Although Richie Ray’s Jala Jala Boogaloo was probably the first release to mention “boogaloo,” and, according to Sabater, was the inspiration for Bang! Bang!, it’s still fair to say that Joe Cuba and his band developed the boogaloo (bugalú ) genre to a pitch that made it acceptable to even the most hardened old-school Cuban musicians and listeners. The success of this Joe Cuba album explains in some way how Latin funk and boogaloo came about. As neighbors, African-American and Puerto Rican New Yorkers had been enjoying each other’s parties and music for years. Many seminal vocalists—such as Sabater himself, Bobby Marin and others—spent the early 1950’s catching the doo-wop echoes on the Harlem stoops with the many street-corner vocal groups of the time. Meanwhile, doo-woppers such as the Harptones were giving a reciprocal tip of the hat to Cuban and Puerto Rican peers with songs such as Mambo Boogie and Hey Señorita. Sabater himself was once quoted as describing boogaloo as “just cha cha cha with a backbeat.”

This particular album contains Cuba’s biggest-selling record of all time, Bang! Bang! Push, Push, Push. The tune also was released as a seven-inch single and crossed over into the international pop charts. But there are other joys here that are too easily overlooked because of that title’s overarching success: check out singer Sabater’s salsa swing on "Malanga Brava" and "Así Soy"; or the descarga "Cocinando", where the musicians encourage each other “off-mike.” "Sock It To Me" and "Oh Yeah" carry the required contemporaneous Harlem swagger, while the title track is neatly restated near the end of the record in Push, Push, Push, just in case we’d forgotten how good Bang!Bang! sounded at the beginning!

Click on the album cover to learn more about this release. Now available in CD and MP3 at fania.com.