His Love of Latin Jazz Led to a New Life --and a Big Party

When Jose Rizo, host of KLON’s “Jazz on the Latin Side,” realized earlier this year that he was about to celebrate his 10th anniversary at the station, he decided to do something special.

“I told myself,” says Rizo, “Why not get together a bunch of my favorite players and have a big musical party?”

As it turned out, that was just the beginning of what ultimately became a memorable assemblage that included many of Los Angeles’ finest Latin jazz artists. By the time he was finished, Rizo had scheduled a concert at B.B. King’s in Universal City on Jan. 7, arranged for it to be recorded and found some of his own music for the ensemble to play.

The album, also titled “Jazz on the Latin Side”--but with a Vol. 1 extension, obviously affirming that there is still more music in the can--has just been released on Cubop Records. Among the featured artists are Poncho Sanchez, Justo Almario, Alex Acuna and Francisco Aguabella.

“It’s really a dream come true,” says Rizo, whose “Jazz on the Latin Side” is heard every Friday from 7 to 11 p.m. on KLON-FM (88.1). “And to hear these guys play my music--you can’t even imagine what that does to me.”

Rizo’s feelings are a far cry from what he was experiencing when he first went on the air at the listener-supported KLON in 1990.

“When I first started doing the show,” he explains, “people said, ‘You’re not going to last two months there, man. Who’s going to pledge to hear that?’ They said I should do a salsa show. So when I was there for my first pledge drive, I was really worried. But I knew I didn’t want to do a show in which I just played salsa.”

He didn’t have to. The initial response to the show was quick and positive, despite the fact that it was entering relatively unexplored territory. At the time, Latin Jazz was a relatively gray definition, and, according to Rizo, “There was no real Latin jazz at the time on the radio--only salsa.”

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In part, the problem traced to the limited availability of material.

“I started out,” he recalls, “with some records from Cuba with stuff from Chucho Valdes and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and I mixed that with jazz artists like Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones working with Latin rhythms.

“I’ve been a collector since I was 18, picking up things here and there from record shops. And whenever I had a friend who was going to Cuba, I’d give him a hundred bucks or so and say, ‘Here’s the names of some artists; if you can find any of them, bring them back.’ Sometimes I’d get a stack of 15 or 20 albums. And then, of course, there was the little bit that was being recorded here at that time--Tito Puente, Poncho Sanchez, Jerry Gonzalez and the Ft. Apache band--not a whole lot, so I had to rely heavily on the Cuban albums.”

As the overall interest in Latin music began to grow, Rizo found it much easier to locate material. For the past four or five years, with the opportunity to pick from a much richer catalog, he has tried to schedule in a broader fashion. Recognizing that definitions are often blurred with groups that range across the pop-to-jazz spectrum, he tries to balance his programming accordingly.

“I enjoy music that has fire to it,” says Rizo, “and a lot of the Latin dance music does have that quality. There are a lot of musical gems on some of those albums by dance-oriented groups like Bamboleo, but you have to take the time to search for them--and I do.

“I also try to make a point of reaching across the timeline from the past to the present. In a typical hour, you might hear one or two cuts of Mongo Santamaria, Willie Bobo or Cal Tjader. But then I’ll also have some contemporary Cuban things in there as well as up-to-date stuff by current Latin jazz musicians and a sprinkling of jazz musicians--Stan Kenton or Dizzy Gillespie or Freddie Hubbard--performing music with a Latin tinge.”

Rizo recalls receiving a call from a listener who asked, “Where can I get an album by this Latin jazz artist, Bobby Hutcherson?”

“And I thought,” he says, ‘If I can get people turned on to Bobby Hutcherson, the great jazz vibes player, as a Latin jazz artist, then I’ve really done my job.’ ”

Rizo has been doing his job since he first started in radio in the ‘70s and ‘80s at KUSB and KIST while working on an electrical engineering degree at UC Santa Barbara (although he graduated from Cal State LA). Eventually becoming program director for KUSB, he covered many of the late night slots, filling in with classical music, pop and jazz.

“I really got deep into it,” he says, “burning the night oil. Sometimes I’d pull up a whole rack of John Coltrane and then follow it with Cannonball Adderley.

Eventually, however, Rizo wound up in engineering, working for seven years at Lockheed, part of the time in the legendary research-oriented Skunk Works. An unlikely path for a 44-year-old who was born in Guadalajara, came to this country when he was 40 days old and didn’t learn to speak English until he was in the first grade.

But after his two sons--Mario and Daniel, now 14 and 18--were born, and “Jazz on the Latin Side” was launched, he made a major career decision.

“I’d gotten to the point with engineering where it just became a job, nothing more,” Rizo recalls. “And I saw how much my wife Leticia enjoyed teaching. So I went to a couple of her classes and got really turned on by the idea of working with kids, helping them read and learn how to do math.”

But when he told his wife that he was considering taking a teachers’ qualifying test, she was astonished. Why leave a well-paying engineering job to teach?

“Everybody else thought I was crazy, too,” he continues, “but I’d made my decision. We didn’t have any heavy debts, and I knew I’d be a lot happier teaching. So I took the test, I passed it, and I’ve been teaching in the L.A. Unified School District since 1991.”

If Rizo sounds like a happy man, that’s exactly his message.

“I’m doing what I want to do,” he says. “And after years of frustration over not hearing a Latin jazz radio show, and having a concept about what it should be, it’s just incredible to be able to do it, and have it be accepted. That’s the best.”

* “Jazz on the Latin Side” is heard every Friday at 7 p.m. on KLON-FM (88.1).