Willie Colón: Todo Tiene Su Final

I've got a spicy question to kick us off today.

Oh I love spicy. Give me them school bos.

Okay, as besties, what is the biggest fight that you and I have had that we're willing to share publicly? We're recording, remember this is a podcast.

I can tell you the biggest fight we've had that I'm willing to talk about on the mike.

That was not the question. I think the biggest fight we've ever gotten into is what do you define as orange on a lip? I define as orange on a yeah, yes, yes, you're right.

It's are our fights, you know, because we really do get along and we actually know how to communicate as friends. But I feel like our fights are definitely make up related, like your eyeliner placement and you want it longer and thicker. And if this is red, then what's orange? Our quotes I've heard you say so, yeah, it's lipstick, it's lipstick.

In line of grass, I will say that we are both perfectionist when it comes to our craft, and even though Joseph is technically the expert at makeup and skincare, I do consider myself an elevated applicator. You are you know what you are and I'm pretty good at doing makeup. We end up.

Collabing really well because you usually just give in exactly.

Joseph. When we do get in a fight, which is rare and usually about stupid shit like what color lipstick I want to wear on TV that day? How would you describe yourself in a sight? Are you the aggressor do you retreat?

You know, I guess when I'm really in the moment, it's my ego talking and I've just determined what I'm going to use, right, because I feel like we're really good communicators. I feel like after I've just kind of settled down and you're just kind of like, I know what you're saying, and it's in this light and blah blah blah, I can kind of see the bigger picture, and I don't admit defeat because then I will understand what you're saying.

Now, I'm just trying to convince you to wear what I want. Yeah, I was it. You definitely do not. To somebody that doesn't know you, it would appear that you are backing down, but you're actually not. You're like string, You're only strengthening your position, right, And then you're doing like some kind of weird circumventing to get me to believe what you said is right, and then I think I'm actually right. But no, you guys, it was just

I'm a beauty gas lighter. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that.

One hundred percent. Anyway, the reason we're digging up old graves here isn't for any nefarious purposes.

Oh no, that's a wrong kind of spicy ew I said, nefarious purposes.

Anyway. The point is besties we fight. I mean, sometimes we just get on each other's nerves.

And sometimes you get so close that when you do butt heads it becomes life or death.

And when we last left Wrikolon, he found not just a front man for his Latin jazz orchestra.

But something of an artistic soulmate, h the Nikki Jam to his daddy Yankee.

Exactly, and together they would release nine full length albums over six years. Basically, they were the secret Sauce to Funya success, ushering in the age of Salsa.

But sometimes when you change the game, you end up wanting to be the only.

Player, especially when the game gets to your teammate's head. Today we're taking a look at how Willie and Hector redefined Latin music before going their separate ways.

We better not separate, which we're for Eva, We're bad girls for life.

I'm your host Lillianavoskar and I'm Joseph Carrio and this is Becoming an Icon a weekly podcast where we give you the rundown on how today's most famous latinv stars have shaped pop culture and given the world some extra level. Sit back and get comfortable.

Because we are going in the only way we know how, with Buenas, Bibas.

Junasriesas, some and a lot of opinions as we relive their greatest achievements on our journey to find out what makes them so iconic. Hector Martinez knew he would end up being kind of a big deal. He was born in Ones in nineteen forty six to a very musical family.

His mother sang, his uncle played the trece, his father sang and played guitar, and big fans his grandfather saying controversial protests.

His father was a mechanic, His father was a mechanic. His father's sister was a mechanic. Like when Hector cried as a baby. He did it in key, so no surprise. When he was a teenager, his music teacher could tell he had what it takes and took him under his wing.

Teach taught him the meaning of stage presence, and by age seventeen, Hector had ditched school and was singing in a ten piece band.

In nineteen sixty three, he and the band chased their dreams to New York, where mambo mania was still in full effect. That's where he met Willie Colonne at the Ponces Social Club, named for the very city Hector hailed from, and after joining the band and signing to Fania Records, Hector dond his stage name Hector Lovo, a play on lavos.

Labo you know that Puerto Rican Spanish where you leave off to the ends of the words like labo labos.

Y'all, I heard you saying weeppa in episode one. You're one of us now. And by the way, we are not the only people that do that, but yes, one hundred percent, that is totally why.

So Lavon Polonne formed a duo. Levo brought lavos and Cologne brought danois.

Or at least that's how the old guard of Latin jazz felt about the duo's music. AKA. While most Latin jazz orchestras up until that point were more or less purest Gologne took the jazz part to its logical conclusion.

He kept things modern and mixed little bits of rock, funk and soul and R and B into his band's.

Repertoire, along with distinctly Puerto Rican sounds such as Kibara, bomba and Lena.

There was still plenty to satisfy long time Latin jazz listeners, but mambo Mania pretty much got killed by Beatlemania. Case in point, the legendary Palladium Ballroom closed that year after losing its liquor.

License, which meant it was time for something new, and with their fusion approach to Latin jazz, Willi and Hector established themselves decisively as the next generation of Latin musicians in the United States.

Starting with nineteen sixty seven's e La Malo and nineteen sixty eights The Hustler.

These albums did two things right away.

First, they debuted the duo's mafioso steeze.

I highly encourage you guys to look up these covers online. We're looking at the pictures right now, and on first glance you're like, wait a second, what is this? Is this like a mafia Godfather gone Puerto Rican?

Wait?

Do you know what? We need? This?

Me and you red shurtleneck, black blazers. We're going that's it. This is our new becoming an icon season three cover.

Or we should just go dressed as weely go On and Hector Levau for Halloween. Shut your butt, that's what we're doing. It's very, very good.

Right.

So the cover for Hustler has Wheeli, Hector and members of the band crowded around this pool table and dapper suits. It looks like they're maybe so Frank Sinatra. It's very the god Okay, Godfather, Yeah, it's very Godfather. They're holding SIGs maybe Wait is that a lot of cash? It is? I think they're betting. All bets are on here. So

Boogleoo combined the call and response vocals of Cuban Son with the harder, faster rhythms of soul.

Example, I like it like that. In Layman's terms, it was easy to sing along to and even better, easy to dance to, which is exactly what you want to set off a dance craze.

And just for a minute, that's exactly what Boogleloo did. The genre formed common ground between Latino and Black American club goers in the sixties, giving the old guard of Latin jazz a run for their money.

So much so that, rumor has it, the old heads tried to keep boogaloo down as the style and the younger musicians playing it started to crowd out the mambo bands. Those old Latin artists supposedly pressured booking agents and promoters to blacklist the younger bands from music venues. Why do old people hate young people so much, you know what? Because it enforces change. And ultimately Boogoloo was short lived, but Willie and Hector and Fania along with them, rode

And with their next album, nineteen sixty nine Guisandro, they heralded the coming of Salza.

Now we've talked about what makes salsa salsa on the show before back in our Celia Cruz Trio. Celia Cruz herself said, salsa is Cuban music with another name. It's mambo, chacacha, rumba son all the Cuban rhythms under one name.

People have also argued over whether satsa actually describes a genre or if it's just a marketing term.

Oh my god, I was so young back then.

In April of this year twenty twenty four has been long bitch, I.

Could not agree more so anyway, og Sansa is musically not so far off from the Latin jazz that came before. That's why elder statespersons of Latin music like Diepo and Celia Cruz could slot so easily into the salsa revolution.

But there's one thing that sets satsa apart from the crowd pleasing big bands of Latin jazz. Yester years attitude grit category is street life realness.

Ooh, I want to see what you come up with for that. The Latin jazz of the post war years was all glitz and glamour, not unlike a Havannah nightclub. But Salza she was from the streets. The Puerto Rican music journalist Jamie Torres writes this the Colonna valduo outlined a sound of their own, a revolutionary salta in which the smell of garbage accumulated in the corner of the ghetto, the aroma of marijuana captivating damn like sounds like my house.

He also wrote that you could hear the screams of naked children in the alley, sex workers clapping back at their pimps, and the wish for happiness among the Bourrigua diaspora.

If you listen to our episode on Los Digres del Norte, there's actually a bit of similarity with Corridos. Many of Willy and Hector's songs were just stories about what was going on around them. Like the title track of Guisando.

Hector sings about a pickpocket named Vincent who sticks his hand in a purse and finds not a wallet but a mouse trap, and Hector basically tells him, you're doing amazing, sweetie.

He sings, keep sticking your hand where it doesn't belong, and who knows what you'll find next. It's very sassy, and they get just as real on Noma. Then Candela a song about neighborhood gossip and the evil eye child. Did you grow up hearing about El Maldeo?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think like everyone well I don't know everyone knew that, but yes, and Maldo Woe people would wear evil eyes like all that good stuff.

It does go to show you how connected Really and Hector were to the culture of New York and that connection would deepen over four more albums, Go Sandestra, Why are you going to Have? Saw Christmas? La Grande Fuga, and El Huisio. They also kept up the Mafioso Steve. Let's talk about these covers. These covers are giving straight up criminal, maybe organized criminal, but criminal. Nonetheless, Joseph has nothing to say for the first time in his life.

Yes, but also you know what, the one, the super Mafioso one, I mean that kind of looks like a Tom Ford campaign.

The one where he's basically holding up what looks like a bag that would hold over yeah with go sanuestra. You guys, he's literally standing under what is the Brooklyn Bridge? I'm not sure. It looks like a bridge in New York. Let's just call it a Brooklyn bridge. He looks like he's standing under a bridge with a body that he just pulled out from the East River.

And then about we're about to throw down because there's a weight and you see that.

Oh shit, he's about to throw that motherfucker in the river.

Yeah, what kind of message were they sending? Do not come for us unless we send for that ass.

Willi and Hector were the biggest names in salsa, which made it all the more shocking when they decided to go their separate ways. After a string of genre defining albums, Willi and Hector released nineteen seventy three's Lomato, their eighth album as a duo and their fourth album to reach gold certification.

By this record, everything had fallen into place musically. Hector's vocals were living up to his stage name. On record and on stage, he was playful, acrobatic, and unmistakable.

The same could be said of released trombone playing, he could lay down distinctive hooks like the iconic horn line on La Murga and find the perfect way for different styles of salsa music to fold into a each other. And whereas Boogaloo ended up being a passing craze, Sadza had become an undisputed force in Latin music.

But between Willie and Hector things were turning sour, and you could hear it on the record. The Bad Boys always had some dark lyrics, but the backstreet tales on Lomato were a little less playful and a little more grim.

Whereas Guisando told a tale of come up ins for a petty thief, Gaye Luna Gaya Sol presented the barrio as a place where no one lives peacefully, where you have to watch your words and keep your eyes ahead to keep your life fun. Fact, this wasn't a song about New York, but about two streets in La Perla, the same poor neighborhood in San Juan, where a little under two decades later, Puerto Rican b Regaton would hatch at a little club called The Noise.

These parallels are wild, y'all, But let's talk about the album cover Willie's holding a sleepy Yehito at gunpoint. The full title says, I'll kill him if you don't buy this record.

The story here is that this is actually a reference to a famous National Lampoon magazine cover where a dog is held at gunpoint. If you don't buy this magazine, We'll kill this dog. And they say comedy doesn't a twelve. I mean all of this shit is dark. Yeah right. The album is dark, The comedy is dark, the magazine cover is dark. But perhaps the most revealing track on it might be Dodo piennes sufinad. Everything has its ending.

Everything has its ending, and the Bad Boys partnership was about to end in bad blood.

Since the day Willie met him, Hector Levau had been a playful, somewhat childlike person, maybe even a little immature, some might say. And in the music business of the seventies, let alone just New York in the seventies, a person like Hector, he.

Didn't stand a chance. As coke became the drug of choice, both on the streets and behind the closed doors of the record label offices, Hector fell into the trap.

Addiction turned the playful singer with whom Willy had formed a close bond into a hostile, unpredictable person.

You could kind of see it from the jump, the whole oh you don't want me to join the band thing.

But the drugs amplified all of Hector's worst qualities. According to Willy, quote he didn't want the party to end. He wanted to go on and on and on and on, quote unquote. Friends started arriving with gifts, saying try this, try that.

Not that Willy abstained completely. This is el Malow we're talking about. But some people just can't say no. And Hector was one of those people.

And by nineteen seventy four, Hector no showed at several concerts, were pissed and sober. Concert promoters, many of whom had direct connections with the mob.

Those good fellow ass record covers weren't just for Steeze. The music biz had mafiosos up plenty, and if you lost them money, they'd make sure you lost something of.

Yours, anything from a prize belonging to a loved one to a limb and what's more, the music was suffering. Hector couldn't be counted on to show up to rehearsals. Willy rehearsed with the orchestra on his own, and when Hector showed up to record, they just went with the first take and hurried him out.

Real talk, though it says a lot that he could just nail the first take and move.

On absolutely, and that's probably why Willy and Hector managed to continue on as long as they did. His talent was second to none, but his absence from concerts was a straw that ultimately broke the camel's back.

Because the mafia probably threatened to break Willie's back.

That and the fans were happy, and so was everyone who worked with him. Hector and Willie would co build just one more album, nineteen seventy five's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

And as we learned with Daddy Yankee, just because you got in the booth to lay down vocals, doesn't mean you were in the same room with.

The other guy, right. And as Willy expanded his footprint as a producer over the seventies, he would still produce Hector's albums to great sonic and commercial success, but personally

I have known you to be a lot of things, but a liar. You are not a mena.

I'm not a Menidos, but I am a stan whatever whatever.

But actually I would tell you this, I would like to have seen the story of Hector, like against the obstacles of the industry, you know, I would have liked to see that, because that really is you need to go through those challenges and you know, like highlighting the drug aspect, like yeah, that was a big part of it, but there was just so much more.

Totally. It is not easy to exist and grow up in the music industry in any decade. Every every decade has its own devils, right, And for the sixties and seventies when they were growing up, it was drugs and mafia, and that was kind of the end for that. You know.

I just wonder, like, how can you distance yourself from a friend or collaborator and still like how can you still work with someone and still care about them?

Okay, so let's pretend we're in a therapy session. If you were telling me about an abusive boyfriend. Damien. His name is not dam I e n. He lives at eighty seven Park Place, New York, New York. That's a fake address, by the way. What I'm saying is how I think you have to do it for yourself, right, I think you say listen, like, I'm on my own game. I can't bring all this chaos and catastroph into my own life. It's what does my therapist tell me, Not

It's just, you know, I sometimes think it's just so hard, especially when you've had to come up with someone like really you know, they learn so much about each about themselves, and you know, just leaving that behind, or like having to leave someone you came up with behind, it's just so it's your past, it's who you also are.

Yeah, I know, but you know what. Michelle Obama I think, has a super famous quote about this where even though they grew up with you came up with you. Not everybody is ready for the ride, right, Like, not everyone is ready for the ride. And if you want to get to where your ultimate success and destination is, not everyone is in the car. Sorry, you're in my car.

I know.

Maybe we're in a coop. It's two seeds. That's it. That's it. So after the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the Bad Boys were no more.

Oh but some of Willy Colan's most iconic collaborations were still ahead.

Far from being lost with that as longtime collaborator, Willie found a new fire after the Bad Boys parted ways, and nineteen seventy seven ended up being a big year for him. The year we went Big Willi Style. Yes, let's go with that, okay. So the Willy Colon sound aka a gleeful mix of musical styles and instrumentations from all over Latin America smushed into the framework of Afro Cuban rhythms, shall now be referred to as Big Willie Style. Does that work for you? So happy?

Nineteen seventy seven the year that Cologne shared the wealth of his Big Willi Style with a bunch of different vocalists on the final label.

Resulting in some of the most exciting salsa recordings to come out of that era. If you listen to our Celia episodes, you'll remember the audaciously titled only They could Have made This.

Album, an album where La Rena ditched the classic cavana big band sound for the smoother, more eclectic styles that Willy had developed over the decade.

Cologne skills as an arranger and producer empowered Celia to show a different side of her powerhouse vocals. There were excursions into samba and Panamanian thambod along with classic bolero, merengue and more.

This record was Willy's biggest creative challenge yet, but not just for musical reasons. He was working with the real life legends straight from La Isla.

Thematically, so much of Willy Colon's music had dealt with the relationship between New yorka on the island of Puerto Rico, a geographic gap more than fifteen hundred miles wide and for a second generation mainlander like Cologne, several fathoms deep.

Celia, meanwhile, was approaching her second decade of exile following the nineteen fifty nine Cuban Revolution. These two came from different worlds, and yet they shared a common feeling of estrangement.

No surprise then, that these two penn Latinos and estadosunidos a call for unity among us bound Latinos. Seriously, if you haven't yet, please go back and listen to our Celia episodes for more on this incredible movement in the culture.

Celia and Willie would produce three albums together in total. Not only that, Willi and Celia would come to see each other as family after send Us passing decades later in two thousand and three, it was Willie who organized her massive funeral in NYC.

But this wasn't the only partnership that Willi formed after he parted ways with fellow bad boy Hector Leveau.

After recording one track for nineteen seventy fives to Good Debat and the Ugly Pannumanian singer Ruben Blades decided to keep working with Willie.

He had big shoes to fill after willie string of albums with Hector, but Rubin and Willie's collaborations would turn out to be some of both artists defining work.

Between nineteen seventy seven and nineteen eighty two, the two would release four albums Mentien do Mano, Ciembra, concerne Es, Sola de los Abrios, and The Last Fight not the Last One in English the Last Fight.

These albums are the epitome of salsa dura's socially conscious lyrics. Because remember nineteen seventy seven. Is it just the year of Willy Colann's creative zenith. It's also the year of New York City's lowest point.

The burning of the South Bronx, citywide blackouts, the Son of Sam murders, the Apple was rotting, and unities like Willie's were hit the hardest.

These albums told it like it was. Ciambra in particular is a bona fide classic of the genre. The scent ripples beyond New York and all throughout the Americas, especially it's standout track, Pedro Navaja.

The story of a knife wielding killer with a gold tooth who gets the jump on a call girl, only for the call girl to pull a gun on him that you end up killing one another, only for a beggar to come by and take the knife and pistol along with two dollars.

Wow. Musically, the song is full of key changes, the sound of police sirens and an ironic West Side Story reference out of contacts. The song's refrain La Vida de da Pressa's basically, life comes at you fast. Sounds like something your abuela might tell you in a calming type of way, but in.

The song, it sounds like a warning. You don't know what's coming around the next corner.

And maybe Uruben and Willie didn't know what was coming when the song got so big across the Americas that it spawned two feature films and a stage musical, and.

They sure didn't know the album Cimra would end up causing it another beef decades later between Willy and a singer.

But that's next time, y'all. The beef must wait on the next. Becoming an Icon, Willi Colonne flies solo in more ways than one. Becoming an Icon is presented by Sonoo and Iheart's Michael Duda podcast Network. Listen to Becoming an Icon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast