Directory

Below are all of the artists mentioned throughout the interview in order of appearance:

  • Johnny Pacheco

  • Ray Barretto: “NEA jazz master”

  • Orlando Marin

  • Manny Oquendo

  • Joe Newman: “the great trumpet player from the Count Basie orchestra”

  • Maxine Sullivan: “the great jazz singer had a house here [the South Bronx]”

  • Thelonious Monk: “he was living in the South Bronx at the time in the Morrisania section”

Artists featured on television shows during Bobby Sanabria’s childhood:

  • Sammy Davis

  • Dean Martin

  • Frank Sinatra

  • Nancy Wilson

  • Nina Simone

  • Herbie Hancock: wrote the song “Watermelon Man,” “won like 28 Grammys”

  • Mongo Santamaría - “lived in the South Bronx at one time made it [“Watermelon Man”] a big hit”

  • Sergio Mendes: recorded the song “Mas Que Nada” “in Brazil, 66”

  • Dave Valentin: “the great jazz and...Latin flute player. He’s Nuyorican like myself [Bobby Sanabria]”

The early pioneers of hip hop who were influenced by jazz:

  • Grandmaster Flash

  • Rakim: “wanted to be a jazz musicians but they cut all the music programs at his school but his parents listened to jazz all the time...that aesthetic he brought to his lyricism and rap, hip hop”

  • Caz

  • Charlie Chase

Artists who performed at neighborhood concerts in the South Bronx during the 1970s:

  • Tito Puente: "El Rey de los Timbales" (The King of the Timbales), performed a neighborhood concert in the Melrose Projects, which inspired Bobby Sanabria to become a professional musician

  • Machito and the Afro-Cubans: “that band was the first band to fuse jazz arranging technique with Cuban rhythms back in 1939”

  • Ricardo Ray: “from Brooklyn. He was a Juilliard-trained Nuyorican pianist.” He was in a salsa band with Bobby Cruz

  • Bobby Cruz: Vocalist in “the hottest salsa band at that time” with Ricardo Ray

Remaining artists mentioned in interview:

  • Larry Harlow: “salsa musician, pianist,” composed “La Raza Latina,” which Bobby’s multi-Grammy nominated Big Band helped bring to life at Lincoln Center Out of Doors

  • Rubén Blades: Performed at Lincoln Center Out of Doors, the same day as “La Raza Latina” premiered

  • Dizzy Gillespie: jazz musician “who once said ‘As long as there's one black person left on planet Earth singing the blues, jazz will never die.’ So as long as there’s one Puerto Rican, Cuban, you know with an album in their house of salsa the music still is alive in some way.”

  • Pete Bonet and His Orchestra: the first band to play at the Corso, a Manhattan nightclub

  • Típica 73

  • Héctor Lavoe

  • Charlie Palmieri: brother of Eddie Palmieri and “a very famous salsa pianist”

  • Eddie Palmieri: “a nine-time Grammy award-winning National NEA jazz master”

  • Joe Cuba Sextet

  • Jimmy Owens: “NEA jazz master grew up over here”

  • Nancy Wilson: “the great jazz singer was discovered here. Where the supermarket is there used to be a place called the Blue Morocco”

  • Eydie Gormé: “the famous vocalist...went to Taft High School”
Directory