Joe Bataan — “Make Me Smile”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — May 13, 2024

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,207) Joe Bataan — “Make Me Smile”

Joe Bataan (see #55, 339) takes a #9 hit by Chicago and turns it into a swinging and joyous Latin romp.

Richard Pierson tells us about Joe:

Born Peter Nitollano, of African-American/Filipino parents, Joe Bataan grew up in Spanish Harlem, where he ran with Puerto Rican gangs and absorbed R&B, Afro-Cuban, and Afro-Rican musical influences. . . . Self-taught on the piano, he organized his first band in 1965 and scored his first recording success in 1967 with “Gypsy Woman” on Fania Records. The tune was a hit with the New York Latin market despite its English lyrics . . . and exemplified the nascent Latin soul sound. In early anticipation of the disco formula, “Gypsy Woman” created dance energy by alternating what was fundamentally a pop-soul tune with a break featuring double-timed handclaps.  Bataan would take this tendency even further on his influential Salsoul, which fused funk and Latin influences in slick yet soulful orchestrations. Salsoul remains influential as a rare groove cult item, and pointed to the future at the time of its release. The LP embodied the artist’s highly deliberate and culturally aware musical concept. Bataan theorized the ’70s next big thing as a hybrid: an Afro Cuban rhythm section playing Brazilian influenced patterns over orchestral funk. In many ways, his vision was on the money, though most of the money would go to others and mainstream stardom would elude him. He did, however, get in on the ground floor of the new trend as an early hitmaker. His biggest commercial move was a Salsoul production released under the Epic umbrella, and promoted to the new disco market as Afrofilipino, which included 1975’s “The Bottle,” a much-anthologized classic that drives an R&B horn arrangement with a relentless piano montuno. Always in touch with the street, Joe Bataan picked up on rap very early in the game. His minor rap hit, “Rap-O, Clap-O” was a bit more successful in Europe than in the States, and is remembered as rap’s debut in the European market. Nevertheless, his legacy remains his gritty and realistic Latin soul lyrics, his self-identification as an “Ordinary Guy”, and his highly personal and prophetic merger of Latin and soul influences.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/joe-bataan-mn0000117990#biography

Oliver Wang goes deep on Bataan’s early years:

[A] cohort of mostly Puerto Rican Americans—Nuyoricans—were coming of age, seeking a stake for their generation’s sonic sensibilities. Into that moment strode Joe Bataan, knife in hand. . . . [A]s a kid, he ran deep with the Nuyorican crowd . . . . In his teens, he helped lead a local Puerto Rican street gang called The Dragons, but a few stints in the pen encouraged him to seek a different path. He turned to music. . . . [I]n 1966, a “new breed” of Latin music was bubbling up in New York that would enrapture Bataan and his band: boogaloo [which] began as a dance craze . . . . By 1966, the dance had made its way into New York ballrooms and it was here that Nuyorican house bands began to tinker with it, giving birth to a distinctive Latin boogaloo style. . . . [A] young record executive trying to get his new Latin label off the ground . . . Jerry Masucci of Fania Records.. . . . found [with Bataan] more than just a musician; here was a voice that could sell to black, white, and Latino audiences. . . . [T]he first single Bataan recorded for Fania nodded to an earlier soul classic: The Impressions’ 1961 hit, “Gypsy Woman.” However, Bataan’s “Gypsy Woman” wasn’t a cover version. Beyond an opening line that riffed on Curtis Mayfield’s songwriting, Bataan changed everything else: the lyrics, the arrangement, the instrumentation, etc. Whereas The Impressions’ mellow original had more in common, aurally, with a bachelor pad exotica record, Bataan’s song was ferociously uptempo and unmistakably Afro-Cuban, opening with a lively piano montuno and background singers yelling, “She smokes, hot hot, she smokes!” . . . Other boogaloo breakout hits in 1967 . . . boasted memorable hooks but the singing was middling at best. By comparison . . . Bataan demonstrated that he could be a quadruple threat: singer, songwriter, pianist, and bandleader.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/joe-bataan-gypsy-woman/

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