Azuquita Y Su Orquesta Melao – Pura Salsa

“This album was a bit exhausting to produce. On a promotional trip to Los Angeles this writer discovered that Camilo Azuquita was performing at a club called Virginia’s. I hadn’t seen him for years, so I decided to pay him a visit at Virginia’s night club and say hello. When I returned to my hotel, I had a cassette tape in my possession that Azuquita handed me. It included enough of Azuquita’s compositions to produce an album. In New York, I contacted another Panamanian musician, Mauricio Smith, to write arrangements for half of the songs on the cassette. The following week we called some good musicians who had played on the SNL show with Mauricio. We then recorded the music, and I flew back to LA to overdub Azuquita’s voice on to the master tape, at Herb Alpert’s studio. When I returned to NY, I contacted recording engineer, Bob Blank, and we mixed the five songs. By now I had run out of money and visited Jerry Massucci at Fania and played the final mixes for him. He liked what he heard and agreed to pay for the rest of the album, which would be released on his Vaya label. The result was a well-received album that had a variety of delightful sounds from the west and east coasts of America, and some Pura Salsa.”

—Written by Bobby Marin