Willie Colon with Hector Lavoe & Yomo Toro – Asalto Navideño Vol.II
Vinyl rip in 24-bit/192 kHz | FLAC | Art scans | Folk, Holiday, Salsa
2023 Craft Recordings || Orig.rel. 1973 Fania
I wanted to get this post up before the holiday season passed, and I just *barely* made it — Jan. 6 is the end of the Xmas season in Latin America, with the holiday of Three Kings Day / Feast of the Epiphany closing things out. If you don’t know Willie Colon and the late, great Hector Lavoe, this may not be the place to start. Not because it isn’t good, but it’s not typical of the lean, street-wise salsa sound they helped craft in the formative period of the genre during the late 60s through the 70s.
For some reason, Craft only issued volume 1 of these two Christmas albums as a RSD special which I somehow missed completely. If anybody comes across an affordable copy of that, please let me know. Hopefully they will give it a wider release, eventually. Both records area a mix of some traditional folk / country (jíbaro) songs associated with the holidays along with original compositions in those styles. The first tune here is a medley which, somewhat surprisingly, throws in an original SAMBA song. This shouldn’t be too unexpected, though, because Willie Colón had begun including salsa versions of bossa nova and samba classics peppered through his records in the 70’s.
Much of the album is a showcase for the playing of the great Yomo Toro on the cuatro (Puerto Rico’s answer to the ‘três’ found in Cuban son montuno music). So if you are fan of that sound — more “rootsy” than the urbane ‘salsa’ sound that developed in New York City (think Buena Vista Social Club) — then you’ll probably dig this.
Willie Colon, Hector Lavoe & Yomo Toro – Asalto Navideño, Vol. II
Label/Cat#: Fania Records – CR00428, Craft Recordings – CR00428
Country: US
Year: 2023
Genre: Latin
Style: Guaracha, Samba, Guaguancó, Salsa, Holiday
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, 180g, Black Vinyl
Tracklist
A1 – Pescao (Potpourri Sambao) (05:37)
A2 – Recomendación (03:51)
A3 – La Banda (03:00)
A4 – Doña Santos (04:20)
B1 – Cantemos (06:07)
B2 – Pa’ Los Pueblos (03:40)
B3 – Arbolito (05:05)
B4 – Tranquilidad (04:44)
Total length: 36:24
Bass – Santi “Choflomo” Gonzalez*
Cuatro – Yomo Toro
Lead Vocals – Hector Lavoe
Percussion – José Mangual*, Milton Cardona
Piano – Professor Jose Torres*
Trombone – Eric Matos
Trombone, Leader, Producer, Chorus, Arranged By – Willie Colón
Track A1/Pescao (Potpourri Sambao) is a multi rhythm track which includes the styles of Bomba, Guaracha, and Samba.
Matrix / Runout (Side A): CR00428-A2 KPGeCA #5R 38875.1(3)…
Matrix / Runout (Side B): CR00428-B KPGeCA #5R 38217.2(3)…
LINEAGE: Record cleaned on Music Hall WCS-3 machine with custom fluid; vinyl 2023 Fania/Craft Recordings CR00428; Pro-Ject RM-5SE with Audio Tecnica Signet TK7E cartridge; AT-618 Disc Stabilizer weight; Pro-Ject Tube Box S2 preamp with Philips NOS ECC83 tubes powered by Accu-box battery PSU; Audioquest Black Mamba and Pangea Premier interconnect cables; RME Babyface Pro interface ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 192khz; clicks and pops removed manually with Adobe Audition 3.0; studio banter at beginning of track B4 had ClickRepair applied with output monitored in real time; resampled, dithered, converted to FLAC using iZotope RX Advanced. Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename. Transferred and edited in Oct/Nov 2023.
password: vibes
