Jazz Articles about Héctor Lavoe

About Héctor Lavoe

Album Review

Héctor Lavoe: ¡Que Sentimiento!

Read "¡Que Sentimiento!" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
November 9, 2026

Héctor Lavoe was one of salsa's first superstars. A native of Ponce, PR, he started singing as a child. After moving to New York, he hooked up with Fania, its founder, Jerry Masucci, and Willie Colon. Together, they conjured up a gangster image, mostly for show, for it was the sights, sounds, smell and feel of the Nuyorican barrio they embodied. The music went through a number of phases, but was always an amalgam of Afro-Caribbean, bogaloo and jazz: “bueno ...

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 ...