A week or so ago, I received a call from Harry Sepulveda. Harry and I go way back. We first met in the 1970s, when I'd stop by to run my fingers through the many Latin-jazz albums at Record Mart, his store in the Times Square subway station. Today the store still exists, though it moved to a more prominent location facing the shuttle when the station was remodeled years ago. Exciting Latin music still pours out the door, adding flavor to the expansive station. Harry calls whenever there's an album I absolutely must hear. This time, his call was about Ray Mantilla's High Voltage, which was just released by Savant Records.
"Papa, how you been?" Harry shouted over the subway din. "Hey, stop down if you can. I want to give you a copy of Ray Mantilla's High Voltage. Ray is fantastic. Man, he's been in the business a long time. The album was produced by Joe Fields, for his label."
I dig Joe, so I stopped by Record Mart a bunch of days ago on my way downtown to dinner with a friend. Harry knows his stuff about Latin music. And Latin-jazz. And jazz. So I love dropping by to chew the fat with him and to see what he thinks is heavy and hip. Before I left his store, Harry pressed the Mantilla album into my hand along with a couple of others.
When I arrived home later that evening, I put on the CD. Wow, was Harry right. The album is beautiful. Mantilla is an old-school Latin percussionist with sterling jazz credits. He recorded extensively with Herbie Mann starting at the dawn of the 1960s and with Larry Coryell and Art Blakey in the late 1960s. In the early 1970s, he was a founding member of Max Roach's M'boom group. He's on more than 75 jazz albums, including Joe Farrell's Canned Funk, Cedar Walton's Mobius, Freddie Hubbard's Windjammer, Jeremy Steig's Firefly and albums by Charles Mingus, Dexter Gordon, Jimmy McGriff, Mose Allison and many others.
On High Voltage, Manilla's percussion is soft, hypnotic and ever-changing. He's joined by Ivan Renta (ts/soprano), Jorge Castro (bs and fl), Guido Gonzalez (tp, flugelhorn), Mike Freeman (vib on tracks 2 &7), Edy Martinez (p, Fender Rhodes), Cucho Martinez (b), Diego Lopez (d) and Maitreya Padukone (tambala on track 5).
What I love most about this album is Mantilla's gentle but swirling Latin-jazz approach, which lets you dig all of the colors in the music without being overwhelmed. In other words, the rhythm is along for the ride, not drowning out the instrumental conversation. Among the highlights are Exit 45, with a lovely Fender solo by Martinez; The Gypsy, with a lengthy tenor sax solo by Renta; Tu No Me Quieres, a nifty cha-cha-cha featuring Freeman on vibes; the standard Ramona, which also is taken as a cha-cha-cha and the jazz standard Solar. Heck, the entire album is enveloping and shrewd. It's everything Harry said it would be: "Killer." Kudos to Joe Fields.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Ray Mantilla's High Voltage (Savant) here.
JazzWax clip: Here's Tue No Me Quieres (You Don't Love Me)...
Here's Ramona...
