Category: Latin

Eddie Palmieri – Unfinished Masterpiece
Vinyl rip in 24-bit/192 kHz | FLAC |  300 dpi scans |  Salsa, Latin Jazz
1975 Coco Records CLP 120

Titling an album “Unfinished Masterpiece” sort of confirms my suspicious that Eddie Palmieri wasn’t exactly humble, and a difficult, if admirably uncompromising artist to work with.  His tendency to jump from one record label to another also reinforces it.  But any such hubris is more than justified by the likes of this album and others in his catalog.  This one features long-time musical companion Barry Rogers on trombone (and some arranging) as well future member of the band Libre, Andy Gonzales, on bass.

It’s also the recording debut (I think) of vocalist Lalo Rodriguez, who had a respectable career in the salsa scene. The last track on the album features a crew of CTI stalwarts like Ron Carter, Jeremy Steig, and Steve Gadd. Musically, it is a nice coda to the rest of the material, but the difference in the pristine recording style associated with that label is jarring.  (It’s worth nothing that Irv Greenbaum is credited as the engineer for the entire record, but there are two studios listed without distinguishing which tracks were recorded where – my money is on “Resemblance” having been tracked at Electric Ladyland.)

But getting back to that audacious title.  This really is one of Palmieri’s best records, especially if you enjoy his ventures away from more the traditional forms of that hodgepodge referred to as “salsa.”  He stretches out into jazz territory on a lot of this, and calling it “Latin jazz” doesn’t really do it justice either.  His grounding in Latin music is always there (with the exception of “Resemblance” which is more straight, swinging large-band jazz),  but he also incorporates elements of funk, though less so than he did with Harlem River Drive, and maybe a smidgen of rock. (Does a slightly over-driven guitar through a wah pedal automatically signal ‘rock’? I don’t think so but I’ll throw it in the grab bag anyway.) Palmieri was able to sway rather than lurch through these styles, encompassing the beautiful and the abstract and the rhythmic without seeming especially self-conscious about it.  The spacious “Random Thoughts” moves from chromatic runs evoking Mister Rogers’ trolley to a Cecil Taylor you could take home to meet your mum, then becomes a bolero for a few bars, then back into an atmospheric, almost spiritual space.  Oh, and underneath parts of it you can hear him doing his Puerto Rican Erroll Garner thing, moaning and whirring along in concentrated ecstasy.

Well, my prose has gone all purple suddenly, so I’ll take a moment to share the thoughts of two other listeners here.

Tracklist
A1 – Un Puesto Vacante (03:56)
A2 – Kinkamache (05:38)
A3 – Oyelo Que Te Conviene (06:30)
B1 – Cobarde (10:46)
B2 – Random Thoughts (06:22)
B3 – Resemblance (04:49)

Total length: 38:01

The following blurb does not qualify as a review, but it is also on AMG, a “source” which I’ve made my I’ve made my feelings known on this blog for years now and I don’t need to rehash them here.  This one was written by John Storm Roberts, a legit music historian who has written a few solid and readable scholarly works on music, and curated a Smithsonian / Folkways collection that accompanied one of them (“Black Music of Two Worlds).  But the ridiculous, single-paragraph brevity of this “review” makes me think it was lifted directly from a longer piece of writing:

 

The late-’70s Unfinished Masterpiece caused a huge quarrel because he couldn’t or wouldn’t get it done to his own satisfaction (Coco finally put it out anyway, thus the title). Unfinished or no, it’s classic Palmieri from his late Golden Age and long unavailable.

That’s all, folks!  But it explains the title, anyway.  And it’s so typically AMG that there is no other review for this massive album on their site.  Seriously, that site is the Basic White Girl of music journalism.

Here’s a more thorough review of the album that is also a delight to read, from the interesting music blog Burning Ambulance  in a column called “The Runner-Up”, which is great idea I wish I’d thought of:

A vast number of musicians appear on Unfinished Masterpiece: on most tracks, Palmieri is joined by Victor Paz on trumpet, Barry Rogers on trombone, Peter Gordon on French horn, Tony Price on tuba, Lou Marini (“Blue Lou” from the Blues Brothers band) on alto sax, Lou Orenstein on tenor sax, Mario Rivera on tenor and baritone saxes, Ronnie Cuber on baritone sax and flute, Alfredo de la Fe on violin, Andy Gonzalez on bass, Tommy Lopez Jr. on bongos, Eladio Perez and Jerry Gonzalez on congas, and Nicky Marrero on timbales. The lead vocals are handled by Lalo Rodriguez, with backing vocals by Ismael Quintana, Jimmy Sabater, and Willie Torres.

Palmieri, who was a guest on the BA podcast in 2018 (listen to that here), jumped from label to label during Latin music’s heyday in the 1960s and 1970s. He started out on Alegre, then recorded a long string of albums for Tico, but also put out albums on Roulette and even Verve (a collaboration with vibraphonist Cal Tjader). By the early ’70s, he was mixing commercial success with political engagement and musical experimentation, making the album Justicia in 1969, forming the Latin-soul-funk band Harlem River Drive the following year and recording a concert at Sing Sing, the upstate New York prison. He also performed at the University of Puerto Rico during a riotous student demonstration. Between 1969 and 1971, he made a series of albums — Justicia, Superimposition, and Vamonos Pa’l Monte — that incorporated nearly avant-garde jazz improvisation and production techniques borrowed from psychedelic rock in order to break down the walls hemming Latin music in. The Sun of Latin Music, from 1974, was just as thrilling and exploratory.

Unfinished Masterpiece was clearly intended to be the next step in Palmieri’s musical evolution. It’s a journey out. It begins with the churning, blaring “Un Puesto Vacante,” which sounds like fairly traditional salsa, the horns blaring atop the slapping, rattling percussion and the lead and backing vocalists in full flight from the first note. Palmieri’s piano and Gonzalez’ bass are the engine driving it all, and while the energy level is in the red throughout, it doesn’t get crazy until almost the three-minute mark, when, after a timbale solo, the leader strikes a series of huge, clanging/crashing piano chords that almost sound like a metal shelving unit falling to the floor in the studio. That triggers a baritone sax eruption, even greater passion from the singers, and the whole thing ends with a blast of energy that should almost finish the album right there. But we’re just beginning.

“Kinkamache” is a straightforward number clearly intended for dancing, at least to start, but the way the flute manages to overpower the fierce horns gives it an almost disorienting effect, and Palmieri’s piano solo is so harsh and abstract, it threatens to become free jazz. The album’s first side concludes with the manic but lush big-band orchestrations and passionate vocal cries of “Oyelo Que Te Conviene.” Even that track goes wild, though; around the halfway mark, the percussion and bass take over in a booming mix worthy of Lee Perry, with Palmieri’s keyboard seemingly struggling to break through.

The second half of Unfinished Masterpiece is where it really starts to live up to its title. Superimposition had established Palmieri as someone happy to split albums in two; its first side was relatively traditional, while its second contained improvisatory jams. Similarly, the nearly 11-minute “Cobarde” is a swirling, almost hallucinatory suite that combines some of Palmieri’s wildest, most virtuosic yet pounding piano, Latin rhythms, orchestration and compositional complexity worthy of prog rock, free jazz horn fervor, an electric bass solo that’ll bounce you out of your chair, bizarre vocal scats and growls, stabs of funk-rock guitar…it’s got everything you can imagine, and that’s what makes it glorious. That’s followed by the solo piano showcase (with little bits of bass and percussion in the background) “Random Thoughts.” The album ends with “Resemblance,” a modal jazz tune featuring Mike Lawrence on flugelhorn, Jeremy Steig on flute, three trombonists (Ed Bryne, Barry Rogers, and Lynn Welshman), Eddie Martinez on electric piano, Ron Carter on bass and Steve Gadd on drums. The horns still come charging in from time to time, but for the most part it’s a moody, late-night groove with sensitive flute and flugelhorn solos, the electric piano keeping things on track as Gadd delivers ultra-precise fills not unlike what he’d do two years later on Steely Dan‘s “Aja.”

Unfinished Masterpiece‘s title is literal; Palmieri didn’t think it was done, at least not to his satisfaction, but Coco put it out anyway, causing a rift between him and the label. In some ways, it marked the end of his golden era; he signed with Epic in 1978, making one extremely ambitious and worthwhile album, Lucumi, Macumba, Voodoo, but as time went on, the audience got more conservative and he moved deeper into the realm of Latin jazz, still capable of getting dancers on the floor but more interested in complex charts and florid arrangements. So while Unfinished Masterpiece may not have the reputation that Vamonos Pa’l Monte or The Sun of Latin Music do, it’s very much worth hearing, the sound of a maverick genius at the peak of his powers. Honestly, I can’t imagine what else he thought it needed.

LINEAGE: 1975 Coco Records CLP-120 vinyl; Pro-Ject RM-5SE with Audio Tecnica Signet TK7E cartridge; Speedbox power supply; Pro-Ject Tube Box S2 preamp; Audioquest Black Mamba and Pangea Premier interconnect cables; RME Babyface Pro interface ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 192khz; (probably) Click Repair; further clicks and pops removed manually with Adobe Audition 3.0; dithered and resampled using iZotope RX Advanced. Converted to FLAC in either Trader’s Little Helper or dBPoweramp. Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename, Replay Gain tags added in Foobar2000. Transfered in winter 2022, prepared very gradually and finished in summer 2024!

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