专辑简介

“We all think he’s the greatest” said Pupi Campo in 1950, when talking about Stan Kenton. Campo was himself leader of one of the best Cuban bands on the rhumba and mambo circuit. “We’re all trying to copy Kenton.” One of the reasons the Latin leaders had come under the Kenton influence was that they had already been heavily influenced by Perez Prado, whom Campo named the Stan Kenton of Cuba. In 1949 Pupi Campo began contracting jazz musicians, and two of the first to be engaged were saxophonist Frank Socolow, who was with Artie Shaw at the time, and Johnny Mandel as arranger and soloist, who played both trombone and bass-trumpet. (Other notable arrangers were pianist Joe Loco and Tito Puente, who plays timbales on these recordings.) In 1950 Campo’s orchestra played jazz themes with a kind of undulating rhumba rhythm that was very popular with the dancing public. Pupi, an attractive and sophisticated man wo had married Betty Clooney (Rosemary’s younger sister), would often leave the bandstand while the orchestra was playing to dance with the most beautiful ladies present.