Wild Thing (1968) is the only disc Cuban percussionist Armando Peraza (1924-2014) released under his own name during his lifetime. It is also the fifth disc released on the short-lived Skye Recordings, the label founded earlier that year by musicians Gary McFarland, Cal Tjader and Gabor Szabo. If it did nothing other than offer a calling card for the percussionist’s abilities, Peraza simply couldn’t have come up with a better one than the wonderful Wild Thing.
Peraza originally got his start in the music world by filling in for fellow Cuban and friend Mongo Santamaria (1917-2003) at a performance in Mexico in May 1948. Santamaria later helped bring Peraza to the United States, where the two performed as part of Mongo Santamaria’s Cuban Black Diamonds. Peraza eventually settled in San Francisco, where musical doors started opening up for him right away.
He became house percussionist at Slim Galliard’s supper club and toured with the singer and multi-instrumentalist for two years. Then, in 1950, Galliard asked pianist Dave Brubeck to let Peraza sit in with his trio, which at the time, included Cal Tjader. The band was an instant hit with the audience. “Peraza broke the place up”.1 Coincidentally, the occasion served as Tjader’s very first taste of Cuban music – and he was hooked.
For Tjader’s second outing as a solo artist, Cal Tjader Plays Afro-Cuban (1955), the “vibist” recorded with a band that included Richard Wyands on piano and maracas, Jerome Richardson on flute and maracas, Al Kibbon on bass and Armando Peraza on bongos and conga, followed shortly thereafter by Ritmo Caliente! Hot Rhythm, credited to the “Cal Tjader Mambo Quintet” (also with the percussionist).
Peraza would join the George Shearing Quintet that year, recording and touring the country with the pianist for the next 11 years. He also contributed a number of originals to the Shearing songbook – including “Mambo in Miami” (later covered by Tjader), “Te Arango la Cabeza” and “Barandanga” – often by whistling the tunes for Shearing to transpose.
The percussionist would continue working with Tjader for about seven years during this period, notably contributing what is surely his best-known and most memorable song, “Maramoor” (a.k.a. “Maramoor Mambo”) to the vibraphonist’s hit album Soul Sauce (1964).
Skye issued Peraza’s Wild Thing – the second release in what the label dubbed its “Discovery Series” (the first was drummer Grady Tate’s vocal debut Windmills of Your Mind) – in August 1968. The model would seem to be the popular Latin jazz records of Mongo Santamaria on Columbia released during the period: a mix of Latinized pop covers and lively group originals.
The covers include The Troggs’ 1966 hit “Wild Thing,” Wilson Pickett’s 1967 take on “Funky Broadway,” and Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Mony Mony” (1968).
Peraza provided two of his own songs (“Red Onions,” a.k.a. “Armando’s Quajira,” and “Viva Peraza,” which has since appeared on several funky Latin jazz-oriented compilations), while Tjader provided two (“Souled Out,” which Tjader first recorded the year before for his final Verve outing, The Prophet, and “Al Bajar el Sol,” which is unique to Wild Thing) and McFarland added the album’s closer, “Granny’s Samba,” which he first waxed on his 1966 Impulse album with Clark Terry, Tijuana Jazz.
Wild Thing was recorded over two days in June 1968 and features Peraza on congas and bongos with Chic(k) Corea or Mike Abene on piano, Chuck Rainey on electric bass, Bobby Rodriguez on bass, Donald MacDonald on drums, Tommy Lopez and Cal Tjader on percussion and a small horn section featuring Garnett Brown on trombone and Sadao Watanabe (whose earliest American credit was in McFarland’s 1965 quintet). Surprisingly – considering that two vibes players (Tjader and McFarland) produced the set – there are no vibes heard here.
As on the previously-noted Grady Tate album, Gary McFarland shares arranging duties with Mike Abene (although McFarland’s hand is evident on “Souled Out” and “Granny’s Samba,” and possibly “Red Onions,” too).
Most of the players had previously worked with one another: Tjader and Peraza had a long history together, while Peraza worked with Corea and Rodriguez on Tjader’s 1967 Creed Taylor-produced disc Along Comes Cal, and Tjader had recorded several months earlier with Abene, Rodriguez, Rainey and McFarland for his own Skye debut, Solar Heat.
Aside from Peraza, other soloists include Corea on piano (“Wild Thing,” “Viva Peraza”), Abene on electric piano (“Red Onions,” “Viva Peraza”), Watanabe on alto sax (“Funky Broadway,” and, in his signature style, “Granny’s Samba”), either Watanabe or Johnny Pacheco on flute (“Mony Mony,” “Viva Peraza”) and, on “Al Bajar el Sol,” trombonist Garnett Brown, whose solo here anticipates the shells trombonist Steve Turre would later employ.
The record is an unfettered joy that is only hindered by its brevity and its lone standing in Peraza’s discography. But just as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared again, never to be followed up. Skye’s financial difficulties probably prevented Peraza from waxing further solo efforts, if indeed he ever wanted to.
As it turns out, though, Wild Thing was never intended to launch Peraza on to a solo career. The record was considered a sort of “payback” from Cal Tjader, who, at the time, was in a position to repay a debt from much earlier in both men’s careers.
The 1955 album noted above, Cal Tjader Plays Afro-Cuban “was originally supposed to [have been] my album,” Peraza said in 2007, “since I had selected the music and musicians for it. Unfortunately for me, the album was too good and [Fantasy] decided to give it to Cal…. During that era in America, the record companies could make more money and have an easier time marketing an album if a white guy fronted the record or band.”2
All these years later, It’s difficult to know just how realistic such reasoning might be. But as Tjader’s star was already on the rise in 1955, the producers may have felt his name was more bankable than Peraza’s. In any event, Tjader felt enough responsibility for the slight to provide Peraza with his very own album after all those years.
“Tjader signed Peraza to a Skye contract,” according to S. Duncan Reid in his tremendous biography of Cal Tjader, “hand-picked all of the musicians, helped out on percussion and, save for the conguero’s originals, ‘Red Onions’ (a.k.a. ‘Armando’s Guajira’)and ‘Viva Peraza,’ chose the tunes as well.”3
Many years later, when Peraza was praised for Wild Thing, the percussionist seemed to marvel: “You know how long it took us to make that record? Four hours. I didn’t sign anything with that company, they just gave the musicians and me some money. … I probably could have made more records, but I was never a person capable of being a leader. That’s not me. No, man. Why would I want to be the leader of all those guys and Chick Corea? We’re all the leader.”4
Wild Thing‘s “Red Onions” was covered especially well (in an electrifying Tom Harrell arrangement) by Pete and Coke Escovedo’s Latin-rock group Azteca on the second of the group’s three LPs, Pyramid of the Moon (1973). The song was also covered by the Cal Tjader Quintet as “Armando’s Quajira” on the 1990 CD release titled Latin + Jazz = Cal Tjader, a disc that claims an “original release date” of 1968 (likely when the live date was originally recorded), but no such disc was released at the time.
Peraza would briefly reunite with Mongo Santamaria for several recordings before famously joining the internationally successful group Santana – genuine rock stars at the time- for band and side projects, as well as multiple world tours (notably the 1973 Japanese tour that yielded the epic live album Lotus). Beginning with 1972’s Caravanserai (on which he is beautifully spotlighted on the disc’s “La Fuente del Ritmo”) through 1990’s Spirits Dancing in the Flesh, Peraza dazzled audiences and listeners for the unique sound he brought to the band.
“With the addition of conguero Armando Peraza,” wrote Hal Miller for the 2003 CD release of Santana’s Caravanserai, “Carlos not only found a dear friend and trusted advisor but also elevated beyond question the band’s claim to an Afro-Cuban pedigree. …Put quite simply, [Peraza] was and is an Afro-Cuban musical colossus whose place in the annals of percussion history is secure and altogether deserving of absolute veneration.”
Endnotes: