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We were there in 2009 with cameras rolling. McCarthy had his interview face on. We sat in Jerry Garcia’s favorite dressing room downstairs at the Warfield. And some other places too. And then the bands started playing. But we were hearing the music all day.
Voices of Latin Rock 2009 from Avalon Media Group
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.
Pictured at the 5th Voices Of Latin Rock Autism
Benefit in San Francisco.
Honoring the Women of Latin Rock.
From left to right; Lydia Pense, Wendy Hass-Mull, Linda Tillery,
Rita Gentry and Sheila E (Escovedo)
Benefit for Autism
Voices of Latin Rock
5th Annual Benefit for Autism Awareness
January 24 , 2009 at The Warfield Theater, San Francisco
WAR
Azteca
Pete Escovedo, Wendy Haas, Victor Pantoja, Errol Knowles, Bill Courtial, Jules Rowlles, Sheila E.
Los Cenzontles
Voices of Latin Rock Review
Musical Director Karl Perazzo
Honoring the Women of Latin Rock
Rita Gentry, Lydia Pense, Wendy Haas, Sheila E., Linda Tillery
MC: Chuy Varela
San Francisco, California – Putting together an inspired collection of talent, Voices of Latin Rock presents The 5th Annual Benefit for Autism Awareness as a benefit for The Alex Speaks Foundation on Saturday January 24th, 2009 at the newly refurbished Warfield Theater, 982 Market Street, San Francisco, California. Headlining the bill is multi-platinum selling band WAR, Azteca, Los Cenzontles, Voices of Latin Rock Review, featuring members of Cold Blood, Malo, El Chicano and Santana. We will also be honoring the following Women of Latin Rock: Rita Gentry, Lydia Pense, Wendy Haas, Sheila E. and Linda Tillery. As in past years, many surprise guests will also appear. General tickets are from $45.00 to $75.00 and available by calling 415. 775.7722 or at Ticketmaster.
A limited number of exclusive packages & tables are available for special seating. Please e mail: DrBGMalo@aol.com for more information.
The show benefits schools in the Bay Area dealing with autism on a daily basis. This disorder has increased recently to 1 in 150 births, up from 1 in 166 just a few years ago. When questioned about special needs children in the most recent presidential debates, both candidates mentioned the need for increased funding for research for autism, specifically as it approaches epidemic numbers. With the Bay Area’s support of this event, we can continue our support of both schools and research for autism. – More-
WAR has recently been nominated as candidates for induction into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for 2009. WAR has recorded some of the biggest hits in the last 30 years including “The World Is A Ghetto”, “Cisco Kid”, “Why Can’t We Be Friends”, and “Low Rider.” The band is in it’s 40th year and has its first release in 14 years, “Greatest Hits Live.” More information on the band can be found on their website at www.wartheband.com.
Azteca features a stellar collective of Latin Rock performers that promises to tear the house down. Azteca was founded by the late Coke Escovedo and his brother Pete after their departure from the Latin Rock superband Santana. They were the first band to employ a large ensemble of horns, woodwinds, keyboards, Latin percussion and other instruments sometimes having 25 members in a live performance! Many of the original members will be performing.
Los Cenzontles is an amazing group from the Mexican Arts Center in Richmond, California featuring the vocals of Fabiola Trujillo and Luciana Rodriquez that infuses traditional Mexican instruments with gutsy electric bass and drums. The group is directed by Grammy nominated producer Eugene Rodriquez, and their latest CD “Wood & Steel” features producer/guitarist David Hildalgo along with vocalist Linda Ronstadt.
The Voices of Latin Rock Review with Musical Director Karl Perazzo includes members of Santana, Cold Blood, Malo and El Chicano.
This years event is honoring women of Latin Rock: Rita Gentry, Lydia Pense, Wendy Haas, Sheila E., and Linda Tillery.
‘Voices of Latin Rock’ has become a Bay Area favorite event, and early purchase of tickets is encouraged, as this event will sell out. Get your tickets soon!
For more information please contact: Gaynell Rogers 415.298.1114 or gaynell@pressandrelease.biz or
Katrina Markarian 707.578.6728 or Katrina@pressandrelease.biz.
David Rubien
San Francisco Chronicle
E-mail David Rubien
Original article here
Sunday, January 18, 2009
(Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle)
Pete Escovedo, who has resurrected his 1970s Latin jazz b…Coke Escovedo (left), Tito Puente (center) and Pete Escov…The Latin jazz band Azteca in 1973. View More Images
“I really think we could have made a lot more music,” says Pete Escovedo, the Latin percussion master who formed Azteca with his brother, Coke. “Listening to the stuff we recorded, it still sounds great. It still holds up all these years.”
A crowd will get a chance to see if Azteca still can deliver the goods when Escovedo revives it Saturday at the Warfield Theatre to play a Voices of Latin Rock benefit for Autism Awareness, part of a bill that includes War, Los Cenzontles and the Voices of Latin Rock Revue.
After flying up to San Francisco recently from Los Angeles, where he’s lived for nine years, Escovedo, 73, is talking with The Chronicle about growing up in West Oakland, playing in Santana, forming Azteca and other subjects. Dressed in a gray sports jacket and matching tie, with his gray hair slicked back, he looks a bit like a Mafioso. But there’s nothing menacing about the man, unless you’re intimidated by the idea that he can play the fastest timbales in the West – and you should be.
Actually, Escovedo’s daughter, Sheila E., may play the fastest timbales in the West, but the audience Saturday won’t get to experience that because she’ll be anchoring Azteca behind the trap drum kit. Anyone who knows her work with Prince in the ’80s will vouch for her genius as a drummer.
Escovedo was born in Pittsburg and moved to Oakland when he was 4. His father, Pedro Escovedo, an immigrant from Saltillo, Mexico, was a pipe-fitter at Oakland’s Army base during World War II.
“My dad was a wannabe singer,” Escovedo says. “He would throw us all in the car and drive down to one of the ballrooms in Oakland – there was Sweet’s, the Ali Baba, the Sands – because a lot of the concerts were on Sunday afternoons. My mom made him take us so we’d be sure he’d come home. My dad was a rolling stone.
“We’d just sit in the car listening to this great music coming out of the ballroom. The Dorsey brothers, Basie, Latin bands like Machito, Perez Prado. We grew up listening to all this stuff.”
Dad’s first marriage produced seven kids, including Pete and Coke (born Joseph Thomas Escovedo), and his second yielded six more, including Alejandro, a pioneer of West Coast punk and alt-country. Many of Escovedo’s siblings are professional musicians.
As a student at McClymonds High School, Escovedo played saxophone, but he moved to percussion when an older friend from New York played him records by greats such as Tito Puente and Chico O’Farrill.
“Man, I just fell in love with that music,” he says. “It was great to play jazz and have Latin rhythms with it.”
Coke Escovedo (left), Tito Puente (center) and Pete Escovedo in 1959. (Voices of Latin Jazz)
“He was playing at a club called the Macumba on Grant Avenue, upstairs in Chinatown. We went there every night. We became great friends with Tito. … We were lucky because we got a chance to meet a lot of the great Cuban drummers at that time: Mongo Santamaria, Willie Bobo. We’d go to the Blackhawk and see Armando Peraza, Cal Tjader, all the great players. We made friends with all of them and hung out together.”
In the late ’50s, Escovedo put together the Escovedo Brothers Sextet, with Coke on timbales and another brother, Phil, on bass. The group burned through practically every club in Northern California for years.
The Latin jazz band Azteca in 1973. (Voices of Latin Jazz)
First Coke was hired on timbales as a replacement for Chepitó, then Pete Escovedo joined on congas.
“We had a chance to travel the world,” Escovedo says. “What was really cool for me was we were playing for a lot of white people. There we were, doing our thing, and it was amazing because I think a lot of the people were hypnotized by the sound of the Latin percussion. A lot of people had never heard that stuff before, and Carlos was able to break that barrier.”
But Santana kept shuffling personnel, leading to discontent in the band. It was Coke, Escovedo says, who decided to start a new group, and Azteca was born. With top rhythm players such as Paul Jackson on bass and Lenny White on drums and a large roster of horns and percussion, the group sounded something like a combination of Santana, Earth Wind and Fire, Tower of Power and the Tito Puente Orchestra.
“It was Coke’s vision,” Escovedo says. “Azteca was a mixture of a lot of different styles of music. All the Latin rhythms were very strong and prominent. At the same time, a lot of the guys came from a jazz background, so we incorporated a lot of jazz harmonies and jazz melodies. At the same time, because we were in the Latin rock era, we incorporated that and a little R&B.”
The groups recorded two magnificent albums for Columbia, “Azteca” and “Pyramid of the Moon,” and toured with the Temptations and Stevie Wonder. Columbia dropped the group after Clive Davis – who had signed Azteca – was ousted in a payola scandal. Mainly, though, it was the size of the group that did it in – 16 players at minimum, often augmented by many more.
“It was crazy,” Escovedo says. “There were times when we left a gig with no money and had to sneak out of the hotel at night. … We started having internal problems in the band because we weren’t making any money. Our bank account ran out, and a lot of guys began to jump ship. The ship was slowly sinking.”
The death knell came when Coke left the group for a solo career. He released three albums for Mercury, then was in high demand as a percussionist for artists such as Wonder and Herbie Hancock.
Coke died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1986.
“He passed away in L.A.,” Escovedo says. “We were in that era of doing some crazy things. Some of us were smart enough to get out of it, and some of us were not. And he was one of the ones who could not get out of it. And it eventually was his downfall. … It was too bad. He was a great musician.”
Compounding the anguish, Coke died on July 13, Escovedo’s birthday.
“It was a tough thing to get over,” he says. “Every time my birthday would come up, it’s kind of like, ‘Do I celebrate, or do I feel bad?’ ”
Escovedo’s career as a bandleader and percussionist – for artists ranging from Woody Herman to Hancock to Stephen Stills to Barry White to Puente – has been nothing but successful. Less so have been his ventures into owning nightclubs.
The resurrection of Azteca began in the summer of 2007, when filmmaker Daniel Meza approached Escovedo and other original members about getting back together and recording a DVD. The group performed at Hollywood’s Key Club on Sept. 15, 2007, featuring surviving members Lenny White, Jackson, Victor Pantoja on congas, Wendy Haas and Errol Knowles on vocals, Bill Courtial on guitar, Jules Rowell on trombone and Escovedo.
The DVD, “La Piedra del Sol” (“Stone of the Sun”), will be available from Internet vendors beginning Tuesday.
For Saturday’s show, the personnel is the same, except Sheila E. is on drums and Curtis Olson replaces Jackson on bass – and there’ll be plenty of guest horn players and percussionists on hand.
A new era for Azteca?
“It remains to the seen,” Escovedo says. “You never know what situations the good Lord puts us in. … I look at all these things as a blessing. We’ll see what happens.”
VOICES OF LATIN ROCK: Azteca, War, Los Cenzontles, Voices of Latin Rock Revue. 7 p.m. Sat. Warfield Theatre, 982 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets $45-$75. Call (415) 421-8497 or go to www.ticketmaster.com.
E-mail David Rubien drubien@sfchronicle.com.
BY TONY WADE
DAILY REPUBLIC CORRESPONDENT
SAN FRANCISCO — The 5th annual Voices of Latin Rock Benefit concert for Autism Awareness returns Jan. 24 to the Warfield Theater in San Francisco. The concert raises funds for schools in the Bay Area who battle autism on a daily basis. During the last 5 years the show has grown and even expanded into a traveling tour, but the January annual event has become legendary.
The 2009 lineup includes 1970s funk/Latin/rock hit machine WAR (“Slippin’ into Darkness,” “Why Can’t We Be Friends,” and “Low Rider”), pioneering Latin/rock/jazz fusion group Azteca, an all-star revue featuring members of Malo, Santana, El Chicano, Cold Blood and many others. As a special treat, this year PBS is filming the show for later broadcast. It has become an annual tradition to give tribute to those who helped Latin rock flourish. This year women who helped craft the sound will be honored. Among the dignitaries are legendary promoter Bill Graham’s personal assistant Rita Gentry, vocalist Linda Tillery, Santana and Azteca pianist/ vocalist Wendy Haas, Cold Blood frontwoman Lydia Pense, and percussionist extraordinaire Sheila E.
Green Valley’s Jeff Trager has co-produced the show from the start. It’s grown from a one-time deal to an annual event and then into a traveling tribute which picks up local Latin legends as it trudges across the states.
Voices of Latin Rock sold out Bimbo’s in San Francisco for four straight years with no advertising. For their fifth go round, Trager and his associates have moved the soiree to the much larger and newly refurbished Warfield Theater. With the array of talent in this year’s lineup, in 2010 he’s sure to face a yearly problem once again.”Every year we say, ‘How are we going to top this?,’ ” Trager said. “Two years ago, we had Booker T. and the original Santana Band and Lenny Williams. Last year we honored Richie Valens and Los Lobos came up and played. “This year we have Azteca and we always wanted to have them because they were the first Latin Rock supergroup and this is their second appearance in 25 years. The band featured percussionist Pete Escovedo, drummer Lenny White who later went to Return to Forever and guitarist Neal Schon who was in-between Santana and Journey.”
In addition to the dream lineups of world class musicians on the bill, one of the hallmarks of the Voices of Latin Rock annual show are the unannounced guests who show up and turn an already special evening into a magical one.Carlos Santana will be one of the presenters honoring the women of Latin Rock and while it’s not guaranteed he’ll strap on an axe and wow the Warfield crowd with his trademark tone, stranger things have happened.
“You never, never know who is going to walk on out on the stage,” Trager said. “At last year’s show out came Jackie Greene, Santana vocalist Tony Lindsay, the reclusive Sly Stone, and Funkadelic’s George Clinton. That kind of thing happens every year.”
_______________________
Reach freelance writer Tony Wade
over40rocker@sbcglobal.net
At a glance
Who: “Voices of Latin Rock” Autism Benefit
When: 7 p.m. Jan. 24
Where: The Warfield, 982 Market St., San Francisco
Info: www.ticketmaster.com
www.voicesoflatinrock.com
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