When a Latin Jazz musician attains worldwide acclaim as a leader in the genre, it’s easy to focus upon their present status and forget the past. Their current recordings generally display their mastery and their concert appearances present the results of years of experience. They often receive ample promotion, significant airplay, and arise repeatedly across the internet. From an audience perspective, the identity that the artist projects in the moment seemingly reflects a timeless personality and ability level. Everyone starts somewhere though, and in reality, even the most advanced and renown musicians put time into their development. In most cases, these musicians dedicated years of their lives - sometimes even decades - into the development of their technical skills, the refinement of their musical concept, and the nurturing of their artistic personality. They pay their dues through low profile gigs, lean economic periods, and a sometimes apathetic audience, keeping their vision clearly focused upon their goal of musical advancement. Their undying dedication eventually brings a musical payoff as they connect with a large audience and reach a new level of respect in the public eye. Once these musicians attain this level of success, their hard work fades into the past and most people only know them for their present statements.

Conguero Poncho Sanchez has sat at the top of the Latin Jazz world for many years, becoming an icon for musical excellence and a spokesperson for the genre. His conga playing stems from a Mongo Sanataria influence, showing a solid straight ahead groove and clave based improvisational mastery. As a bandleader, he has run a tight-knit group of outstanding musicians, inspiring them to play at their top abilities. He has been a torch bearer for the traditional small ensemble Latin Jazz sound, finding creative arrangements for jazz standards in a mostly Afro-Cuban context. While his Latin Jazz repertoire has remained the group’s focus, Sanchez has consistently integrated salsa pieces and more recently Latin flavor rhythm and blues. His energetic musical mixture found a warm place among the hearts of jazz fans and his reputation shot into the forefront of the Latin Jazz world. His albums have become regular events that contain polished and engaging tracks as well as a long list of guest artists that have included Tito Puente, Chick Corea, Hugh Masekela, Joey DeFrancesco, Terence Blanchard, and more. His performances take his band around the world, placing them as headliners at countless jazz festivals and jazz clubs. Sanchez sits atop the current Latin Jazz world, and his success reflects decades of hard work, dedication, and passion for the music.

Sanchez recently released his 24th album for Concord Records, Psychedelic Blues, the next step in a career that has spanned more than three decades. A lot of elements played into Sanchez’s musical development, from a childhood immersed in soul music to a dream gig with Cal Trader to years of effort placed into his own band. It’s been a long road, but Sanchez has certainly come out on top. In the first piece of a four part interview with Sanchez, we dig into his childhood years in Norwalk, California. Sanchez becomes exposed to rhythm and blues, jazz, and salsa, planting the seeds for an active musical future.

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LATIN JAZZ CORNER: You were born in Texas and moved to Los Angeles at a young age; when did music start to become important in your life?

PONCHO SANCHEZ: I was born in Laredo, Texas. I’m the youngest of eleven children – I’ve got six sisters and four brothers. When I was three and a half or four years old, my father decided to move out to Los Angeles. One of my mother’s brothers moved out here first and got some work in a dry cleaners - my father was in the dry cleaning business. He called my father and said, “Hey man, you’ve got to come out to Los Angeles – there’s a lot of work out here.” That was back in 1954, so everything was just building and there was a lot of work. So my dad put us all in the car. Actually, I think a couple of my sisters were already out here with my uncle, but there was at least nine of us in the car. We all came out from Laredo to Norwalk, California, a suburb of Los Angeles.

We came out in 1954 and that’s when my sisters got a hold of the radio. Of course, out here in Los Angeles, compared to Laredo, Texas, there was a lot more music on the radio. In Laredo, they may have had one or two little stations and most of the time it was in Spanish. Laredo is right by the Rio Grande, right across the border from Mexico. So most of the musical influence in Laredo was from Mexico – Mariachi, Tejano, and Tex-Mex Music - all the stuff coming out of Mexico. So when we got to L.A., my sisters started listening to rhythm and blues music. They really liked that, and there were some shows on television that we would watch.

I remember as a little boy, I liked the Johnny Otis show. Johnny Otis was a bandleader, a vibraphonist, and a drummer. He had an all black band on television; it would come on once a week. I used to like it. It was a big band – trombone players, trumpet players, sax players, and a bunch of different singers who he’d feature from time to time. He’d say, “Now this is the great voice of Melvin Williams . . .” and then this good looking guy would come out and start singing. I remember they had these singers, and Jay McNeeley on saxophone . . . he had a great band! Then of course, they was American Bandstand, and another swing dance program by Al Jarvis. Those two shows were mostly for white folks; I liked the music that they played on the Johnny Otis show.

I was just a little kid of six years old from Laredo, Texas. In my house, they mostly spoke Spanish – my parents used to talk to us in Spanish and we used to talk to them in English. That’s what it was like in my house, but we still liked this black rhythm and blues music. When we moved out to Los Angeles, my brothers and sisters said, “Wow! These guys dance good!” There would be black dancers on T.V. and they’d be swing dancing, throwing each other through their legs and over their head. It was like, “Wow, these guys are good, they’ve got a lot of rhythm.” So, I picked up on that stuff as a little boy.

Later on I learned that Johnny Otis was the only guy there who was not black – he was Greek! He had an all black band and he spoke like a black man. He looked like a light colored black man. I thought back years later “Ah, you know what - that’s why they gave him the television program, because he wasn’t black.” He was white actually, that’s why he got the program – that’s what I believe. Because in those days – the mid-fifties – there was a lot of prejudice going around. There weren’t that many black folks on television and for sure, there weren’t that many Mexicans! As a kid, I really didn’t notice that, but as I got older, I started putting two and two together and said, “You know there’s not that much black entertainment on television.” And there was absolutely zero Latin Jazz or what they call salsa nowadays. In those days, the term salsa wasn’t being used yet – they called it the mambo or the cha cha cha in those days, they didn’t call it salsa yet. And there was none of that on television – and very little jazz on television. The closest thing that we got to it was Johnny Otis’ show.

My sisters start getting into all that music listening to the radio, and we got exposed to more things out here in Los Angeles. In Laredo, there was nothing on T.V. – there was one channel in English and one channel in Spanish, that was it, that’s what you had in Laredo. We came out here and they had channel 2, channel 4, channel 5, channel 7, channel 13 – wow! This is heaven! I was just a little boy, so I would pick up on my sisters and brothers when they would dance or if they liked something on television, I’d go, “Yea, I like it too!” As I got older, I had my own little transistor radio and I’d fall asleep with my little transistor radio on. I used to move the knob around – I’d find some jazz and listen to that. I was like in sixth or seventh grade – just a kid – but I liked the sound of jazz when I was in junior high school. I’d listen to jazz stations late at night and go “wow, that’s a really cool sound.” I was into that type of thing, and then my brothers and sisters started buying the Cal Tjader records, the Tito Puente records, Machito, and Joe Cuba – stuff like that. They would play those records all day long at the house and dance. My sisters still today are good dancers. I’m the only musicians out of eleven, but they loved music. I actually got exposed to Latin Jazz and what they call salsa nowadays through my sisters. They bought the records - I was way too young to buy records, I was still a kid.

As I started growing up, I started learning how to play the guitar from a guy across the street, his name is Benny Rodriguez. He was a little older than me and he played guitar in a rock and roll band. I would watch him rehearse or practice across the street. When the rehearsal would be over, I’d ask “Hey, can I touch your guitar? Can I play it?” I bought an old beat up acoustic guitar from Tijuana, Mexico for a couple of bucks and he helped me tune it. He started showing me just a couple of simple tunes – “Honky Tonk,” “What’d I Say,” and real simple stuff like that. It’s funny, I used to practice that stuff with a guy down the street – Ralph Vazquez. Ralph is my all time best friend - I met him when I was four years old when I first got here. Ralphie and I grew up together, and he had the same kind of guitar from Tijuana. There we were together our brand new, shiny, cheap acoustic guitars! The guy had an electric guitar and he had an amplifier – a Fender Mustang or something. He showed us some simple tunes.

All of a sudden my father got the great idea to move back to Laredo, Texas. We were now in the eighth grade – and we all threw a fit! Actually, there were only three of us left by then, but we all threw a fit, saying, “No, no, no, no – Laredo, Texas?!? Wait! We’re from California! We’re from Los Angeles! What are you trying to do Dad? “ He wanted to go back and reopen his cleaners in Laredo. We said no, but he took us all. We all went back to Laredo. We went back, and I think I cried all the way from Los Angeles to Laredo, Texas – about two days of crying. Through the desert, Arizona, New Mexico; it took about two days to get there and we were all in the back seat, very quiet. When we were down there in Laredo, we didn’t care for it too much. We were used to Los Angeles and all the hip stuff – we were hipsters by then! We got down there and it was really slow and way behind the times. We got into going fishing with my cousins – that part was cool, growing up like that, but I was into music already. I was learning to play guitar. Well, I practiced those three songs for a year, because no one showed my anything down there. I just plucked the same three tunes. All of a sudden, we talked my father into moving back to L.A. because the cleaning business was not going as well as he though it would. Things were not going as smooth as he planned. We begged him everyday to go back, and he finally got tired of it.

We got back, and the very first house that I went to was Ralph Vazquez’s house. I knocked on the door and his sister opened the door and said, “Poncho! What are you doing here? Don’t you live in Texas?” I said, “Not no more! We decided to move back, where’s Ralphie?” I had my guitar with me and she said, “Oh, Poncho, they have a band now! They’re down the street over there on the corner. Just go knock on the door, you’ll hear them playing.” I went over there and knocked on the door, the music stopped and they opened the door, and they did the same thing – “Ponch! What are you doing, don’t you live in Texas? Hey, you look different, you talk different!” I was saying y’all and all that stuff from Texas – yes sir, no sir. They were going, “Man, you talk funny now.” It’s funny how when you’re a kid, stuff comes on you quick and you don’t realize it. But if you’re gone from your real friends for a year, they come back and they tell you everything!

It ends up that they had electric guitars now with amplifiers and a drummer and a microphone and they were playing songs from The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. I’ve always been into rhythm and blues music and soul music myself, but they were playing that because it was the music of the times. They were really into the Rolling Stones. They were singing and playing – by now, I’m hiding my little guitar, because it’s a piece of junk and they’ve got electric guitars! They bought them from pawn shops, but they were electric and they were shiny. I was like “Wow, that’s a good looking guitar.” It was a St. George or some off brand, but to me it was like a Fender. They played a couple of tunes and to me they sounded great.

They said, “Hey Ponch, as you can see, we don’t’ need a guitar player, there’s three of us playing guitar. We need a singer – we all sing a little bit, but nobody sounds that good.” I said, “Oh, man, I’m not really a singer, I play guitar.” And then Ralphie said “Poncho, there’s the microphone, why don’t you try to sing a song, we need a singer man. You’re a good dancer, you could be singing and dancing a lot.” I said, “OK,” because I just wanted to be in the band. They said, “What do you want to sing”? I said, “James Brown” So I sang a James Brown tune and I started dancing like James Brown, and I got the microphone and started acting like I knew what I was doing, putting on a fake show. After the song was over they all said, “Poncho, man, you sing great. Do you want to be the singer for the band?” I was just messing around because I wanted to hang with them. They gave me a stack of 45 records and they said “Learn these songs, we have a wedding to do Saturday.”

I went home and I wrote down the lyrics to these songs and started learning them. They were old soul tunes – Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - that kind of stuff. So I wrote them down and I’m singing away, watching my pitch. I didn’t really know how to sing, but I knew if you sound out of tune, you sound out of tune. I was guessing, but I was trying to find it. Next thing I knew, we were at the gig, and they told me, “OK Ponch, there’s the microphone, go ahead.” I said, “Go ahead, go ahead what?” They said, “Well, you’ve got to talk to the people too.” I said “I ain’t talking to any people! I’m barely remembering the words to these songs – you want me to go talk into the microphone? Are you crazy? You guys do that.” “No, you’re the lead vocalist, you’re in the front.” “Don’t put me in front! Put me back here by the drummer!” “No, the lead vocalist goes in the front of the band.” Now you’re putting me in front of everybody, and I’m just trying to get past these words. So you know what? You dig down deep because you want to be in the band. I just said what the heck, and I said, “Welcome everybody, we are The Halos, and we’re here for your listening and dancing pleasure.” I guess I did pretty good that day, because the boys in the band, they said, “Man, Poncho, you’ve got it.”

You know, it’s funny, I became a singer just by accident , but from that day until today, I’ve been the lead vocalist of every band I’ve ever been in. Pretty strange stuff that happens by being exposed to music and coming out and trying your best. That’s what happened for me, and that’s how I started my musical journey. At that time, I was telling the guys in the band, you should do more soul music, like James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding. They were going, “Well, we like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles.” That’s when the British Invasion came in. I liked it, just like anybody else, but not as much as I liked the soul music. So, little by little, they started doing more soul music, and after a while it became a soul band. They weren’t doing any more of the British music. I see some of the guys today, like the bass player Mike Dominguez, he said, “Poncho, you changed the whole band when you came, you changed everything. It was cool man.” They got into what I was in to. And still today, those guys tell me, “Hey Poncho, you were ahead of your time.” Because, right away, shortly after, I started showing them about jazz, and showing them Tito Puente and Cal Tjader. They had no idea what that was. And they go, “Man, how did you know about that stuff?” Because my older brothers and sisters liked it, so I learned about it when I was a little boy. So I’ve been following this music and being part of Latin Jazz for many, many years now.

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Check back tomorrow for Part 2 of our interview where Sanchez discusses his leap into Latin percussion and his time with his musical mentor, Cal Tjader. Don’t miss this discussion with a legend!

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Check Out These Related Posts:
Latin Jazz Conversations: John Calloway (Part 1)
Latin Jazz Conversations: Jose Madera (Part 1)
Latin Jazz Conversations: Mitch Frohman (Part 1)
Weekly Latin Jazz Video Fix: Poncho Sanchez, Psychedelic Blues

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