Written by Max Salazar, Foreword by Al Angeloro

     No other American music has been so haphazardly documented as Latin music. Yes, you read that sentence correctly -- this music, whose roots run back to Cuba, Puerto Rico, Spain, and Africa, is American music. But unlike jazz, soul, blues, or rock 'n' roll, you have to look hard to find any authoritative work on this sound that grew out of the melting pot of New York City. That's where historian Max Salazar's Mambo Kingdom begins, and through dozens of interviews with figures great and small, the book traces the arc of Latin music from its inception at neighborhood socials in turn-of-the-century East (Spanish) Harlem through the glitzy mambo era to rise of salsa in the gritty '70s. A journalist and radio show host intimately connected with the music for more than 50 years, Salazar draws upon primary sources to get at the daily details of the development of the music that was to take over the globe. The 40-plus chapters are reprinted from Salazar's articles for Latin Beat and other magazines, mostly from the late '90s. But the interviews themselves stretch back three decades or more. Through his friendship with bandleader and vocalist Frank "Machito" Grillo, Salazar learned stories of the music's early days from those who were there -- Miguelito Valdes, onetime vocalist with Xavier Cugat's orchestra and one of the first Latin heartthrobs to find fame in the U.S.; Alberto Socarras, one of the most sought-after Latino musicians of the 1930s; Gabriel Oller, proprietor of El Barrio's venerable Spanish Music Center record shop; and many others. His own recollections of the Palladium, the dance hall that defined Latin music in New York during the mambo era in the '50s, and later trends in the music lend the weight of experience to his observations. He speaks with the wife of famed vocalist Tito Rodriguez, the longtime director of the Tito Puente orchestra, and sidemen who relay the unvarnished truth about the big stars and big rivalries. Best of all, Salazar is a gracious interviewer who lets his subjects speak for themselves, and often. The only caveat with Mambo Kingdom is that it only occasionally follows up on its subjects, many of whom have passed away since the original printing of these articles. But the value of the documents that result from Salazar's labors -- rare English-language primary source material -- makes them invaluable to both the scholar and the casual fan of Latin music. Mark Schwartz