JULY_AUGUST 2007/INTERVIEW/JOE BATAAN

You were born and raised in New York City’s legendary Spanish Harlem, also known as El Barrio; tell us about growing up in this tough environment and the sounds and images that shaped you as an artist and a person?

Well it was quite different to how things are today, back then we didn’t have so much television and mostly you just saw the kids and the grown ups listening to the radio, the radio was a big part of our life and we played that through the windows and out the fire escapes and the music would emanate through the streets when I was growing up as a kid. Most of the things that were exciting to us back then was the music we heard coming out of the apartments and the juke box that played across the street in the candy store; on hot summer days the music would be playing loud and we’d open up the water pump so we could cool off and we’d play in the streets.

What sort of music were you listening to when you were growing up, what were your parents listening to?

I started off listening to pop music, they used to have the top 40 on the radio every Saturday morning and of course we were listening to Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett, Johnny Ray and most of the movies that came out that had music, it was a different world because we didn’t have much black radio back then and not a lot of Latin radio. Of course later on came Alan Freed with Moon Doggy and he introduced rock and roll and that was our music as kids when we were growing up as it felt rebellious in contrast to the sounds we’d been exposed to ‘til then. Of course people had bad things to say about Rock’n’Roll, but they had bad things to say about the twist, they had bad things to say about the boogaloo... of course in the end rap music survived and that’s pretty much what we went through. After the Rock’n’Roll era there was some Latin played by Tito Puente, Randy Carlos and guys like that and eventually when it got to the 60s people like me and Peter Rodriguez were able to incorporate the R’n’B and Latin sounds together and that was the birth of the boogaloo and Latin soul.

It’s been well documented that you became a musician while serving time in prison. Tell us a bit about this experience, was it what motivated you to succeed in the music world?

Growing up as a kid I was no different to any other kid, I had my share of troubles, having too much time on my hands and I got into some trouble with a stolen vehicle and they sent me away. I decided right then when I was away that I was not going to waste my life, I was going to study and read everything I could get my hands on and so I started to learn music while I was in West Coxsackie Reformatory. After I was released I was determined that I was going to start something, so I came home and I talked with the guys that had been singing in the hallways and they said that they were organizing a Latin band, so I went to someone’s rehearsal but they didn’t want me there because I was supposedly the neighbourhood tough guy and the neighbourhood had changed while I was away so they didn’t want me involved, and that got me so angry that it motivated me to do something with my life, so I started my own band. As a result I had the youngest band in Latin music - some of them were like 12 years old! I was about 19 and made myself the leader and the rest was history. We were together for about 6 months and then we started making records – of course now we were the neighbourhood sweet hearts because the kids were so young so a lot of the younger generation could follow us and could identify with our music because no one else was really doing Latin with English lyrics, which went on to become so popular and still is today in fact.

It's been alleged that you were part of the Dragons gang in New York. If true, how dangerous was this world and do you feel that this experience was what gave your music its distinct "street" sensibility?

Yes I was a member of the Dragons for a time and that experience of being able to see life from the street level definitely influenced my street sensibility to my fans as well as to my self.

You released a number of records for the legendary Latin music label Fania – how did that come about?

We were starting to play around the neighbourhood and had started to get noticed and a lot of people wanted to put their hands on us and control us at that time, and the only thing I really had going for me was my aggressiveness, as I didn’t know about the business, about publishing, about royalties, I was just a novice. Anyway, we had a whole host of guys that wanted to sign us at that particular time, so what happened was I signed with all of them in an attempt to get the best deal because none of them were really giving us good contracts and didn’t have our interests at heart. The only way I thought I could protect myself was that Joe Bataan isn’t my real name, Bataan is actually my first name so I was signing everything as Joe Bataan, and then finally one guy caught me and pretty much threw me out the door and said to me “We’re going to teach you a lesson young man, you do things our way or you’re not going to do anything for anybody”. So there I was out on the streets, thinking I had nowhere to go and that I’d ruined things again, but nonetheless, Jerry Masucci was just starting Fania at the time and he said he would take a chance on me, and so we started to record and the rest is history. Fania went on to become one of the most legendary labels in Latin music and even bought up the catalogue of some of the smaller labels I’d had negotiations with that hadn’t got their musicians interests at heart. One record came after another for us and we started getting airplay on American stations, then the crossover effect started to take place and we built a new audience, not only the Latinos but the black community, the Jewish kids were big fans of Latin musicians and then the white audiences caught on and we had everybody. Now Latin music is one of the biggest influences in the world.

One of the ways that you managed to cross over was by singing in English. Did that cause you any problems at the time, did people consider it a risk?

It was new, but I came at the right time. I wasn’t even the singer originally, there was another guy by the name of Joe Pagan and when he started to realize that the boogaloo was getting popular in the dancehalls he wanted to try doing a song in English, but he had such heavy diction, so the guys at the label asked me to try and sing it instead, so I tried and I’ve been singing ever since. He never went on to sing his songs in English but I did, and I guess my technique was a little different to the standard boogaloo because a lot of my songs have lasted throughout the years. I’m a lyricist and a lot of my songs have stories, as opposed to ‘dance to the beat’, ’get up and shout’ kind of fillers, I had actual stories which has helped them last – this is now my 40th year in the music business.

Your biggest hit for Fania was ‘Gypsy Woman’ in 1968, which was a Latin interpretation of the Impressions hit from 1961, how did that come about?

Well, it was going to be another song and I was trying to teach the guy how to sing, so I picked up some of the words to Gypsy Woman and was showing him how they fit in to my melody – I was trying to show him how words can fit into any melody if you know how to control the pattern, so that’s how it came about. It went top 16 on New York Black Radio and was a big breakthrough for us as we started getting played on both the Black and the Latin stations.

Did you experience racism within Latin music circles due to your ethnic background?

Oh yes, you get that all over, even today but at that time it was more prevalent because I’m not really Latino. I grew up in Spanish Harlem but my father is Filipino and my mother is black but all my friends were Puerto Ricans, so growing up in a Puerto Rican neighbourhood I had to learn to speak Spanish, but I never really identified with anyone else, I was just myself, that’s how I described myself in one of my songs “Ordinary Guy’ – and I never thought it would make a difference but apparently it did down the road. What had happened was that as long as I was making Latin music the Latino community were endeared to me and loved my music, loved the slow songs, but when I ventured out into other types of music and started making some Latin jazz and some straight R’n’B the black community took hold of me as well and started to consider me one of theirs, and the competition in the streets became ‘what is he? Is he black or is he Puerto Rican?’ and that went on for years, even to this day. It doesn’t matter to me, I’m just a universal person but at that time it mattered to people, don’t ask me why. It also mattered when I went to Europe and they wanted me to change the album covers, putting certain people on the cover to appeal to the people buying records. They had a lot of things going on in the industry then, there was one radio station where they wouldn’t play my records because if you weren’t Latin you didn’t get played and then some of the stations decided they wouldn’t play artists that weren’t black and I got caught in the middle for many years. Maybe that’s why ‘Joe Bataan’ never evolved into an ‘Elton John’. Only now in my twilight years am I getting recognized in the way I thought I should have been recognized. I guess it’s a different generation and they really appreciate a lot of things I did in the past, to them it’s new even though some of that stuff goes back 30 years! I’ve actually discovered I have a lot of young fans these days and when I question them about how they know my music they tell me their mothers and grandparents passed it on to them.

The riot LP came out in 1968 and addressed important social issues; what is the story behind this album?

When The Riot was released it was awarded a Gold album. During this span The Riot actually out sold every Latin and Latin soul artist by a margin of 3 to 1. This album was musically documenting something like an outbreak of freedom for young Latinos and blacks in New York and the surrounding tri-state area. Of course what was exceptional was that this album was performed by the youngest group of musicians during that time. All the members were young teenagers the youngest being just 12 as I mentioned before.


What was your involvement with Ghetto Records?

With Ghetto Records I was basically the originator and the founder of the label. The same was true of Salsoul Records and then the disco explosion happened.

Speaking of Salsoul you are one of the people credited with coining the term as well as being part of the foundation of the label – how did you envisage the label working at the time?

Actually when I left Fania Records, (after negotiating for a long time I wasn’t really happy anymore) I was looking for a new label and I didn’t really know where to go. So there was this little label dealing with Chicano-Mexican music called Mericana Records, so I went up there and sold the idea of me recording for them to a Joe Cayre and he gave me a very small amount of money to record and I went out a made an album, got it done way under budget and then got it played on the radio. He was amazed that we sold 15,000 records in a week and of course he was excited, so we talked about a deal and then he said we could start a label together, so I agreed to name the label. The name I picked was Salsoul which just joins the words Salsa and Soul so it’s no different from Latin Soul or Boogaloo Latin but I called it Salsoul and it immediately caught on. I had the hit ‘The Bottle’ and then ‘Rap-O-Clap-O’ and things just went on from there. Of course I didn’t really get a fair deal because eventually I sold my rights to the Cayre brothers thinking I could just do it again. I remember having the dream that Salsoul would become a household name years later, but you know, I don’t have regrets, I started the label and I’m proud of that and I was one of the innovators of Latin music within the disco scene so overall I’m happy.

So you mentioned your big hit with Gil Scott Heron’s ‘The Bottle’, how did that come about?

Well he was having a big hit in New York with that record and I was always one of those people who could tell when a record was going to be big and that there was a possibility you could cover it and also have a success off the record - actually Gil Scott and his partner were really happy that I covered it as they had run out of money and couldn’t produce the record or manufacture it anymore - so I decided to do the instrumental and I got a guy to play the saxophone who’s now famous called Dave Sanborn and the rest is history, I think we sold 80,000 records in a week when it came out it, it went Top 100 in Billboard magazine which was huge for that time and we were at the threshold of disco music.

And of course you also mention Rap-O-Clap O – that’s considered quite a ground breaking track, can you tell us about your inspiration for that?

Yeah that was a real strange story, there were some kids at the community centre in the neighbourhood that I used to run, and I just couldn’t understand why the place was packed every night and what these kids were all doing just stomping their feet while a couple of youngsters at the decks were just spinning records. So one day I asked these kids to record, their names were Jekyll and Hyde back then and of course they went on to be producers for Motown, but in the end they didn’t show up to the studio, I’d arranged everything but I guess they didn’t think I knew what I was doing, so I was stuck there with the bill and everything so decided to do the song myself. I went to Salsoul with it when it was done and they told me that they wanted me to go to Holland, they said the record was a hit and I couldn’t understand how they could know a record was a hit when it hasn’t been played yet, and they told me ‘they know these things’! At that time Holland was the focal point of Europe for music, so I went there and I didn’t get back to the states for 6 months, that’s how big that record was for me, one of the biggest of my life.

Your name appears on the production credits of the Lasso LP from 1977, what other work had you been involved in as a producer?

I produced many records for all the labels that I worked with - Ghetto, Fania, Salsoul; I produced for LaSo, New Jersey Turnpike, David Sanborn (from The Bottle), Paul Ortiz’s ‘Tender Love’, a track I did with Jocelyn Brown called ‘Sadie’.. the list goes on!

More recently Italy’s Irma records released a house version of "Ordinary Guy" in 2003 - Were you personally involved in that?

Yeah I was - Irma Records flew me out to Italy to sing my song on their recorded track – there’s also going to be a vocal and a rap version soon coming out on a label in LA.

In 2005 you made a new album on Vampisoul Records entitled ‘Call My Name’ tell us how that came about?

That did really well - you know I never in my whole life got interviewed as much as I did when that record came out; it was like the resurgence of my life. I met this young kid called Danny Collas, he was about 24 years old and he came to see me play, and he had a suggestion. He said “do you want to record something with me in my basement?” and I said “yeah sure, why not?”, so I went down to his basement and we did these songs – cause you never know – Europe is a funny market, it’s not like America, there’s a lot of songs that come out there that might not do anything in the states, so I just figured you might get blessed or lucky or whatever, so I did these songs with him but he didn’t have anywhere to take the music, and I happened to notice that there was this little label in Spain that was re-releasing old Fania stuff, so I told him to call, but I had no idea he’d made a deal with them and they were releasing the record. The reviews were fantastic all over the world.

When we first heard the lead track from that release we actually thought it was an old Joe Bataan track that we just hadn’t come across before.

Yeah you have to give Danny credit, he wrote and produced these songs but he tailored them for me and my style, so he must have been one of those fans that had studied me for years, and he knew that these songs would suit me. He sought me out, he could have got anybody to sing but he wanted me and the results were like magic, because people all over the world had that same impression you had.

That track has always been a big dance floor hit for us whenever we play it.

That’s really good to hear! You know back in the day apparently I had a bit of a hit in Greece but I think your government rules made it really hard to get any money out of the country, but I saw some sales figures at least and they were good, so I always wanted to get out to Greece.