Search - Pucho & Latin Soul Brothers :: Caliente con Soul!

Timbalero Henry "Pucho" Brown has for decades held onto the mantle of being at once underaccorded and fiercely open to integrating different musics atop fundamentally Latin and Cuban rhythms. He opened ears in the 1960s as part of the "boogaloo" movement (and here covers the great Lou Donaldson's "Alligator Boogaloo"), where he thrived. A New Yorker by birth, Pucho got his ears and chops from East Harlem, where Latin pop and jazz seemed to play together as two channels in a single stereo system. Organ groove jazz, hard bop, hardcore Havana traditional rhythms, all of it came together in Pucho's world, lending his recordings a tough, driving power. His 1990s resurgence reaches a peak on Caliente con Soul!, which has the audacity to blow through rhythmic riff-outs that would make James Brown proud and a sure-to-please revision of Barry Manilow's "Copacabana." Pucho is strong, quick, and intense on the timbales, which he pounds on as his band creates a mix of styles so well thought that it'll score with Cuban music purists and '90s dance culture equally. --Andrew Bartlett