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Cortijo y Su Combo in Puerto Rico
Written by jesus
Cortijo was born in Puerto Rico in January 1928 and loved Caribbean music from a very young age and become very good at playing the Congas. He then joined Ismael Rivieras band as a Conga player which then motivated him to start his own orchestra which only plena music. After developing a reputation throughout many countries he the joined “El Combo”. So now we have Cortijo y su Combo which made some latin tunes a bit like this:
This particular song itself is about the death of a parrot. It starts off with the noise of a train and the distant calls saying ” move out of the way parrot here comes a train!”. However little did they know that the parrot was deaf. The train driver then laments that if only he knew the parrot was deaf he would have stopped the train. Here now is a clip of one of my favourite songs from Cortijo with Ismael Riviera singing.
Now his combo generally consists of an orchestra including two saxophonists who sing as well and unbeliavbly high, two trumpets and rhythm section with a bass player. Here is one final rare clip of them all in action and busting out some moves enjoy ….