Jazz Articles about Héctor Lavoe

About Héctor Lavoe

Album Review

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 ...