Jazz Articles

Our daily articles are carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. You can find more articles by searching our website, see what's trending on our popular articles page or read articles ahead of their published dates on our Coming Soon page. Read our daily album reviews.

Album Review

Willie Colon: Cosa Nuestra

Read "Cosa Nuestra" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
October 14, 2026

The 1950s and 1960s were years of dynamic change for the island of Puerto Rico, with rapid growth and light industrialization. But widespread unemployment also produced heavy migration to the United States and especially to the New York metropolitan area, the ethnic context in which Willie Colón's salsa was conceived. Colón and singer Hector Lavoe were at the music's forefront. Their collaboration in this recording Cosa Nuestra was especially noteworthy. The recording was a major commercial success and went gold. The ...

Album Review

Héctor Lavoe: La Voz

by Rob Garratt
June 24, 2023

Craft Recordings have been on a roll of late, following 2021's excellently presented Ornette Coleman boxset, Genesis of Genius, with 2023's Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds series and imminent Sonny Rollins set Go West!: The Contemporary Records Albums. So it is only natural that jazz-inclined audiophiles will start turning their attention to what other treasures the LA-based reissue specialists are digging out of the vaults. And so we arrive at Craft's new “special reissue" of salsa star ...

249

Album Review

Joe Cuba: A Man & His Music--El Alcalde del Barrio

Read "A Man & His Music--El Alcalde del Barrio" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
July 29, 2010

Exhaustive and exhausting (because you won't be able to stop dancing), A Man & His Music--El Alcalde del Barrio presents the first major retrospective of the 240 albums recorded by Joe Cuba, the Father of Latin boogaloo, and was released in February 2010 to commemorate the one year anniversary of his passing.Gilberto Navarro was born in early 1930s Spanish Harlem. Inspired by the storied Latin percussionist Sabu, he taught himself to jam on congas and eventually wound up ...

230

Album Review

Ray Barretto: Jazz

Read "Jazz" reviewed by Graham L. Flanagan

by Graham L. Flanagan
August 7, 2009

Although both of his parents were full-blooded Puerto Ricans, Ray Barretto was as American as they come. Born in Brooklyn, by the age of seven he had already resided in that borough, as well as Spanish Harlem and the Bronx. His biological lineage, combined with the place he was born and raised, gives new meaning to the concept of Latin jazz. Fania honors his legacy with a compilation featuring ten of the strongest works he recorded for the ...

518

Album Review

Willie Colon: The Player: A Man and his Music

Read "The Player: A Man and his Music" reviewed by Norman Weinstein

by Norman Weinstein
June 29, 2007

This two-disc overview of the work of the trombonist, vocalist, and composer Willie Colón presents a musically convincing case that Colón was to the history of Latin music what Don Drummond was to Jamaican ska and J.J. Johnson was to jazz. If the preceding suggests a holy trinity, note that all three had a fervor frequently associated with the spiritually possessed. While many jazz fans have immersed themselves in J.J. Johnson's legacy, few know Drummond and Colón as well as ...

394

Album Review

Charlie Palmieri: El Gigante Del Teclado

Read "El Gigante Del Teclado" reviewed by Norman Weinstein

by Norman Weinstein
October 16, 2006

The ongoing achievements of the great Latin jazz pianist/composer Eddie Palmieri may hopefully lead listeners new to Latin music to explore the recordings of his equally talented brother Charlie. Charlie Palmieri, a dynamic keyboardist and bandleader, passed away in 1988, and his albums have been difficult to obtain compared to those of his younger brother. “El Gigante Del Teclado," which translates into English as the immodest but accurate “The Giant of the Keyboard," is one of an outstanding batch of ...