The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Read Free Page A

thigh, that muscle which intersected the clitoris and got all twisted, quivering ever so slightly when he’d kiss a woman there.) They tried a hundred poses, but the one that made the album cover was this: Cesar Castillo with wolfish grin, a conga drum strapped around his neck, his hand raised and coming down on the drum, his mouth open in a laugh, and his whole body bending toward Miss Vane. Her hands were clasped together by her face, her mouth forming an “Ooooh” of excitement, her legs bent for dancing, part of her garter showing; while to her left, Nestor, eyes closed and head tilted back, was blowing his trumpet. Later the artist who did the mechanicals for Orchestra Records would add a Manhattan skyline and a trail of one- and two-flagged notes spewing out of Nestor’s trumpet around them.
    Because Orchestra Records worked on the cheap, most of their recordings were 78s, though they also managed to put out a few party-size 33s, with four songs per side. In those days, most record players still had three speeds. Pressed in the Bronx, these 78s were made of a heavy but brittle plastic, never sold more than a few thousand copies each, and were to be found in botánicas —religious knickknack shops—alongside statues of Jesus Christ and his tormented disciples, and magic candles and curative herbs, and in record stores like the Almacén Hernández on 113th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem, and in bins in the street market and on tables manned by friends at dances. The Mambo Kings would put out fifteen of these 78s, selling for 69 cents each, between 1949 and 1956, and three long-playing 33s (in 1954 and 1956).
    The A and B sides of these 78s were titled “Solitude of My Heart,” “A Woman’s Tears,” “Twilight in Havana,” “The Havana Mambo,” “Conga Cats and Conga Dolls,” “The Sadness of Love,” “Welcome to Mamboland,” “Jingle Bells Mambo!” (“Who’s that fat jolly guy with the white beard dancing up a storm with that chick? . . . Santa Claus, Santa Claus dancing the ‘Jingle Bells Mambo!’ ”), “Mambo Nocturne,” “The Subway Mambo,” “My Cuban Mambo,” “The Lovers’ Mambo,” “ El Campesino, ” “Alcohol,” “Traffic Mambo,” “The Happy Mambo!,” “The New York Cha-cha-cha,” “Cuban Cha-cha,” “Too Many Women (and Not Enough Time!),” “Mambo Inferno!,” “ Noche Caliente, ” “Malagueña” (as cha-cha-cha), “ Juventud ,” “Solitude,” “Lovers’ Cha-cha-cha,” “How Delicious the Mambo!,” “Mambo Fiesta!,” “The Kissing Mambo!” (And the 33s: “Mambo Dance Party” and “Manhattan Mambo”—1954—and their full-length 33, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, June 1956.) Not only did the Mambo Kings feature winsome and beautiful Miss Mambo pinup girls on each of these records, but sometimes a dance instruction box was included. (By the mid-seventies, most of these records had vanished from the face of the earth. Whenever Cesar would go by a secondhand store or a “classic” record rack, he would search carefully for new copies to replace the ones that had gotten smashed or lent out or given away or just worn out and scratchy from so much use. Sometimes he found them for 15 cents or 25 cents and he would walk happily home, his bundle under his arm.)
    Now the narrow entranceway of Orchestra, where those records were made, was blocked off with boards, its windows filled with the remnants of what had become a dress shop; a few manikins were leaning backwards against the glass. But back then he and the Mambo Kings used to carry their instruments up the narrow stairway, their enormous string bass always banging against the walls. Beyond a red door marked STUDIO was a small waiting room with an office desk and a row of black metal chairs. On the wall, a corkboard filled with photographs of the record company’s other musicians: a singer named Bobby Soxer Otero; a pianist, Cole Higgins; and beside him, the majestic Ornette