Bandleader, pianist, composer and arranger Gilberto Cruz was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, but by the early 1960s he was active in the New York area playing gigs with his uniquely configured charanga orchestra, Gilberto Y Su Charanga. At that time there were a lot of charanga orchestras in New York, and if a band wanted to compete they had to bring something special to the table; taking the vibraphone out of the Latin jazz context and inserting it into the “typical” Cuban orchestra was Gilberto Cruz’s gambit.

By the mid-1960s the pachanga fad had died and so Cruz decided to dissolve his charanga in favor of a much more manageable and hip sounding vibes and piano led sextet in the mode of the very popular Joe Cuba Sextet. Cruz retained most of his core members, including bassist Teodoro “Teddy” Vantapool and vibraphonist and percussionist Andrew “Andy” Vega. He also recruited the gruff-voiced Genaro “Heny” Álvarez as lead vocalist, sweetening things with the female backing voice of Rosa Angélica, Eddie Lois, from New York, on conga and Enrique “Henry” Dávila (aka “Kike” or Quique), from Fajardo, Puerto Rico, came in on trap drums and timbales.

In the winter of 1970, the Gilberto Sextet went into Beltone Studios to begin the sessions that would yield their next LP, "Pónganse Duros" for Ansonia Records, which was released the following summer in 1971 and has become a sought-after collector’s item in recent years. By this point, Cruz had been a veteran of the Latin music scene for a decade and his band was a well-oiled machine that could turn out any sort of Latin music, from mambo and mozambique to merengue, from jazzy instrumental “descargas” (jam sessions) and Latin soul to Puerto Rican bomba and steamy boleros with a touch of doo-wop. But for this record, a little something different would be attempted with the addition of Lou Bartel on English language vocals and harmonica. Inserted into the Gilberto Sextet, Bartel comes across like a blend of Lou Reed and Tuli Kupferberg moonlighting in a Latin band, injecting a little East Village counterculture gringo grime into the proceedings. In the late 1950s Bartel (born Louis Bartfield) was a Brill Building / Broadway style teeny-bopper pop and novelty tune songwriter and also sang vocals on several singles including “Natural, Natural Baby,” featured in the 1957 B movie monster flick Beginning Of The End. Though the Gilberto Sextet had featured English language vocals on previous releases, Bartel was the first (and last) white singer in the band. Thankfully, it was a cross-cultural grafting experiment that worked in that “only-in-New York” melting pot way. Backing Bartel was an uptown soul-style English language female duo that seems to have been dubbed with the odd name “Stick In The Mud” for the occasion. Interestingly, Pónganse Duros literally means: “Harden Yourselves” or “Get Tough” but it’s an idiomatic expression commonly found in Latin songs that actually is interpreted as “get ready” or “prepare yourselves” (to dance, jam and have a good time). In this case get ready for a wild trip, because the Gilberto Sextet was about to “let it all hang out” and get truly groovy.

“Por Cada Minuto” kicks off the journey with an unexpectedly slow start, showcasing the talents of Sammy Ayala in a bluesy, soulful ballad/bolero hybrid penned by Cruz and punctuated by unexpected bell sounds and staccato, rapid-fire bongo hits, as if Motown and El Barrio had a mash up at the Apollo Theater. Then the pace picks up only slightly with the slinky, funky “You Better Keep Up With The Times” sung by Lou Bartel. There were several tunes at the time with socially conscious lyrics from Latin artists like Eddie Palmieri, Jimmy Sabater, and the young Rubén Blades but one senses that Cruz’s lyrics, especially as sung by Bartel, are more about free love and relaxing social attitudes than fighting economic ills or racism, though the call to “get involved, be a part of today’s continuous revolution, [and] get up with the times” does have some less hedonistic overtones as well. What grabs the listener’s ear most is the bluesy harmonica, psychedelic vibes drenched in reverb, and groovy soul lady backing vocals, all of which were relatively unheard of in typical Latin boogaloo tracks of the era.

Next up is a tough guaguancó / mambo perfectly paced for dancing, “El Último Que Se Rie,” which is basically a revenge lyric where the singer defiantly says “he who laughs last, laughs best” when his friends rib him about his relationship problems. Then the mood is lifted by Sammy Ayala’s title tune, a gem that kicks off with be-bop, doo-wop group vocals and then—boom! Another highly danceable guaguancó jam is revealed, featuring dance-party lyrics happily sung by Ayala. And to keep things interesting, there’s even a little bit of Ponce-style plena drumming in the break with the band’s conguero, Willie Rodríguez, leading the charge. Incidentally, several years later Ayala’s old friend Rafael Cortijo would cover the song on the LP Champions (Coco, 1975). The side closes out with a hot descarga featuring tasty solos from the song’s composer Andy Vega on the vibes and bandleader Cruz (who receives the humorous shout-out, “Mister Fingers”) on piano. The rest of the band stretches out as well with great bass tumbaos (ostinato vamps) from Vantapool and some “heavy duty” timbale riffs courtesy of Kike Dávila.

“Do You Want To Be Free,” turns back to the slightly odd, East Village hippie boogaloo funk/soul, where Bartel urges his lady to “come on and fly with me” and “lift your hands and shout, let it all hang out,” with Cruz cooking on organ and rare groove drum beaks that would excite any hip-hop sample freak. Psychedelic vibes (literally, courtesy of Vega) abound as Bartel sings, “You don’t have to answer to no one, just be true to yourself, and do the things you have to do that help you find yourself,” taking us out into the stratosphere with manic harmonica blasts that seem caged from early Beatles hits.

The mood then shifts back to a down-tempo pace and the theme of romantic loss with Sammy crooning the torchy bolero “No Es Tan Fácil” where he emotes about a lost love that is not so easy to forget. The dark, bluesy feeling of heartbreak is continued with “It’s A Doggone Shame” but this time in English. The song effectively channels James Brown’s “It’s A Man’s World” with Bartel bemoaning how he, as a poor man who will “pay the rest of his life,” was made a fool of by his ex-lover, a woman who got pregnant by a rich wife-cheating playboy who will never have to take the blame, while Bartel will “have to save her name” by falsely taking responsibility for the baby.

The mood is lifted somewhat by the choppy son montuno “Para Que Gocen,” where Ayala urges everyone to forget their cares and dance to the cha-cha beat. This isn’t hard, especially with the classic Cuban melodic runs courtesy of the dynamic duo of Cruz and Vega which are underpinned by some nice jazzy bass work from Vantapool and great cierres (unison percussion breaks for the dancers to bust some sexy moves) that accent the proceedings at the perfect moment.

The album ends with the oddest and perhaps best-loved track, the enigmatic “Fango” (Mud). Throughout the song Lou Bartel desperately intones trippy ravings about giving the gift of psychedelic soul (“What you give is what you get, and what you get is what you give, oh baby, we give you mud, ‘cause we got soul, we give to you, we give you mud, what we give is what we get, and what we get, we give to you, we give you mud, in your eyes, in your ears, in your nose…”). All this to a jazzy cha-cha-chá / breakbeat rhythm on the traps and a mean bass line while the vibes float above in a purple-tinted lysergic haze. To top it off, Bartel decorates his shamanistic rants with equally bonkers harmonica trills.

Though Gilberto Cruz sadly only made one more album, he never again repeated the uniquely hybrid psychedelic salsa and counter-culture boogaloo of "Ponganse Duros." Like much of Gilberto Cruz’s work, “Fango” and the rest of "Ponganse Duros" definitely has a unique sound that has forever endeared deep connoisseurs of Latin soul and salsa to the Gilberto Sextet, especially the vibraphone work of Andy Vega and the left-field contributions of Lou Bartel. Thankfully the album, which was remastered from the original tapes, has now become accessible to all with this first time ever digital reissue from Ansonia Records.

-Pablo Yglesias