Deep in the Stacks: Your Daily Jazz LP Podcast
Every day, Danny from Kissa Kissa -- the Japanese-style jazz vinyl bar in Crown Heights, Brooklyn -- pulls one album from the stacks and tells you who made it, why it matters, and what to listen for. Three minutes, one record you need to hear. Calendar-driven picks tied to recording dates and artist birthdays, plus deep cuts from the Kissa Kissa collection.
Deep in the Stacks: Your Daily Jazz LP Podcast
Acid — Ray Barretto (Fania, 1968)
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In 1963, Ray Beretto scored a top 20 pop hit with a song called El Watusi, a novelty single that sold a million copies and nearly derailed his career. Five years later, he made the album that proved he was never a novelty act. He called it Acid. This is Deep in the Stacks. Today's album, Acid by Ray Beretto. Barretto was born in Brooklyn to Puerto Rican parents and fell in love with percussion after hearing jazz records as a teenager. He served in the army, came home, and worked his way through the Latin music and jazz circuits, playing congas alongside everyone from Tito Puente to Red Garland. By the mid-60s, he'd become a leading figure in Boogaloo, a sound born in New York City's barrios that fused Afro-Cuban rhythms with soul and RB. In 1967, he signed with Fa Nya Records and assembled the Rey Barreto Orchestra, a conjunto style band built for dance floors. Acid was the first album, recorded with no overdubs, produced by Harvey Avernay. The personnel reads like a new Eurekan dream team: Roberto Rodriguez and René Lopez on trumpets, Orestes Villato on Timbales, Louis Cruz on piano, Bobby Rodriguez on bass, and Adalberto Santiago handling Spanish vocals. The title track pulses with clave-driven intensity, while A Deeper Shade of Soul became the album's most enduring moment, later sampled by Urban Dance Squad for their 1990 hit. But the record is bigger than any single track. It bridges the boogaloo craze and the salsa explosion that would arrive in the 70s, catching Berretto at the exact moment when all his influences, jazz, Cuban music, soul, funk, converged into something new. Fahnya released it in February of 1968 and it became a bestseller. Drop the needle on a deeper shade of soul. It opens with a groove that sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday. The interplay between Berretto's congas and Velato's timbales creates a rhythmic conversation that never lets up. The whole album rewards close listening to the percussion, but flip to the title track Acid for a completely different energy. It's raw, more urgent, built enclave with Santiago's vocals cutting through the heat. What makes this record special is that nothing on it sounds calculated. Eight musicians in a room, no overdubs, playing like a unit. Cruz's piano and Bobby Rodriguez's bass lock-in with the percussion section so tightly you stop hearing individual parts and start hearing one organism. This is New York City in 1968, pressed into vinyl. Acid by Ray Barretto. The record that proved Boogaloo could be art and the dance floor could be a laboratory. I'm Danny from Kissa Kissa in Brooklyn. Go put on a record. We'll see you tomorrow.