Alfredo Linares y su Salsa Star: Baila Montuno
From 7″ (Caliente, 1973)
This appears on Linares’s 1973 Sensacionales! album but I didn’t catch wind of it until I picked it up on 7″ first. I’m a huge fan of Linares’s work and so I was pleased and a bit stunned to realize that, unless I’m totally off-base, this is a cover of Bobby Matos’s “Nadie Baila Como Yo” (from his seminal My Latin Soul album of the mid/late ’60s). Matos isn’t credited (not an unusual happenstance) but certainly, there’s more than enough musical and lyrical evidence to suggest that Linares basically gives Matos’s original a salsa update. It’s still not nearly as deliriously fun as Matos’s song but I do like that Linares keeps elements of the boogaloo-influenced original, especially on rhythm piano.
chatter