[Today: Hot salsa and graphic art...]
Gangster to its core, the cover image of Cosa Nuestra is too good to ignore. It features Willie Colon standing over a prone body that has been wrapped in carpet and anchored to a rock. Colon holds his hat over his heart, as if he’s truly sorry for what has transpired, and wields his trombone case as a gangster would a machine gun. For an album released in 1969, it cannily anticipated the gangsta rap movement by a good twenty years, as well as the popularity of Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather movies. Shot in the shadow of the Brooklyn bridge, it’s a quintessentially New York photo that would inspire a Wal-Mart embargo if it were released today.
Fortunately, the music is just as bold as the cover art. Colon and Eric Matos spar on trombone, pushing their instruments beyond the edge of distortion, while singer Hector LaVoe spins tales of unrequited love and the pain of betrayal. Album opener ‘Che Che Cole’ was a big hit that helped launch Colon and company to a higher level of prominence within the New York club circuit. Cosa Nuestra was followed by popular albums such as La Gran Fuga (1970) and El Juicio (1972) that helped define the sound of Latin music in the 1970′s and set a standard that few other Latin groups have ever approached. Unfortunately, like the poor stiff on this cover, Colon’s records have spent years submerged below the surface of public awareness, laying in wait to be discovered.
Listen: Che Che Cole
