{"id":2455416,"date":"2020-03-05T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-05T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=321943"},"modified":"2020-03-05T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T23:00:00","slug":"latin-jazz-legend-poncho-sanchez-back-at-jas-cafe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/latin-jazz-legend-poncho-sanchez-back-at-jas-cafe\/","title":{"rendered":"Latin jazz legend Poncho Sanchez back at JAS Caf\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Poncho Sanchez and his band have been making stops in Aspen for a generation now, performing regularly under the auspices of Jazz Aspen Snowmass for three decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve got some great jazz fans there,\u201d he told The Aspen Times during one of his recent swings through town. \u201cThey love Latin jazz.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanchez is back at the JAS Caf\u00e9 for two shows Saturday night.<\/p>\n

The altitude slows him down a little more these days, at 68, than it did on his first few trips to town.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwenty years ago it was no problem \u2014 stay up all night, you know what I mean?\u201d he laughed. \u201cBut nowadays I\u2019ve got to chill and make sure I have a good time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In concert, Sanchez plays a healthy dose of Latin jazz and dance-friendly salsa music along with the self-styled Latin soul that\u2019s been one of his signatures for decades. A Poncho Sanchez set might include his take on soul classics by the likes of James Brown, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to mix all of those things together, and usually by the end of the set people are having a pretty good time and looking for a dance floor somewhere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The foundations of his omnivorous sound can be found in Los Angeles in the 1960s, where Latin jazz mixed easily with the Motown and soul of the day.<\/p>\n

The youngest of 11 children, Sanchez was born in Laredo, Texas, and moved to Los Angeles at age 12. His first taste of the music he would eventually devote his life to came from his older siblings playing records of the mambo music coming out of Cuba and Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn those days it was not called \u2018salsa,\u2019 it was just musica Cubana, musica Latina,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThat\u2019s how long I\u2019ve been in this thing \u2014 before they even called salsa \u2018salsa.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

His taste formed around those Latin rhythms, pop music and \u201cAmerican Bandstand.\u201d While he\u2019s won Grammys and acclaim for his skills as a drummer, he started out, as a sixth-grader, playing guitar in a rhythm and blues band. He eventually started playing drums \u2014 a regular trap set, not the conga setup that made him famous \u2014 in a few soul bands.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I got my hands on a conga drum and it just felt right to me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d hole up in his family garage and play along with records by the greats of the moment: Cal Tjader, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria. He recalled the foreboding feeling of approaching the rumba drum circles at Griffith Park in Los Angeles for the first time in the late 1960s. He first sat in with a big group under a tree in \u201ca crazy, hippie smoke-in,\u201d but soon realized he was in the wrong place.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started banging on my conga, but after like a half hour I was like, \u2018Man, half of these guys don\u2019t even know what they\u2019re doing,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

So he moved onto a smaller group of Latin drummers. Sanchez recalled tapping on a player\u2019s shoulder, asking if he could join in.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018Are you Cuban?\u2019 I said \u2018no.\u2019 \u2018Are you Puerto Rican?\u2019 I said \u2018no.\u2019 \u2018What are you?\u2019 I said, \u2018Chicano, Mexican-American.\u2019 And he said, \u2018Chicanos can\u2019t play congas!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, though, he snuck in and won over the circle\u2019s leader, who complimented his skills but still doubted his pedigree.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018Your mother has to be Puerto Rican or your father has to be Cuban,\u2019\u201d Sanchez recalled. \u201cI said, \u2018No, man. They\u2019re from Mexico.\u2019 He couldn\u2019t believe it. He\u2019d never seen a Mexican-American play like that. That was the very beginning for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanchez, from there, started playing congas and singing in the Los Angeles band Sabor, doing gigs at weddings and covering rock bands like Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago. His big break came when an associate of his hero, the legendary percussionist and band leader Cal Tjader, saw him play with Sabor in a small Latin jazz club and told Tjader about Sanchez\u2019s skills on the congas. When Sanchez and his wife went to see Tjader play in Redondo Beach in 1974, much to Sanchez\u2019s surprise, Tjader called him up onstage to sit in with the band.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went up and did one song, did a solo. The crowd went crazy, and Cal said, \u2018Stick around for the rest of the set,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI said, \u2018Somebody pinch me. Am I dreaming?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The dream set led to a four-night run in Los Angeles and San Diego, and then to seven years playing with Tjader, with whom Sanchez toured the world and won his first Grammy in 1980. Sanchez was with Tjader when he died, at 56, of a heart attack while on tour in Manila.<\/p>\n

After the shock of losing his mentor, Sanchez set out to carry on his legacy, which he has been doing in the ensuing decades.<\/p>\n

Since then, Sanchez has kept his own eight-piece band intact \u2014 with three horns, piano, bass and an assortment of percussion. He\u2019s been nominated for nine Grammy awards, won twice and was given the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look around sometimes and say, \u2018Jesus, how did all this happen?\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poncho Sanchez and his band have been making stops in Aspen for a generation now, performing regularly under the auspices of Jazz Aspen Snowmass for three decades. \u201cThey\u2019ve got some great jazz fans there,\u201d he told The Aspen Times during one of his recent swings through town. \u201cThey love Latin jazz.\u201d Sanchez is back at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2455416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 12:09:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2455416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2455416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2455416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2455416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}