JORGE SANTANA “HERE I AM” CD REVIEW
© Jim McCarthy October 2009

Here I Am is the recently released “from the vaults” compilation put together by Jorge and released on his own Misha label. It follows on from his two earlier solo recordings originally recorded for Tomato Records in New York and also re-issued on CD and available on Misha and from his new website jorgesantana.com.

Jorge Santana CD Review

Here I Am is divided into five musical ventures and opens with five songs with a definite eighties feeling in production style and arrangements with big keyboard sounds and a solid band featuring Walter Afanasieff on keys/vocals plus Phil Anastasia on Lead vocals. It features Gary Brown on bass plus Yogi Newman and Rick Lawton on congas& percussion and drums respectively.

Jorge Santana-CD Here I Am

Once Is Not Enough/Para Ti opens the CD and the remastered sound quality is decent considering these are studio demos. The song has a lilting Latin cha-cha feel. In common with Jorge’s output at this time, it falls on the R&B and pop side of the musical fence. This song furthers the Latin cha-cha feel with a raspy, fluent and sharp guitarra solo by Jorge, over the refrain of “Para Ti, Para ti”. The next tune, Isolation has a jaunty funky and light summery feel, the band also managed to fit in a five-week tour around the New York area while these demos were being shopped. The “title” track Here I Am is a mid-tempo piece that didn’t lift me particularly but is competent and features an arrangement steeped in synth washes. Runaway Love has that AOR sound typical of that era with big backing chords by Jorge, It has a rousing chorus and a sound not unlike Carlos’ output around the Inner Secrets/Marathon recorded era. Tell Me Love is another up-tempo with a great vocal by Walter aka Dean Parrish, Jorge plays fifties style rhythm guitar licks on here.

For my money the jewels on this CD follow with Jorge’s collaboration with the Mission District group Puro Bandido. Casa Bandido is pure Latino magic! It starts with a three chord, slightly melancholic refrain with excellent guitar atmospherics by Jorge and Johnny Gunn, before breaking into a salsa inflected joyous song, featuring Richard Segovia (previously of the TNT band) on timbales and Rafael Ramirez on congas and Angel Orozco on drum kit!
This is truly a great cut, both fully steeped in the San Franciscan Latino-Mission tradition but with a fresh and uplifting vibe. The song kicks with excellent compressed vocals. Superb horns and arrangement see this song would not be out of place on one of Carlos’ recent stellar releases. They name check Puerto Rico, Salvador and the Mission thru this great
and very danceable song. Jorge plays a dreamy and soulful guitar break over the middle eight and is followed by a great trombone solo. One would really like to hear Puro Bandido releasing some more stuff- this is excellent. It fades with a guitar break by Johnny Gunn-top notch!!

Latin Lover follows with a Jose Santana  (Tony Santana, Jorge’s older brother is Jose’s father making him Jorge’s nephew) rap over another Puro Bandido arrangement. This is another smoking cut which strides confidently along with superb excellent ensemble playing, including backing vocals by Heather Lauren and The Herrera Sisters.
A cascara timbale rhythm by Richard Segovia propels this cut along with a supreme gusto and features another Jorge solo full of controlled fire, followed by a flourishing keyboard solo by Steve Salinas. Yet another musical high point on this CD.

Rainbows Of Love is notable for a closely recorded conga tumbao by Yogi Newman (apparently Newman had an even bigger afro-head than Mike Carabello or Arcelio Garcia and is these days living a hermetic life, out of the music scene) and it would be great to hear congas recorded with this “loudness’ more often. This also features a stirring Jorge solo over a double time vamp.

The fourth set of tunes feature old Malo running mate Richard Bean on chief vocals and song writing. It also features Ron DeMasi from the last two Malo albums on Warner (Evolution & Ascension)
Bar Of Five instrumental shows DeMasi playing some synth and other keyboard clavinet style solo funkiness over a driving beat, the is a real cooker and these recordings hail from 1977 and were demoed at San Francisco’s CBS Studios in Folsom Street. The drummer Jerry Marshall wrote this cut and these could be DeMasi’s last recorded performances.
Sandy and Darling I Love You, originally featured on the Jorge Santana solo release, are given a different dance mix airing here and shows Bean’s pop take on Latin, with an almost Neil Sedaka feel to proceedings, with an ample disco-style beat produced by Tony Bongiovi and Bob Clearmountain.

Of great interest to Malo fans are two cuts from Sesame Street, Bienvenidos (Welcome) and Show Me How You Feel (Como To Sientes) featuring the redoubtable Tony Smith on drums and Lead vocals along with Jorge. Welcome is great as it aims to teach a person listening basic Spanish. It has great (Ascension era-Malo) horns and a pumping Pablo Tellez bass aided and abetted by Jorge on a nice piercing solo. A cool way to round off this varied CD package.

For guitar followers Jorge has added information on the guitars and amps used thru-out these recordings.

I had a conversation with Jorge about the future and he aims to release at least two more CD’s of material next year. He informed me he had been listening to archive recorded with Richard Kermode and Pablo Tellez from 1981 and another piece (A Bit Of Spice) recorded with Karl Perazzo, both among others, which should find their way onto the next CD release in 2010.
Of great interest is the Malo “fifth” set of recordings demoed after Ascension in San Francisco (not to be confused with Malo 5 released in New York on Traq Records, under the name of Arcelio Garcia) and featuring Pablo, Ron De Masi, Butch Haynes on percussion. Further down the line Jorge is planning to release these rarities and I know all Mission Latino heads will be looking forward to hearing this historical material.

Here is an excerpt from an article by Corry342 at Rock Archeology. Head over there for the rest of the story.

Ghetto Club

Of course, 4742 Mission Street was a building, and a building with a Use Permit for musical performances, so it is no surprise to find out that the club simply changed its name. However, since it changed to a Soul music club, and from there to a Latin (or Latin Soul) club, it dropped off rock historian radar. At the same time, many “ethnic” establishments did not advertise in the mainstream newspapers, so the newspaper research performed by rock historians like me turns up no trace of the club. In fact, however, it turns out that for at least several more years, 4742 Mission Street was The Ghetto Club, and it played an important part in San Francisco music.

I had seen peripheral references before to The Ghetto Club, and gathered that it was a Soul music club. However, I was reading a book called Voices Of Latin Rock, by Jim McCarthy with Ron Santos, about the history of Santana, Malo and Latin Rock music in San Francisco in the 1960s and 70s, and The Ghetto Club plays an important role. I was quite surprised to see an ad for the club in the book, (reproduced above), only to discover that the address was 4742 Mission Street.

Voices Of Latin Rock (published by Hal Leonard 2004) features remarkable research, with hundreds of unique interviews with musicians and friends who are rarely or never participants in typical rock narratives. The book offers an alternative universe to San Francisco music history, with only intermittent appearances from the usual suspects. The book is focused on personal narratives and musical reminiscence, and it is not focused on a careful timeline of people, venues and events (more’s the pity for me). However, it turns out that by 1969 The Ghetto Club was a multi-racial stew of Latin, Soul and Rock, with an apparently diverse crowd, very similar to the Excelsior neighborhood it was located in. A musician named Jose Simon recalls

The Rock Garden was a hard club, real party hardliners. The bouncers were two Samoan guys. They kicked the hell out of anybody trying to kick off in there. The Rock Garden was competition to the Nite Life [another club], and was probably the first rock club in the Mission area [the Excelsior is just South of the Mission District]. They had Big Brother, Janis Joplin, Mongo Santamaria (p.49).

The author ads “Later, the club changed hands and became The Ghetto.” Another musician, Richard Bean, chimes in

The Ghetto was originally a black club. Then the Latin thing started there. Abel And The Prophets were like the house band. Crackin was another band from around that time (p49)

Abel And The Prophets were a Latin-Rock-Soul fusion group, probably playing a lot of cover versions, but in their own style. Abel Sanchez was a young guitarist, who would go on to work with Naked Lunch in 1970 and then Malo in 1971, where he was an integral part of that band’s sound. In 1969, the other happening club was The Nite Life, apparently at 101 Olmstead Street (near San Bruno Avenue), on the other side of McLaren Park, where a band called The Aliens held court with an amazing mixture of funk, Latin and jamming. The Santana Blues Band evolved into Santana, not least by absorbing Chepito Areas from The Aliens.

Santana 3 or the Third Album, as it is also known, is a primal masterpiece, filled with some of Santana’s best music. The ensemble playing is freer and more fluid and the band embarked on darker, deeper, more mysterious grooves.

Santana’s San Franciscan Mission District based music, had no parallels, it wasn’t salsa, it wasn’t bugaloo, and it wasn’t straight ahead blues or rock. It contained elements of all this music but totally existed in it’s own universe, both re-defining Latino music that had gone before (Mongo Santamaria, Ray Barretto, Richie Valens, Cal Tjader etc) and creating a totally contemporary definition of what it meant to be the vanguard for a new, emerging Latino culture.
Santana 3 is the final part of the effortless trilogy, the original band brought to the international music scene.
Their meteoric rise to fame, with their stunning appearance at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, and the subsequent release of their first recording Santana, galvanized not only the festival audience, putting Latin rhythms on the world map, but significantly, Santana also positioned themselves in the arc of USA music history, as a potent, representing, first wave musical force for young, aspiring Latinos in the USA.

The group’s core lineup remained with Carlos Santana (Guitar, Vocals) Gregg Rolie (Keyboards, Vocals) David Brown (Bass) Mike Carabello (Congas) Jose Chepito Areas (Timbales, Congas) and Michael Shrieve (Drums). Santana’s openness to guests and allowing others to share the spotlight brought in two important additions.
Most importantly, the fifteen-year-old guitar whiz Neal Schon. Shrieve and Rolie discovered the fiery Schon, playing in a band called Old Davis at the Poppycock Club in Palo Alto. Carlos, although established as a guitar phenomenon, had no anxiety about the young Schon coming in. In fact, the two together pushed each other to new heights. Remembers Shrieve, “ God knows how Neal felt, coming into the Santana band with Carlos. Neal brought a young fire into the mix and he also picked up on Carlos’ melodicism. Neal was a burner and he could take things really high. Carlos and Neal shared a lot of the same gifts.”

The other newcomer to the ensemble, Thomas “Coke” Escovedo, was another Mission based percussionist (originally playing with Pete Escovedo, as The Escovedo Brothers). Coke was asked to tour with the band in early 1971, due to Chepito Areas, their dynamic, and impossibly talented Nicaraguan timbalero, suffering a sudden and almost fatal brain aneurysm. Coke was brought in to the band, after they had tried out Willie Bobo, (A percussionist and band leader, from New York’s Spanish Harlem, who was a major influence on the Santana group, supplying their first smash hit “Evil Ways”) for the February 1971, Soul To Soul Independence Day Concerts in Accra, Ghana, in Africa.

The recording began mostly at night at the newly opened Columbia Studios on San Francisco’s Folsom Street. Santana were ensconced in Studio B and the recording took shape, partly from long jamming sessions and also songs that had been formulated thru more structured means. Chepito Areas made the sessions, he had made a miraculous recovery; re-appearing with his astonishing musical chops intact. As the band ascended the heights of super stardom, the excesses associated with the music scene in those riotous times had increased as well. The fact that this record is so coherent, and musically cohesive, speaks volumes for the group’s unique musical chemistry.

“Batuka” is the funky opening cut, showing off the feral side of Neal Schon’s guitar work. Behind a backdrop of Carlos, Gregg and David’s ensemble parrying, the percolating rhythm section sets up a cowbell-led pattern that introduces Schon’s wild guitar work.

Gregg Rolie recalls, “We played “Batuka” with Zubin Mehta and the L.A. Philharmonic, for the Bell Telephone TV Hour. They had sent us a taped piece from Leonard Bernstein to learn”.
Coke and Carabello brought in part of the tune “No One To Depend On”, which was in some elements related to an earlier Willie Bobo tune called “Spanish Grease”. They collaborated with Rolie at his Mill Valley home. Rolie wrote the thunderous middle section, and replete with it’s rolling funk-rock riffs this became an instant crowd favourite. This was the second single and demonstrated Santana’s unique take on cha-cha-cha.
“Taboo” was a song Gregg Rolie played frequently at rehearsals until the band developed the sultry piece into the atmospheric ambient finished recording. Carlos’ guitar and Rolie’s vocals intertwine in an ethereal mix until the outro builds to a scorching climax courtesy of Neal Schon’s piercing fretwork.
Here we see Santana using the studio more as an aural instrument itself. “No One to Depend On” finishes with delayed backwards echo and “Taboo” punches its way thru its climax, with a forceful big sound. The sound is enhanced, more open, with studio effects used in an integrated setting. Eddie Kramer, who worked closely as Jimi Hendrix’s producer was on hand to engineer some of the songs but the finished credits went to Glen Kolotkin and the Santana musicians.
“Toussaint L’Ouverture” (named for the Haitian revolutionary by the radical Mission based pianist Alberto Gianquinto) is a pinnacle in Santana’s recorded history. A towering piece that had been jammed from the first album days, Toussaint smokes furiously and features ecstatic soloing from Carlos on it’s fervent intro followed by hot percussion breaks by Carabello and Chepito. The finale is an intense build with wailing breaks by Rolie, Schon and Santana until it’s abrupt end. Deafening silence remains, echoing musical magnitude.

“Everybody’s Everything” was the first single release and has a soul-based vibe with added texture by the East Bay’s Tower of Power’s horn section it is also notable for a crazed wah-wah pedal driven solo by Schon pushing Chepito’s bubbling drum track even further.
“Guajira” is a Santana classic, Shrieve loved Carlos’ beautiful piercing guitar on this cut.
“This is some of my all-time favourite playing by Carlos, starting with Chepito’s bass intro, Carlos’ playing is exquisite, the way he plays over the time change from 4/4 to 6/8, it’s still my favorite music”. Rico Reyes from the neighbourhood supplied a memorable soul filled Spanish vocal and co-wrote the song with David Brown and Chepito in Hawaii.
On “Guajira,” Gregg Rolie was open to a salsa piano solo proffered by Mario Ochoa, another seasoned Latino musician from the earlier generation. “Jungle Strut “was a hip Gene Ammons saxophone soul-jazz instrumental, on which Bernard Purdie, the hip funk drummer of that time originally played. Shrieve was exploring the outer edges of funk with David Garibaldi (the sensational drummer from Tower Of Power) and Santana used it as another vehicle for multi soloing, over a boiling percussion section.
The penultimate track rounding out the recording was “Everything Is Coming Our Way”, a sensitive Carlos song, in contrast to, but also complimentary to all the preceding music. Gregg Rolie with guidance from Carlos supplies a swirling Hammond organ solo that helps resolve the aching vocal by Carlos himself. Coke Escovedo brought in Tito Puente’s “Para Los Rumberos” to the sessions and the furiously driven performance features Luis Gasca on hot trompeta flourishes, ending the album on a high note.

The bonus tracks are a further snapshot of the experimental Santana band, “Gumbo” is a ferocious crowd pleaser, complete with a dual guitar funk interlude, which allowed Carabello and David Brown to do some tambourine propelled dancing onstage.
Mike Carabello attests to “Gumbo”, being influenced by both Sly Stone and Dr John’s Gris Gris album. “We were dedicated to being different, “Gumbo” was a soup of each person’s musical flavours”

“Folsom Street”, named for the new Columbia Studios at Number 1, was never played live and is a rarity with a loping rhythm and a solid band performance. “Bambele Bambeyo” is pure Santana trance music. Aided by Rico Reyes on vocals and Victor Pantoja on congas, the percussion is sublime. With it’s chants, the band takes us all the way back to Africa. Carlos provides free-floating guitar atmospherics, at least eight minutes into the session.

The second bonus disc sees the original Santana captured as the last act on the last night at the Fillmore West, as Bill Graham so aptly puts it, ‘What better way, than to close with the sounds from the streets, Santana!”
The third album was given it’s first airing here and as the sun set on a generation with the Fillmore’s closing, the Santana band closed the auditorium with a powerful, ragged and passionate show. Most of the above is here, the band slams thru their set but with a one-off version of “In A Silent Way”, written by Joe Zawinul and made famous by Miles Davis. Their version heats the song up and Carlos and Neal snarl and maul with Brown’s bass rumbling throughout. Chepito’s metallic timbales slice thru the frenzied haze with the precision he was famous for. Santana ran into problems shortly after, constant touring, plus mismanagement, with subsequent disagreements on musical direction crippled one of the truly great music acts.
Times changed for these musical revolutionaries, caught up in a roller-coaster ride lasting just three or so years. However, the years have been good to the original Santana’s legacy, with their inspired music standing the test of time by remaining timeless.

Jim McCarthy
San Francisco
November 2005

Jim McCarthy (with Ron Sansoe) is the author of Voices Of Latin Rock,
an in-depth look at Santana and the Latin Rock revolution.
(Published by Hal Leonard Corp).

This piece originally was the CD liner noted for the
2 x CD Sony/Legacy Extended Edition
Of Santana 3 or the Third album. (2005)

Directly from the Mission District in San Francisco, the explosive fusion of Latin, salsa and rock is chronicled from a writer who has followed the music and the musicians for over 30 years. The book covers the stories of prominent Latin rock bands including Santana and Malo, examining in detail the pioneering records and the ways in which both reflect a wide spectrum of Latin influences. It highlights the cast of characters and emerging period in the US during the late ’60s, with all the cultural background events including the Summer of Love, Woodstock, political activism, and the record label expansion. Legendary figures such as Bill Graham, Clive Davis and the Escovedos family play crucial roles in the development of this sound. As Latin music continues to become more mainstream, the interest in its musical roots grows. This book sheds light on these musical pioneers, and is gorgeously illustrated with over 800 BandW photos by Jim Marshall, Rudy Rodgriguez, Joan Chase and others, plus artwork of dozens of rare album covers.
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Voices of Latin Rock: People and Events that Created this Sound
By Jim McCarthy, Ron Sansoe
Contributor Ron Sansoe
Published by Hal Leonard Corporation, 2004
ISBN 063408061X

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