. Abel Sanchez, who played in a number of Mission District bands and will head the house band at Bimbo’s, went on to work as an administrator for the Postal Service and eventually played a key role in the campaign to create a Cesar Chavez stamp. Simon of Sapo went to work as a stand-up comic and founded the annual Comedy Day in Golden Gate Park. Malo continues to perform – and will appear this week at Bimbo’s and at the satellite concert Saturday at Redwood City’s Little Fox Theatre – although founder Arcelio Garcia is semi-retired. Santana is still a world-famous brand name, but guitarist Carlos Santana now leads a band that bears little relation to the incendiary outfit that burned out of the Mission and can still be heard blasting “Oye Como Va” in jukeboxes everywhere.
To Anglos, this Latin rock wrinkle may seem li ke a momentary aberration on the pop scene long ago, but to Latinos it is a moment never to be forgotten.
“Whatever movement Carlos started,” his brother Jorge Santana said, “and whatever support I had given in regards to Malo and then my 10-piece band, and with the radio play that I had, it was like the Mayans. They were here and all the sudden they disappeared. Where the hell did they go? And look what they left behind.”
VOICES OF LATIN ROCK

E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page N – 42 of the San Francisco Chronicle