SONG OF THE DAY

“Rumba Azul” by The Lecuona Cuban Boys (Lecuona Cuban Boys, Vol. 4 (1932–1936), Har­le­quin Records, 1994, orig­i­nally released on Vic­tor Records some­time in the mid-30s). Com­posed by Armando Oréfiche.

WHERE I HEARD Â IT

Well, this song really took me for a ride! I heard it dur­ing the “New-Year’s-Eve-party-in-Germany-1943″ scene of the film Aimee & Jaguar, and thought “WOW! Great song! Let’s go straight to the cred­its!” and the cred­its listed the song as titled “Rumba Hin­dou”. At first google glance, that title only revealed a dozen or so search results, and they were all about the film, noth­ing lead­ing me back to an album or com­pi­la­tion or arti­cle or any­thing about the Lecuona Cuban Boys. That made me ques­tion the integrity of the infor­ma­tion about the title of the track, since there’s no way a band from the 1930’s and 1940’s recorded a song espe­cially for a film from 1999; the track had to exist some­where other than this soundtrack!

So then I went on amazon.com into the mp3 sec­tion and lis­tened to every song with the word “rumba” in the title that the Lecuona Cuban Boys had on that site. I could hear in the movie that the word “rumba” was being repeated over and over again, so I knew at least that to be true. “Rumba Inter­na­cionale” — NO. “Rumba Tam­bah” — NO. “Rum­bas Cubanas” — NO.

So, then I just searched the web for the artist, think­ing that maybe they were really unknowns so that’s why their songs wouldn’t even be on ama­zon. But I dis­cov­ered that they had a wikipedia arti­cle, and this arti­cle said that the band also per­formed under the name Havana Cuban Boys. So then I searched for “Havana Cuban Boys rumba” on ama­zon, and this time found dif­fer­ent rumba titles. And now I’ve found it! The “Rumba Azul”! When I lis­ten to that part of the film again, I can now hear the lead singer say­ing “rumba azul”! Nice!

But the Havana Cuban Boys ver­sion is faster than the one in the movie—-I want the one in the movie! So, long shot here, I google “Lecuona Cuban Boys Rumba Azul” since I know that’s def­i­nitely the song title and I’m think­ing the sound­track may have at least been cor­rect in the artist. Results! The youtube.com video that resulted was exactly the con­fir­ma­tion I needed!! My hunch was right! The ver­sion used in the film was by the orig­i­nal band, Lecuona Cuban Boys, not their later incarnation.

So then I wanted to know why the song hadn’t come up when I searched ama­zon for “Lecuona Cuban Boys Rumba”. Well, because I was search­ing in MP3s, and the song had not yet been con­verted to MP3. But it was clearly show­ing up on old, unavailable-for-purchase, com­pi­la­tion albums by the band, so it was def­i­nitely settled.

You may think the 45 min­utes I spent last night scour­ing the inter­net for this song was not worth it, but I do. This song is bril­liant, intox­i­cat­ing and fun. I sim­ply love it. It’s been played on repeat since I found it, and was on repeat in my head all night after I was off my com­puter. It led to fun dreams of good times, and made for a great early morn­ing! Just lis­ten to the video below and I’m sure you’ll see why the effort was worth it too!

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

- The Lecuona Cuban Boys was a pop­u­lar Cuban orches­tra which toured the world for over forty years.

- The band was founded by Ernesto Lecuona, whose role was that of a patron-entrepreneur. He did not actu­ally play with the band, but some­times gave a piano recital before the band played.

- The core of the band was put together in 1931 as Orquesta Encanto; the band changed name early in 1934.

- On tour in Europe, in 1934, Lecuona returned to Cuba, and Armando Oréfiche took charge of the band in Europe. Ernesto gave them the gift of his name, which, at the time, was a prop­erty well worth hav­ing, and the right to use a num­ber of his compositions.

- The LCB was excep­tional strong in arrange­ments, com­po­si­tions and instru­men­tal qual­ity (most of them could play two or three instru­ments). Their only weak spot was the lack of a really first-rate Cuban singer, but that was not so impor­tant as might seem because they played so often to non-Latin audi­ences. Some of their pick-up singers could sing in Eng­lish, and many of their num­bers were instrumentals.

- The band played the full range of Cuban pop­u­lar music, but their spe­cial­ity was the conga. Though it was per­haps Eliseo Grenet who first com­posed a conga in its ball­room dance style, it was cer­tainly the LCB who took it round the world and made it famous.

- The LCB was there­fore the first con­junto to use the conga drum reg­u­larly in its per­for­mances, and not Arse­nio Rodríguez, as is often supposed.

- The band ini­tially orga­nized itself as a col­lec­tive, but in prac­tice Armando Oréfiche (com­poser, arranger, pianist) was the leader.

- Other band mem­bers were Ernesto ‘Jaruco’ Vázquez (trum­peter, gui­tarist, com­poser, arranger); Adal­berto ‘Chiq­uito’ Oréfiche (tenor sax and bongo); Agustin Bruguera (tim­bales, conga, voice); Ger­ardo Bruguera (tenor sax and clar­inet); Jesús Bertomeu (trom­bone); Jorge Domínguez (alto sax, clar­inet, vio­lin); Daniel González (alto sax, clar­inet, vio­lin); Guillermo Hernández (gui­tar, tumba, guiro, mara­cas); Enrique López Rivero (trum­pet) 1932 34; Alberto Rabagliati (voice) engaged 1934; later Fer­nando Díaz and Luis Escalante were engaged as replace­ment trumpeters.

- The band toured through­out the world: the USA, Latin Amer­ica and Europe were the main tours.

- When World War II broke out, the band went to Latin Amer­ica and con­tin­ued their tour­ing there.

- After WWII there was a dis­pute within the band, which ended in a split.

- Armando Oréfiche left with a few mem­bers, and started the Havana Cuban Boys; the rest stayed under the old name, based in New York until 1960.

- The Lecuona Cuban Boys con­tin­ued to tour, and finally retired in 1975.

VIDEO OF THE DAY