The story of Ricardo Ray and Bobby Cruz can be easily divided into two chapters: before and after their conversion to Christianity.

The duo's discography could easily yield two separate CDs in the La Herencia series. If their sessions for the Alegre, Tico and Vaya labels are a treasure trove of salsa gems, the albums that they recorded following 1975 showcase Christian swing at its most original, with a more mature Richie Ray fusing Afro-Caribbean rhythms with novel elements of jazz and classical music.

Richie and Bobby met as teenagers, growing together in Brooklyn. Their mothers, Cristina and Goyita, worked at a factory together. Richie and his brother Raymond were encouraged to play music by their father Pacífico. Bobby, on the other hand, discovered the feeling of bolero and the cadence of island culture during his childhood in Hormigueros, a tiny village on the Southeast corner of Puerto Rico.

In Brooklyn, they were bewitched by the spell of music and the realities of the street, at a time when young Latinos had to join a gang if they wanted to survive racial discrimination and violence towards Hispanics, particularly those of Puerto Rican origin.

Richie, trained in classical music at the Juilliard School Of Music, was the quiet one. Bobby, the leader of an orchestra where he played guitar and bass, knew more about life.

Together, they contributed to the development of salsa, a term that was used in the late '60s by Venezuelan radio DJ Phidias Danilo Escalona to describe the irresistible music that the duo was making during the era of the boogaloo and the shing-aling.

Bobby wrote the lyrics. Ricardo did the music and orchestrations. Their first albums for Fonseca Records secured them a lucrative contract with the Tico-Alegre label owned by Morris Levy, who delegated to Morris Perlsman, the unforgettable Pancho Cristal, the supervision of albums such as Se Soltó, Jala Jala y Boogaloo, Los Durísimos, Agúzate, and others.

LESS >