Strachwitz Frontera Collection

It is one of the most recognizable beats in the history of popular dance music: One, two, cha-cha-cha.

For a time in the 1950s, this Afro-Cuban rhythm also became a dance craze that swept the western world, from Paris to Caracas, from New York to Mexico City. The cha-cha-cha became one of the staples of ballroom dancing, along with the mambo and the rumba. Simultaneously, the light and cheerful beat of this new dance rhythm also seeped into the DNA of early rock ‘n’ roll.

Many Americans may not realize that rock was heavily influenced by the cha-cha-cha and other Cuban rhythms. If you listen to “Louie Louie,” the classic garage-band anthem popularized by The Kingsmen in 1963, the Latin connection may not sound obvious.  But there is no mistaking the iconic opening riff of “Louie Louie,” in the intro to “El Loco Cha Cha,” recorded six years earlier by L.A.-based Cuban pianist Rene Touzet. Touzet’s tune was waxed in 1957 for producer Gene Norman’s GNP label.

The Southern California connection to the cha cha cha dates back even further. The composer of “Louie Louie” was Richard Berry, an R&B singer born in Louisiana who performed with a multicultural Orange County group called The Rhythm Rockers. That band was founded in Santa Ana in 1955 by Barry and Rick Rillera, two Filipino brothers who were also big fans of Latin music. They picked up the sounds of Latin jazz and Afro-Cuban dance music from Chico Sesma’s legendary radio show, coming straight out of East L.A. Berry then picked it up from his bandmates.

With the cha-cha-cha, however, all roads eventually lead back to Cuba. Touzet’s “El Loco” recording was actually a cover of a song that was popular in Cuba, where it was titled “Amarren Al Loco” (Tie Up That Madman). Touzet changed the title and the arrangement, adding that “Louie Louie” lick. The original Cuban song – without that catchy opening riff – was written around 1955 by Rosendo Ruiz Jr., one of the island’s leading composers of the new dance craze.

The Frontera Collection contains three versions of another popular Ruiz composition, “Rico Vacilón,” considered a cornerstone of the genre. These recordings are by Orquesta Cha, Cha, Cha Continental, the Trio Avileño, and Los Tres Ases. The latter, recorded in Mexico and released in the U.S. by RCA Victor, translates the title on the label as “Lots of Fun,” though that doesn’t really capture the vernacular Spanish meaning. Yet, the notion of fun does capture the whole spirit of the cha-cha-cha, which spread quickly because of its catchy melodies, lightly syncopated beats, and fanciful, often frivolous themes.

Both the mambo and the cha-cha-cha emerged from that rich fount of Cuban dance music, the danzón, an elegant salon style featuring structured sections that change rhythms and demand from the dancers precise movements and matching steps. According to musicians and musicologists, it was the dancers who inspired the musicians to create looser and livelier rhythms to match their dancing impulses.

The cha-cha-cha is widely credited to Enrique Jorrín, a violinist and composer with the famed Orquesta America, founded by bandleader Ninón Mondéjar in 1945. According to Cuban musicologist Leonardo Acosta, however, the two men had a falling out over who deserved credit for inventing this new dance style. Either way, the cha-cha-cha is definitely a child of the Orquesta America.  The dance evolved in the late 1940s after Jorrín left another top band, Arcaño y Sus Maravillas, to join Mondejár’s group.

Various sources note that the new genre was created specifically as an easy alternative to the complicated mambo, which had preceded the cha-cha-cha in popularity. One blogger, El Pregonero, even adds a racial element to the analysis, asserting that the latest, easy-to-learn style was developed for whites who had trouble dancing the mambo (“pa’ los cubanos que no saben mambear”). Be that as it may, the dance caught on quickly, both at home and abroad.

People familiar with the Buena Vista Social Club may be aware that the popular band borrowed it name from one of the many social clubs that were so integral to Cuban society in the 1940s. That system of social clubs also played a part in the development of the cha-cha-cha.

At the time, Mondéjar was founder of the Federación de Sociedades Juveniles, which were social clubs for young people located in neighborhoods throughout Havana. The band would play at club-sponsored events, performing danzones that had been written specifically for each group, adding lyrics to a style that had been strictly instrumental. The bandleader asked his musicians to sing the verses in unison, a collective approach that would become a trademark of vocals in the cha-cha-cha.

  It’s often said that the cha-cha-cha got its name from the sound of the dancers’ feet shuffling on the floor while doing the quick three-step section, which sounded to the musicians like a cha-cha-cha. However, Acosta, the Cuban musicologist who also pays saxophone, calls that a myth. He says the name is definitely an onomatopoeia, but derived probably from the sound of the guiro, the gourd-like instrument that makes its distinctive rhythmic noise when scraped with a stick.

As with any new music style, including rock ‘n roll, it’s almost impossible to pin down an actual birth date because pop music is a process, always in flux. There is no doubt, however, that the first song in the genre to gain wide popularity was Jorrín’s “La Engañadora,” which became a big hit in 1953. The Frontera Collection has a remarkable, polished version of the song by none other than Mambo King Perez Prado.  There is also a more recent, upbeat rendition featuring a female vocal by the Texas-based Orquesta Falcon.

Originally, the cha-cha-cha was played primarily by Cuban charangas, a type of band that featured a genteel, salon sound, in contrast to Afro-Cuban conjuntos and orchestras with their bottom-heavy percussion and bright brass. The charanga was typically made up of piano, bass, violins, flute and percussion, including timbales, maracas and guiro. The new dance actually revived the popularity of the old charangas, which had been associated primarily with the instrumental danzón. In Cuba, this type of orchestra was historically called the Charanga Francesa, brought to the island in the early 19th century by refugees from Haiti’s war of independence.

Aside from Orquesta America, other charangas that helped popularize the genre include Fajardo y Sus Estrellas, the Orquesta Melodías del 40, and especially the cha-cha-cha charanga par excellence, the Orquesta Aragon. The Aragon, which exists to this day, included two prodigious composers, director Rafael Lay and flutist Richard Egües, both of whom wrote cha-cha-cha classics. The Frontera Collection has a rare copy of Egües’s “El Bodeguero,” recorded by Fajardo on Cuba’s Panart label, with the trademark line that marks it as an original: “Hecho en Cuba por la Cuban Plastics & Record Corp.” Subsequent Panart releases of dubious legitimacy were made later in the U.S. after the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

In the entire history of the cha-cha-cha, “El Bodeguero” has perhaps the most famous of all chorus lines: “Toma chocolate, paga lo que debes.” Literally, it means drink the chocolate and pay what you owe. The phrase is used for the sheer, syncopated sound of the words, but it has nothing to do with the verses that come before.

The song is about a bodeguero, a grocer, who makes people wonder why he’s always so happy. The answer: the cha-cha-cha, of course. The bodeguero dances the new rhythm in the aisles “amidst the beans, potatoes and chiles.” (El bodeguero bailando va /       En la bodega, se baila así / Entre frijoles, papa y ají / El nuevo ritmo del cha cha cha.) Even Nat King Cole did a version of the song on “Cole Español,” the first of his three Spanish-language cover albums that were big hits in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Cole’s Capitol Records LP translates the title as “Grocers Cha Cha,” using the abbreviated name for the dance used in the U.S., but never in Cuba where it’s always cha-cha-cha, never dropping the third step.

Over the years, the adaptable cha-cha-cha has been performed by many kinds of musical groups, from brassy big bands (Tito Puente), to bouncy Mexican tropical groups (La Sonora Santanera), classically trained crooners (Pedro Vargas), romantic guitar trios (Trio Los Panchos), and even ebullient Tex-Mex outfits (Sunny and The Sunliners).

Which brings us back to American rock music with its cha-cha-cha infusion. Unlike “Louie Louie,” many early rock songs did not need decoding to discover their Cuban element. It was right there in the title. Here are just three examples: “Rock ‘n’ Roll Cha Cha” (1959), a doo-wop/cha-cha fusion by The Eternals;  “Willie Did the Cha Cha” (1958), by Johnny Otis of “Hand Jive” fame; and “Everybody Loves To Cha Cha” (1959), by the cool Sam Cooke. In the last clip, notice the enthusiastic audience response when Dave Clark of “American Bandstand” introduces Cooke and asks, “Anybody here do the cha cha?” The crowd shouts out unanimously: “Yeah!”

Of course, the cha-cha-cha remains a force in American pop culture. There are many contemporary examples: Portland’s Pink Martini doing a faithful rendition of La Sonora Santanera’s hit, “Donde Estas, Yolanda” (1997); “Come A Little Bit Closer” (2004) by the late Willy Deville of Mink Deville fame; “Save The Last Dance” (2005), a modern remake of the Ben E. King hit by Michael Bublé, with a slice-of-life video that features the singer taking cha-cha-cha dance classes.

Last but not least, let’s not forget Carlos Santana. The Chicano rockstar has incorporated the cha-cha-cha from the very start with “Oye Como Va” by Tito Puente, from Santana’s 1969 Abraxas album.  The genre reappeared on Santana’s huge comeback hit in 1999, “Smooth,” featuring vocals by Rob Thomas. (Note the percussionist scraping on the guiro in the “Smooth” video.)

Half a century after the cha-cha-cha was invented, Santana tapped into what made it so popular to begin with: The rhythm is irresistible.

           –Agustín Gurza