Search - Juan Calle & his Latin Lantzmen :: Mazeltov, Mis Amigos

This 1961 Riverside Records album is one of the greatest ruses of 20th century American pop music, a forgotten masterpiece of cross-cultural disguise and masquerade. Neither Juan nor his Latin Lantzmen were actually Lantzmen, and only some were actually Latin. Juan was John Cali, an Italian-American banjo picker and radio veteran best known for his work with the Vincent Lopez Orchestra and a string of solo banjo outings. His Latin Lantzmen included some of the biggest names in 50s and 60s Latin music conguero Ray Barretto, timbales guru Wilie Rodriguez, pianist Charlie Palmier playing alongside African-American jazz greats Clark Terry, Doc Cheatham, Lou Oles, and Wendell Marshall. The sole Lantzmen was Yiddish vocalist Ed Powell. Mazel Tov, Mis Amigos was far more musically vivid than many of its Latin-Jewish ancestors, laced with flashes of jazz improvisation and montuno vamping. Papirossen, a usually mournful ode to cigarettes, is done as a blazing, quickstep mambo. Yossel, Yossel had become popular as Joseph! Joseph!, a crossover swing-era hit for the Andrews Sisters and Glenn Miller, but the Lantzmen stick with the original Yiddish version only to turn it into a cha-cha. Havah Nagila also gets the cha-cha treatment, and Die Greene Koseene, the classic 1920s Abe Schwartz ode to a greenhorn cousin on the Lower East Side, conjures different 1960s New York immigrant worlds with its makeover as a Dominican merengue.