In Remembrance: How Johnny Pacheco Preached The Gospel Of Salsa To The World

Chances are you've heard salsa music, or at least heard of it. But what exactly is it, ingredient by ingredient? Let Johnny Pacheco, who helped popularize the genre back in the 1960s, spell it out for us.

"Salsa came mainly from the Cuban music," the Dominican multi-instrumentalist, bandleader and label founder explained to La Voz Del Mambo in 2005. "Its roots are mambo, rhumba, son montuno, guaracha, guaguanco, guajira, cha cha chá." Which sounds like a lot to distill into one sound, right? Even if you aren't familiar with those genres? Not for Pacheco. When he lifted a flute to his lips, those seven threads braided into one—so much so, that he sometimes felt more like an orator than a musician.

Some call Fania Records the Motown of that catchall genre, and Pacheco was its co-founder. (His partner was Jerry Masucci, an ex-NYPD cop-turned-attorney.) Throughout the '60s and '70s, the pair expanded a small operation into a label synonymous with salsa itself, with flagship artists like the Fania All-Stars defining the genre for millions. Not only that, Pacheco prolifically released his own albums through the label, like his classic team-up with Cruz, 1974's Celia & Johnny. Altogether, he received five GRAMMY Award nominations, and in 2005, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin GRAMMYs.

Sadly, Pacheco died Monday (Feb. 15) in Teaneck, New Jersey, after being hospitalized for pneumonia. His wife, Cuqui, confirmed the news, as reported by The New York Times. He was 85.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">R.I.P. Johnny Pacheco, March 25, 1935 – February 15, 2021. Here he is with Celia Cruz and Tito Puente at Victor's Cafe in New York City in 1988. <a href="https://t.co/2C2kjvMBgo">pic.twitter.com/2C2kjvMBgo</a></p>— Dust-to-Digital (@dusttodigital) <a href="https://twitter.com/dusttodigital/status/1361531732227457025?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 16, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

In a BBC clip from 1988, Cruz sums up Pacheco's magnitude. Together with percussion extraordinaire Tito Puente at Victor's Cafe in New York City, Cruz leads them in call-and-response. "I've always been a lucky girl, fortune's always held my hand / Since I joined Sonora Matancera, Cuba's most popular band," she croons in Spanish. "It was with Sonora I got my break / I came from Cuba to New York / In search of something different / And I was lucky to record with the great Tito Puente / With Tito Puente it went really well / But the best was yet to come / Then I met Johnny Pacheco, star of the Dominican Republic!"

That star was born Juan Azarías Pacheco Knipping in Santiago de los Caballeros, the second-largest city in the country. His father, Rafael Pacheco, played clarinet in and led the Orquesta Santa Cecilia, a prominent Dominican big band. When Pacheco was 11, his family relocated to New York. He went on to study percussion at Julliard and work with luminaries like Charlie Palmieri before starting his own group, Pacheco y Su Charanga, in 1960.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://t.co/L1rYPdLBNP">pic.twitter.com/L1rYPdLBNP</a></p>— The Latin Recording Academy / Latin GRAMMYs (@LatinGRAMMYs) <a href="https://twitter.com/LatinGRAMMYs/status/1361480525739925504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 16, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

At 25, Pacheco and his band took the stage at the Tritons Club in the Bronx. There, he introduced a dance called the pachanga (or "Pacheco" mixed with "charanga," meaning a Cuban dance group). Record producer Al Santiago took notice and signed him with his label, Alegre, for their self-titled debut album. 1961's Pacheco y Su Charanga was a blockbuster hit, selling 100,000 copies in its first year of release. And with that success under his belt, Pacheco pachanga-ed his way through venues the world over.

When the pachanga started to lose steam, Pacheco left Alegre and started Fania with the help of Mascussi—an Italian-American enamored with sounds from south of the border. At first, Pacheco sold records to music stores out of the trunk of his car. The label grew legs thanks to Canonazo, his hit 1964 record with vocalist Pete "El Conde" Rodriguez. Fania's growing clout led to greats like bassist Bobby Valentín, pianist Larry Harlow and percussionist Ray Barretto climbing aboard.

Was Pacheco the one to christen salsa as a genre? He wasn't sure, although he didn't rule it out. "I don't know if I was the first to call it salsa," he told Home News Tribune of East Brunswick in 2000, "but the reason I called it salsa is because we started to travel with all types of Latin [influenced] musicians, so I called it salsa to put it all under one roof. We had the Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, two Jews and one Englishman—it was a nice salsa."

The troupe of signees grew in such numbers that the label curated the Fania All-Stars, a supergroup that showcased Fania Records' ocean of talent. "I would say one of the most memorable moments was the day of our first debut; it was in a club called Alpagado," Pacheco told La Voz Del Mambo. "That was when the members of La Fania All-Stars were all original band members. The acceptance and welcoming of the crowd [were] not what I ever expected. It was warm and exciting."

In 1972, the ensemble appeared in Nuestra Cosa Latina (or, "Our Latin Thing"), a Leon Gast-directed documentary about their concert at the Cheetah nightclub in Manhattan. The following year, the Fania All-Stars played one of the most momentous gigs in Latin music history for 45,000 people at Yankee Stadium; the celebratory commotion almost derailed the team’s home games for the remainder of that year’s season. In 1974, Celia & Johnny was released. The album became a massive hit, solidifying Cruz's stature as the Queen of Salsa and leading to nearly a dozen collaborative albums between the pair.

Masucci took sole control of the label in 1977; Pacheco sold his share in 1980. After a commercially fallow decade for salsa, a series of All-Stars reunion concerts kicked up a wave of revisitation in the early '90s. In 2005, Pacheco's family sold Fania to the music distributor Código Music. In 2013, Concord purchased their catalog; they continue to rerelease old Fania titles for the public under the Craft Latino imprint.

So, as the man who helped define salsa and proliferate it throughout the world, what did Pacheco believe the genre could do?

"Our music is meant to have fun; it is meant to wake up the dead," he told La Voz Del Mambo, segueing into a story about a Toronto gig where the opening act was a snooze. "'I said, "This is going to be a challenge,'" he recalled. "When we got on stage, the crowd was dying, and I said, "In a few minutes, you guys are going to be tapping your toes."

Then, "We played '[Quimbara],'" he said. "We had to come back three times [for an] encore."

For The Record: Celebrating Cuban Sensation & Queen Of Salsa Celia Cruz

In Remembrance: How Johnny Pacheco Preached The Gospel Of Salsa To The World

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