EDDIE PALMIERI LA VERDAD 1987

Here is another Eddie's peace recorded with salsa singer Tony Vega in 1987.
This is a late 80s date for the Eddie Palmieri big band featuring a loose and wonderfully expansive mix of Latin beat, salsa, Cuban son, and rhumba.

The band, featuring Charlie Sepulveda on trumpet, Giovanni Hidalgo on bata, congas, and assorted percussion, along with Anthony Carrillo and Jose Ramirez. Juan Torres also plays trumpet, with his brother Ralph on trombone. Palmieri, of course, in addition to his roles as bandleader and arranger -- as well as composer of four of the album's six tracks -- as always plays a gorgeous piano.

The thing about this man's bands, with their groups of singers, call-and-response (coro/pregon) lyrics, and gloriously uplifting tone, is that they are so musically complex while remaining thoroughly accessible to the listener. The title track, an original with its round of singers taking verse, chorus, and bridge swirling around a plethora of horns and bata drums, moving to underscore the shifting rhythmic signatures and accents that carry the words. It's a weave, and Palmieri is fully in control of its construction and placement.

The furious lower register piano dissonance that opens his solo, "Lisa," is uncharacteristic for Palmieri, and one of his first forays into more classically oriented form, its glissando ushers in a modal framework built on extended minor sevenths and ninths circling around a small fantasia theme that briefly touches upon boogie woogie and "Autumn Leaves." It's all funk and backbeat slip and slide on "Noble Cruise," with its striated piano accents in between the swagger of the warring horns.

TrackList:

1. El Cuarto
2. Congo Yambumba
3. La Verdad
4. Lisa
5. Noble Cruise
6. Buscandote

Musicians include:
Eddie Palmieri Piano
Juan Torres Trumpet
Charlie Sepulveda Trumpet
Angie Machado Trumpet
Tony Villarini Trumpet
Ralphy Torres Trombone
Victor Candelario Trombone
Hector Veneros Saxophone
Polito Huerta Bass
Charlie Cotto Drums, timbales
Giovanni Hidalgo Conga, bata, percussion
Anthony Carrillo Bongo, bata, percussion
Jose Ramirez Bata, percussion