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Patato Valdez, Latin music’s unsung melodist*

7^th, October, 2000

Carol Amoruso

He’s irascible, an ornery magpie who, for 50 years, has allowed fame and fortune to slip from his fingers like soap in a bathtub.  But, no mind, Carlos “Patato” Valdez, one of the world’s great percussionists, is as proud of his reputation as a scamp and free spirit as he is confident of his genius as master of the congas.  The rigors and mundanity of cultivating stardom—rehearsals, early morning recording sessions, the monotony of touring, the bureaucracy and politics of fronting a major band, public relations--have taken a back seat to the vagabondage of an infinitely creative soul. 

Carlos Valdez was born in Havana in 1926, one amongst 5 children, to Carlos Valdez Cuesta and Juana Galán Rivero.  The elder Valdez was a bricklayer and tres player with the seminal son conjunto, Sexteto Habanero (now Septeto Habanero).  The influence of father upon son was formative.  His father first taught him to play the tres, the doubled three-string guitar so closely identified with son, and soon introduced him to the marimbula.  A cajon, or large, hollow box drum, with 4 steel bass keys cannibalized from old wind-up clocks, the marimbua is cousin to Africa’s thumb-piano.  Patato eventually played a unique 18-note marimbula fashioned for him by his father.  The instrument holds special boyhood memories for Patato: his father would send him into isolation forcing him to play it for hours as punishment for his antics.

Playing marimbula as a teenager at rumbas, or traditional spiritual ceremonies where the spirits of Santeria are invoked, exposed Patato to the complex and sacred world of percussion and inspired him to play drums.  It was a timely move: popular bands of the day would soon “leave the tres behind”, as he recalls, and begin to emphasize the piano and other percussion instruments.  It didn’t take long before found work as a conguero.

Santeria has been a defining force in Valdez’ life.  “If it wasn't for the orishas [spirits] I wouldn't be anything,” he confesses.  Most prominent in the pantheon is Ochún, goddess of love.   Patato wears around his neck the red ribbon of the fierce Changó, but overlaying it is Ochún’s yellow satin cord.  It’s pulled taut by the bronze medal of his 1997 Grammy nomination.

Santeria is clearly a cultural as well as spiritual link to Cuba, a by–now mythical homeland he hasn’t seen in over 45 years.  His culinary arts too evoke what’s left behind.  He’s a famed amateur chef of such Cuban specialties as rabo encendido and ropa vieja.  In all of his years here, Patato’s made few concessions to the English language. Neither has he conceded to speaking what would approach a universal Spanish.  Cubanisms, musicians’ slang and Valdezisms form the backbone of his rat-tat-tat expression.

Nearing five feet tall and of a small, still jaunty frame, Valdez’s twinkling, mustached face droops like an overused colador (a cotton sock for filtering coffee). His visage is perpetually shaded darker than its coffee color by the brim of a pinwheel-patched Kangol cap.

He is impeccably dressed.  From the time of his Cuban band days, he’s been identified with fine-threaded, ample yet smartly cut suits and ties.  Before leaving Cuba Patato was wardrobe master for the Conjunto Kubavana and the18 member Conjunto Casino, choosing cloth for the suits for the band, overseeing their personal tailor, and selecting the matching shoes as well.

Patato is ‘sweet potato’ in Cuban slang, an endearing term for a small person. “Like Shorty,” he says in English, then proceeds to give the equivalent in a host of languages, from Swahili to Japanese. He’s capitalized on his small stature to cultivate an image of impishness.

Valdez is quick to confirm the legend that grew after a stay in Paris, during which he was shopping for shoes for his wife.  “Black and white and brown and white they had to be.  Size six and a half.  Made in Italy.”  Patato cruised the various shoe shops of gay Paree and tried on each prospective pair himself much to the bemusement of sales personnel.  “My wife and I wear the same dress size, too, but I stop at that,” he twinkles.

At 18 he was hired to play cajon by Cuba’s foremost son orchestra, Sonora Matancera.  Already seasoned by the party and club scene, Patato remembers, “There are a lot of hard days.  It wasn’t easy.  But when I joined Sonora Matancera, that’s when it all started getting easier.” 

He first came to New York in 1952 with the Conjunto Casino. Compatriot percussionists, Mongo Santamaria, Chano Pozo, Candido and other prominent or promising Cuban musicians had established themselves here earlier.  Patato was smitten with the music scene, the bounty of Cuban players in residence, and by the many new musical genres to explore.

He emigrated in ’54 after coming back up with young bassist Israel “Cachao” Lopez—long-time friend and “a genius”--to play with Cuban trailblazer Machito’s orchestra.  Mongo got him his first steady gig.  With Tito Puente.  Patato’s collaborations with the Mambo King lasted until Puente’s death earlier this year.  It’s not easy recalling Puente so soon after his death.  “I'm very sorry,” he says in a softened voice, his head somewhat bowed.  “I don't like to talk too much about Tito, because it's really close to me, everything that we've done together.  He was the best musical director in the world.  We never had a bad word between us.  From when I came in ‘54 until now, we never had a fight, never, never.”  Patato and Tito traveled frequently together as roommates while touring with the Latin Jazz Ensemble.

While the roster of Patato’s play dates begins with Latin legend, Puente, his first recording was that same year with the jazz trumpeter, Kenny Durham (Afro-Cuban, Bluenote, 1955).  He’s played with a virtual Who’s Who of the jazz and Latin world: Art Blakey, Max Roach, Herbie Mann, Jorge Dalto, Billy Taylor, Dizzy Gillespie, Arsenio Rodriguez, himself.

Patato arrived in the States a celebrated dancer as well as musician (he’d also been a champion Golden Gloves boxer), having invented several steps while still in Cuba, like the toalla (towel) or pinguino (the penguin), el yo yo, and el pelota (the baseball).  He’s apt to flaunt his footwork even today, jumping out from behind a fortress of 4 congas to strut his stuff.  Patato takes credit for teaching the United States to dance the cha-cha-cha.

A much traveled Patato legend has it that, while playing one night at New York’s Blue Note for famed bandleader, Mario Bauza, Patato, inspired, jumped up on his drum set and began to cut the rug, so to speak.  Graciela, Bauza’s lead singer (and Machito’s sister), screeched at him mid-tune, while Bauza threatened an imminent heart attack in vain attempts to get him down.

Patato is best known as a standard-bearer of Afro-Cuban jazz. Migrating musically searching Cubans like Chano Pozo and Machito found jazz innovators here like Gillespie and Stan Getz.  They forged a sound based on the blending of African-derived Cuban percussion with heavily orchestrated jazz horns that has endured, both pure and evolved, until today. 

Greg Landau, who has produced the Ritmo y Candela series (Six Degrees) which earned Patato two Grammy nominations, offers that Valdez’s great contribution to Latin jazz has been to “fit percussion into a jazz format [by] incorporating melody into the rhythmic patterns”.  Partly, says Landau, his supreme melodic sense evolved from his earliest experiences with the tres, but, also, “it was a way to stand out a little more as a soloist."

“There are others with faster hands,” observes Pierre Sprey, sound engineer and founder of Mapleshade records, “but when it comes to melody and drama, there’s nobody that comes close.”  Martin Cohen, founder of Latin Percussion and long-time associate of Patato (“He was the first one to take me to the [Santeria] ceremonies in the Bronx”) agrees.  “He brought a melodic style to the conga,” he observes and acknowledges Patato’s input in designing a conga for L.P.  Patato spends infinite time, onstage or off, in the studio and out, tuning his drums which he does in G, B flat, D and F.  Sprey enthuses: “Just to hear him tuning is like a performance.”  At the same time one can feel, almost see, the liquid kinesis of a dancer’s movement in his playing.

Milton Cardona, Latin and jazz percussionist, agrees with the assessment that Patato’s great contribution has been melody.  “He’s melodic as opposed to percussive,” he says.  “He tunes to the orchestra and that in a sense is unique.  Most guys don’t tune by anything, they tune by ear, sometimes too high, and they’re not melodic.”

Cardona also hears the dance in Patato’s playing, and applauds it, commenting, “He plays for the dancer, and that’s another art that’s being lost with Latin music.” 

Patato’s feistiness surfaces when Cuba’s musical hegemony is challenged.  For the maestro, Cuba is number one world-wide in percussion: after inheriting the already fertile but unelaborated musical legacy of the Yoruba people, the Cubans refined it, devolving from that African base the most complicated rhythms on the planet.  He lauds his countryfolk for exposing the world to their rhythms, especially for bringing them back, finessed, to Africa. Brazil is a great musical culture that turns out some fine percussionists because its origins, too, are in part Yoruban, but Brazil is an imitator, he says.

Nearing 75, Patato’s been so-slightly reined in these past few years.  He’s been less capricious about recording and club dates and his profile’s been elevated somewhat, high enough to garner the two Grammy nods (1995 and 1997).  Landau posits that the accolades and higher exposure reaped by Patato for Ritmo y Candela as well as the lure of ultimately pinning down that Grammy may be serving as motivation to straighten up.

The change can hardly be attributed to his advancing age, as his energy is boundless and his conviction that he’ll live to 104 is taken with not a grain of salt.  An unmistakable influence on Valdez’ mini-mellowing has been his handler, Enrique Fernandez, more officially Patato’s musical director.  Fernandez, a top-flight reed-man, composer, arranger and explorer in his own right, tells of their mutual admiration society which has lasted nearly 20 years.  “He’s a little giant, a musical genius and a trippy cat, one of the original hipsters,” Fernandez enthuses in his muted way.  “The first time we met was in San Francisco.  He was going through with Tito [Puente], and I was playing with the Latin Jazz Quartet.  He walked into this Cuban bar we were playing at.  I was on guiro, and he came up and taught me how to play better.  And we started talking.”

About four years later, in Paris, they reconnected when Fernandez’ Curaçao-based band was left without a percussionist and Patato, who was living in Europe at the time, agreed to sit in.  They’ve been close ever since, working off each other in a synergy which Sprey describes as “beautiful”.  Most times, Fernandez will come into the studio with a finished composition and tell Patato the rhythm he needs for it.  Patato will add the rhythm, whether mambo, guaguancó, 6/8, or some other, and then lay down the bass line as well with his drum.  “I don’t know any other conga player that can do that,” offers Enrique.  Other times Patato, who is unschooled, will compose the melody and conga line in his head, then dictate them to Enrique who will score them.  Cooperation and the smooth funneling of their affinities in the studio belie Valdez’ reputation for intractability and attitude, which may have been earned from folks with less patience for his perfectionism.  

Patato is equally praiseworthy of Fernandez, putting him in the “genius” category along with Cachao and Puente.  But, also, he admits with professional affection, “I like to be next to him.”

Fernandez’s sensitivity to the master’s more dulcet hands led him to suggest an album recording Patato with no brass, just winds, for Mapleshade’s “Explorations” series produced by Hamiet Bluiett and engineered by Sprey (Melodía Para Congas –1997).  (Fernandez: “You want to hear Patato?  Back him up with some quiet woodwinds instead of all that loud brass.  Then get rid of the piano, bass, drums, bongos, and timbales.  He can play all their shit anyway.”)  Sprey’s experience as engineer on the recording may not be as seamless as Fernandez’, but he’s philosophical: “Here’s this tiny man who totally dominates the studio.  He’s crusty and insistent on what he wants….But when it’s in the interest of craftsmanship and beauty, I’ll put up with any amount of that.”  Sprey tells of Patato’s stopping mid-take protesting a lead weight he’d placed on the floor to hold the boards down under Patato’s drums.  The maestro complained that the weight, which would have gone unnoticed by most other drummers, deadened his sound.

A whirring, adaptive mind has led him to be as creative with the tools of his trade as he is with his musicianship.   A first invention was the congofono, a set-up of 7 congas he devised with bongocero and child-hood buddy Armando Perazo.  The congofono couldn’t help but be noticed on stage and was instrumental in bringing the conga to the fore as a lead instrument.  Patato helped to insure the viability of Afro-Cuban jazz by replacing wooden peg tuning keys with metal ones, keeping the drum tuned longer and thus enabling the conguero to play with more melody.  The keys he fastened to a metal ring that also secures the head.  He’s positioned other metal rings further down the drum’s belly which bind the wood and serve as tuning bands, again to enhance the drum’s harmonics.

Patato was converted to the fiberglass drum in its prototypical days having helped EchoTone of Puerto Rico ready the first fiberglass drum for market. After moving to a cold climate with central heating, he’d begun to find his drums drying out and cracking.  In addition, he felt that Cuban drums were made from local and superior oak, while drums here are of wood imported from South East Asia, of inconsistent quality. He says he’s working on an advance on fiberglass drums, but won’t reveal what that is.

Cardona agrees with Patato who won’t switch to a synthetic drumhead, but is perplexed that such a stickler for sound should prefer the fiberglass drum.  “I’m still old fashioned,” he admits.  “A lot of them [fiberglass drums] have that tinny sound.   They lose the echo you get from the wooden drum.”

Patato also invented conga cradles to hold the drums steady and upright.  Freeing the drummer for dancing upon them is just one of the benefits of the cradle.

Fernandez talks of how he’s seen Patato, for nearly 20 years, unfazed living the drummer’s life out of a suitcase and struggling for both recognition and sustenance.  The Grammy nomination bronze tugging at his neck is a constant reminder that an even heavier medallion will, paradoxically, bring him the comfort he’s due.  Greg Landau says they are working on a recording right now with hot-shot Cuban pianist/composer Omar Sosa and a hip-hop producer.  This CD may reel in that Grammy and give Patato plenty of years to spare before he retires at 104.

*This article originally appeared in Drum Magazine