At the Heart of a Legend

There is a curiously pixie-like quality about Chico O’Farrill as he sits on a raised platform in a recording studio, music score spread across the table in front of him, surrounded by the multiple instrumentalists in his Afro-Cuban Jazz Big Band. Wearing his usual turtleneck sweater, the diminutive arranger-composer, a legendary figure to followers of Latin jazz, would probably not look out of place in a Dublin pub.

And with good reason. Although O’Farrill, 78, was born and raised in Cuba, his lineage is Irish and German, and his impish smile and flashing eyes give him a more than passing resemblance to another veteran artist--the Chieftains’ Paddy Moloney.

In this performance scene from a still-in-the-works documentary on his life, O’Farrill snaps out instructions to his players. Speaking in a high, quirky voice, his lighthearted sense of humor underscoring his comments, he gives a downbeat, and an extraordinary surge of sound begins--sweet but powerful, brass harmonies soaring over the infectious rhythms of congas, timbales and claves.

Hearing even a few bars of O’Farrill’s remarkable scoring immediately raises the question of why this artist--universally cited by musicians as one of the principal architects of the Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz combinations of the ‘40s and ‘50s--has had such a strangely uneven career. His 1995 recording, the Grammy-nominated “Pure Emotion,” for example, was a brilliant assemblage of Latin jazz, rich with sly musical subtleties.

But it was the first American jazz recording from O’Farrill in 30 years, and it was not followed by another until the release of “Heart of a Legend” (Milestone) in September 1999.

And it has only been for the past two years that O’Farrill has had the opportunity to lead and write for a regular ensemble--the Afro-Cuban Jazz Big Band, which has appeared regularly on Sundays at New York City’s Blue Note. On Tuesday, he and the band make their L.A. debut at the Conga Room.

It’s been an odd, circuitous career for O’Farrill, whose grandfather and grand-uncle emigrated from Ireland to Cuba in the 19th century; both became well-established lawyers, and a street in Havana is named after the family.

His family expected O’Farrill to follow his father and grandfather into the legal profession. But a stint at Georgia’s Riverside Military Academy in the late ‘30s brought an exposure to American jazz that O’Farrill found irresistible. Back in Havana, he eventually dropped out of college to become a professional musician, studying composition with Cuban composer Felix Guerrero.

Almost from the moment O’Farrill arrived in New York in 1948, he was involved with Machito, Dizzy Gillespie, Mario Bauza, Chano Pozo and others in search of linkages between jazz and Cuban music. And, although he didn’t get there first, he had the orchestrating proficiency to bring the elements together in large ensemble form, often via such extraordinary works as his “Afro-Cuban Jazz Suites” and his “Manteca Suite.”

By the early ‘50s, he was composing for Gillespie and Charlie Parker, recording regularly for Norman Granz, then the hottest producer in jazz, and writing arrangements for Machito, Stan Kenton and Benny Goodman, who reportedly gave Chico his nickname, complaining that his given name, Arturo, was “too hard to pronounce.”

Perhaps most important, he was the first Cuban musician with the skill, desire and training to combine the harmonies of jazz with Afro-Cuban rhythms.

“I grew up in the ‘30s hearing typical danzon-style music,” he recalls, “ensembles with violins, flutes and a little bit of rhythm. There were also a lot of sextets, with two trumpets and a lot more rhythm. But what I really loved was the big American-style bands, with trumpets, saxophones and trombones; I loved that kind of sound.

“And the one thing that I thought Cuban music needed at the time was the richness of the instrumentation of jazz, and of the harmonies. And since I understood jazz and Cuban music, I felt I could bring the two together.”

Which he did in enormously influential fashion. Paquito D’Rivera, the all-star Cuban clarinetist-saxophonist remembers that, when he was growing up, O’Farrill was considered “dean of the Cuban arrangers.”

“Whenever there’s a conversation between writers about how to do things right,” says D’Rivera, “somebody would always say, ‘Well, Chico O’Farrill did it this way.’ That was it, the final word. And it was good for us, because it was a way for us to learn the American way to arrange, but from the hands of a Cuban musician.”

Given this kind of high regard, and the sterling list of achievements from the ‘40s and ‘50s, why were there so many periods of apparent silence from an artist whom Oscar Hijuelos, whose novel “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, describes as “the Grand Archbishop” of Afro-Cuban jazz?

Well, silence can be deceptive. In fact, O’Farrill was never really that silent. But he wasn’t always writing Latin jazz. When big bands were steamrollered by the arrival of rock, he turned to advertising, bringing the same degree of class and competency to a Budweiser jingle that he did to everything he touched.

When a big-band scoring opportunity did come up, he took it, even though the assignment may have been to arrange a set of Beatles tunes for the Count Basie Orchestra. And, characteristically, he found a way to accomplish the deceptively difficult task of adapting the Beatles’ material to the rhythms of the Count Basie groove.

“It wasn’t easy,” says O’Farrill. Then, with a chuckle, he adds, “I had to do violence to those Beatles tunes to fit them into the Basie style.”

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More recently, he was asked to bring in some material to a planned Broadway production of “The Mambo Kings.” (Hijuelos is writing the book for the musical.)

“And you know,” says Jorge Ulla, who worked with O’Farrill on his most recent recording as well as produced the Spanish-language film “Guaguasi,” with an O’Farrill score 20 years ago, “he walked in there, played some music for these producers and it was instant Broadway. It was as though he was saying, ‘Well, I can be a Broadway composer, too!’ ”

O’Farrill, in other words, is a musical man for all seasons. In fact, he has a fairly substantial catalog of classical pieces that have only rarely been heard.

“I think that Chico could have been another Ernesto Lecuona if he had decided to go that path,” says D’Rivera, referring to the versatile Cuban composer of works such as “Rapsodia Negra” and songs such as the classic “Andalucia.” “Chico wrote a clarinet fantasy for me that was a monster--very hard. But he just laughed when he saw me struggling with it.

“But Chico spent too much time in the studios. I understand why he did it, because the money was very good, but he’s one of the most original of our Cuban musicians. You name it, he did it. Commercials, jingles for TV, symphonic music, chamber music, big-band arrangements, jazz arrangements.”

When the work in the U.S. began to dry up, he simply responded to opportunities elsewhere, as he did from the late ‘50s to the mid-’60s, when he moved to Mexico City.

“It was great, for a while,” he says. “I had my own band, I had a TV show, I made some records, and we had a good life.”

But not a jazz life, and O’Farrill inevitably was drawn back to New York, where he now lives with Lupe, his wife of 43 years. His keyboardist son, Arturo O’Farrill Jr., plays with and is the musical director of the Afro-Cuban Jazz Big Band. His daughter, Georgina, is an aspiring actress-screenwriter in L.A.

O’Farrill’s return to New York in 1968 did not come at a particularly propitious time, at least not in a musical sense. O’Farrill did every imaginable kind of scoring assignment, including an orchestration date for David Bowie. And, although times were slim for big-band scoring, he managed to fill in with small group dates (for Clark Terry and Cal Tjader, among others) and the occasional large group gig (for Gato Barbieri and Dizzy Gillespie).

For much of the ‘80s, however, with the exception of the Ulla film, it was back to ad jingles. O’Farrill took the ups and downs with his characteristic grace and humor.

“My father always told me,” says O’Farrill Jr., “that a good musician is a good musician, and you take pride in your work, no matter what.”

Still, it’s hard to understand how the music community could have continued to overlook the presence of such an influential figure. Fortunately, producer Todd Barkan persuaded Milestone to release “Pure Emotion.”

“I have to give Fantasy/Milestone credit for taking a chance with the album,” says Barkan, who, along with Ulla, is producing the O’Farrill documentary. “I knew that it would not be inexpensive to do it right, but they simply told us to do whatever was needed to give Chico’s music the right showcase. I’d known and loved Chico’s music for years, and I knew that all we had to do was let him be heard.”

But not even Barkan could have anticipated the sheer youthful exuberance that came bursting out of the recording. If O’Farrill harbored any anger or resentment, it was nowhere in the music.

“My music may not have been heard at some point, but I was here,” O’Farrill says. “I’ve been here all along. I don’t complain that anything is owed me.”

Even with the success of “Pure Emotion,” however, O’Farrill seemed on the verge of disappearing from sight again. That is, until Ulla began to think about putting together a soundtrack album of music from “Guaguasi.”

“I asked Chico about the music,” Ulla says, “and he said, ‘Forget about it, I’m going to write fresh music.’ He went in hiding for two weeks, then called me over to his place, and he had the floor covered with music sheets. I said, ‘Chico, what is this? This is not the film.’ He just laughed, and he kept writing more material--wonderful material--and we realized that we had a new Chico O’Farrill album.”

And a very different album from “Pure Emotion.” “Heart of a Legend” has a more autobiographical quality; its far-ranging tunes, varying instrumentations and occasional juxtaposition of traditional material are a kind of soundtrack for O’Farrill’s life as a musician.

Music from the CD will be featured in his performance at the Conga Room on Tuesday night. Sadly, Grammy voters last week chose to overlook “Heart of a Legend” in the Latin jazz category.

But O’Farrill, in his half-joking style, takes it all with a grain of salt.

“I love all this,” he says. “It’s nice to come back, especially if you get to make some better music. But, I’ll tell you, success is the most capricious thing in the world. Sometimes it just comes around when you’re not expecting it anymore.”

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Chico O’Farrill and his Afro-Cuban Jazz Big Band, Tuesday at the Conga Room, 5364 Wilshire Blvd., 10 p.m. $20 general admission; $50 VIP. (323) 938-1696.

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A Small but Stellar Discography

Chico O’Farrill’s circuitous career, in which he spent many years either working in the advertising business or living in Mexico, has not resulted in a large discography. But what is available is first-rate, particularly in its coverage of the early and late years in which he was producing some of his finest work.

* “Cuban Blues: The Chico O’Farrill Sessions,” Verve. A two-CD boxed set covering sessions between 1950 and 1954. The material was drawn from one Machito and six O’Farrill 10-inch LPs originally recorded for Clef and Norgran. The highlights of the collection are O’Farrill’s two Afro-Cuban Jazz Suites (the first featuring Flip Phillips and Charlie Parker with the Machito Big Band). This is O’Farrill at his best, transforming the rough Afro-Cuban jazz elements being explored by Dizzy Gillespie, Machito, Chano Pozo and others into complex, full-scale, suite-like compositions.

The balance of the material is expansive, including plenty of then-popular mambos, as well as such familiar tunes as “Peanut Vendor,” “Malaguena,” “Carioca,” “Flamingo” and “Siboney.”

* “Pure Emotion,” Fantasy/Milestone. Released in 1995, “Pure Emotion” was O’Farrill’s first album as a leader in three decades. Nominated for a Grammy, its centerpiece is his 12-minute set of big-band “Variations on a Well-Known Theme” (“La Cucaracha”).

* “Heart of a Legend,” Fantasy/Milestone. Released in September 1999. The range of music--a new version of “Manteca,” various-sized ensembles, references to traditional music as well as jazz--makes this a kind of summing-up O’Farrill collection. There is, in addition, a sterling lineup of well-known artists participating, among them saxophonists Gato Barbieri and Paquito D’Rivera, trumpeters Arturo Sandoval and Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros, singer Freddy Cole, bassist Israel “Cachao” Lopez and percussionist Carlos “Patato” Valdes.

A few LP albums in which O’Farrill functioned as composer-arranger are also now available on CD:

* “Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods,” Dizzy Gillespie and Machito, 1975. Released on Fantasy/Original Jazz Classics CD in 1990.

* “Basie’s Beatle Bag,” Count Basie, 1968. Released on Uni/ Verve CD in 1998.

* “Viva Emiliano Zapata,” Gato Barbieri, 1974. Released on Uni/ Impulse CD in 1992.