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Pedoviejo -> RE: I’ve had an epiphany, and it really hurt! (Dec. 19 2003 1:05:44)
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re Miguel Rodriguez
Yes, I do know Miguel but not well. I know his sister and brother in law better, Lucía Sanchez and Val Phoenix, who operate the “Flamenco Society of Houston” (Or “Houston Society of the Flamenco Arts”?) and have had a group for very many years, “Gitanerías Flamencas.” They’re good people and great aficionados.
I most remember Miguel from the first time I met him. It was in San Antonio, 1973, when I was on tour with the “Lecture-Demonstration-Recital of the Spanish Performing Arts” that José Greco did at that time. (That was a very fun tour – just four of us, José, Nana, Maestro Rogelio Machado and me - and we played colleges and universities almost exclusively.) I was introduced to Miguel at a private party by this guy who had made some sort of name for himself playing in a club (“El Poco Loco” ??) down on the river walk, and he was awful – pink ruffle shirts, flashy-trashy playing a la Carlos Montoya on crack. Anyway, I remember Miguel seated with his wife/girlfriend and a new baby, playing guitar way better than the local “famous” guy. Miguel was always very technically proficient, somewhat perfectionistic in his approach – at, if I may say, the sacrifice of that “something” that makes you want to say “Olé!” A petty critique, perhaps, since Miguel is a very accomplished guitarist.
That brings up lots of other memories. That was the first time I met Paco de Lucía. He was giving a concert in Denver at one place while we were playing some little college just outside Denver. We were all invited to a private party at a wealthy aficionado’s house. The patron thought he had gone to heaven when we showed up since Paco was already there. We sat in a bay-windowed seating area in the front, where Nana introduced me to Paco. He was wiped since he had flown up from Brazil that same day and it was now after 11:00 in the evening. The other thing I remember about that party was a collection of the best looking women we had seen the whole tour, all staring in our direction with wonder in their eyes (it’s good to be young, single and seated with famous people). Great promise hung in the air… And then José looked at his watch and declared it to be late and we had to get up to catch a flight in the early a.m. I almost cried as I peeled the most beautiful eyes you’ve ever seen off my shirt as I was pulled out the door.
That was also the first time I met Carlos Montoya, either in Houston or Ft. Worth. We played one night and he played the other, and we were therefore able to go to each others’ shows. Carlos was playing that so-called “suite” with the local orchestra – you know, the one where he just played whatever he felt like while the orchestra played the score around him and attempted to keep some semblance of compás despite his playing. But he was always jovial and paid attention to his audience, one of the reasons he was always so popular. (Paco has no stage presence at all, in case you haven’t noticed. If he didn’t have more talent and ability than any guitarist has had for the last three centuries he couldn’t sell a concert ticket if his life depended on it. With his shows it has always been the music. With Carlos Montoya it was always the showmanship.) What I remember most was that Maestro and I stood at the back of the sold-out auditorium and we could hear his guitar singing over the orchestra and a packed house. And with a bad sound system besides. An Arcángel Fernández blanca. A guitar to kill for.
Carlos came to our show the next night and he and his wife, Sally, sat in the front row. He was about ten feet away for my solo – and at the time, I was playing Paco’s Alegría in Mi Menor from the “Duende Flamenco de Paco de Lucía” album. A tad perverse. (Some years later I saw Carlos again for the last time, just before he was to play at Tulane U. here in town. The diablito was with me, so while he was “warming up” I asked casually, “How ‘bout that Paco de Lucía?” Carlos stopped playing, looked annoyed for a moment, then said, “He’s a very fine guitarist, undoubtedly…. But he has a metallic sound, not a sound like flamenco should be…” whereupon he dug his thumb into the bass strings to emphasize, I guess, a Manuel Torre “dark sound.” Lots of pops and buzzes. “”Un sonido metálico, no como debe ser" were his exact words which I never forgot – and never forgot to laugh about.)
Near the end of the tour, in late November, 1973, we were in New York and I was fortunate enough to be able to see Paco solo at Town Hall. I went with Maestro Machado (we became very good friends that tour – and there’s another whole well of stories from and about Maestro).
Now I have to diverge again for a little background: Maestro had been with José Greco for 25 years at that point, but that was at the end of his career. Maestro first came to this country in the late thirties as the pianist, arranger and composer for La Argentinita (Encarnción López), with, of course, her sister, Pilar López. Argentinita had several different lead male dancers, and it was she who first brought José Greco to the spotlight, along with Manolo Vargas. (Argentinita gave him his name: His real name was Castanzo Greco, and when she hired him she told him, “From now on, you’re José Greco.” Many years later, when he hired me at the age of 17, I was sort-of-kind-of using the name “Lorenzo” because “Kevin” doesn’t translate into Spanish. So on the first day of rehearsals he walked by me, stopped, and said “You’re now Quevedo Colman”. I later changed “Colman”, which didn’t sound right, to “Colmenar” after I saw that lovely town near Madrid. I later learned all the “Quevedo” jokes, none of them nice.) Argentinita’s guitarist on those early tours of the late thirties, early forties was Carlos Montoya. Back when he actually played in compás. They were under the aegis of the legendary promoter, Sol Hurok, and so was another Hurok “find,” Carmen Amaya and her guitarists: her father, brothers and “Niño Sabicas”. (Someone wrote in one of these threads that Sabicas copied Montoya’s idea of playing flamenco guitar solos. That must have been from Anita Shear, who seemed to worship Carlos’ shadow. However, Carlos’ far more famous uncle, Ramón Montoya, more than anyone pioneered the playing of flamenco guitar solos. There’s also some extant Hurok movie theater promos filmed in the 30’s showing Sabicas playing solos in a show – and, to my great surprise, doing that schmaltzy thing of holding the right hand high in the air to emphasize that he is playing a showy ligado passage solely with the left. Now you know who copied whom.) They all knew each other and at times partied together. Man, what it must have been like to be with them back at the height of the tuxedo & brillantine-hair night club era.
So the point is that Maestro was well known by everyone, including Paco de Lucía who had toured as a young teenager with José Greco in the early sixties, and Maestro was also extremely respected. (Hardly anyone knew him in this country, only as “José Greco’s pianist”, but in much of Europe – including Spain - Maestro was better known, and known as a great concert pianist and director. Like I said, lots of stories about Maestro.) Maestro was probably the finest accompanist for the classical Spanish dance that ever was – he knew all the music, and most important of all, had what I call a “metronome ear”: like a “photographic memory”, it never missed anything. You could have him play a piece and time it with a stop watch, wait five years, have him play it again and it would be the same to the second. No one – including José – ever argued with Maestro on a point of rhythm.
So Maestro and I sat together at Town Hall and watched Paco’s show. And EVERYONE was there. Sabicas’ brother was yelling “Olé’s” from the back as well as shouting humorous encouragements that at one point cracked Paco up. It was after the show that I remember best, however. Maestro said, “Want to say hello to Paco?” Like he had to ask. So we went back stage, and there was almost no one there. It was classic: The lone stage light glowing on top of its torchere casting dark shadows elsewhere. Paco was there in the middle of that chiaroscuro stage talking to two other dark figures as we walked up. I was introduced to Paco again by Maestro, and I reminded him that we had met in Denver a little over a month before. “O sí,” he said apologetically, then explained, “E’taba ciego, hombre, e’taba ciego.” (“I was blind, man, I was blind.”) The other two figures at first I couldn’t see well from a distance and then didn’t pay attention to because I was focused on Paco, trying not to look embarrassed. But then I heard Maestro say to them, in Spanish of course, “And this is our guitarist this tour, Quevedo.” At which point I automatically extended my hand, and then suddenly froze in complete awe and total embarrassment as my hand was shaken first by Sabicas and then by Mario Escudero. What can you compare that to? Standing for one moment on the summit of flamenco guitar Olympus being presented to the gods? My embarrassment was being this twenty one year old American kid trying his damn’dest to pass muster as a professional flamenco guitarist, being introduced by the greatest living piano accompanist of the dance to three of the greatest flamenco guitarists who ever lived – and being introduced as “our guitarist.” It breathes life into the word “humility.” And of course there was no camera around anywhere to memorialize the moment. In hindsight, all the better as that might have made it tacky.
A final coda to that tour: When I got back to Spain in December, one of the first things I did was visit Arcángel to (a) tell him what an incredible guitar he had built for Montoya and (b) why the hell did he build such and incredible guitar for, of all possible guitarists, Montoya? He smiled, pursed his lips a little, and said with finality, “I build guitars for whom I want. So what? A guitar’s a guitar.” He added the latter with great disingenuousness. But that was the end of the subject for the moment. (For those who don’t know: Carlos Montoya always tuned his guitars a half step lower than the standard 440 cycles, and kept the action as low as possible. This tended to make the guitar very buzzy and muddy in sound, but it also made it extremely easy to play, and when capoed, which he often did, it played like butter. It required an incredible instrument to sound good when set up that way, which was one of the reasons I chided Arcángel. I considered it guitar abuse.)
I left the shop and came back later that evening, and guess who was there in avid conversation with Arcángel? Arcángel introduced me, but Montoya immediately recognized me since we had met several times less than two months before. In the course of the conversation Montoya asked me, “So when are you leaving with José on his next tour?” “I’m not,” I said. “I heard he hired another guitarist.” Montoya frowned. “Who’s that?” he asked. I told him the name. He looked puzzled. Then I explained that it was that guy from San Antonio with the hot pink ruffled shirts. Montoya positively exploded. “Impossible! Impossible! You’re a much better guitarist! [Montoya was, at least, always gracious.] And he’s an incredible boor! So boorish! So boorish!” (“¡Que pesado! ¡Que pesado!”) “He assaults me every time I’m in San Antonio! José’s crazy!” and so on and on. After Carlos left I started laughing hysterically as Arcángel looked on with increasing perplexity. “What’s so funny?” he asked. “That guy that Montoya was ranting about as so terrible?” I asked rhetorically. “Y?” asked Arcángel. “He plays just like Montoya!”
We had a good laugh. Then I provoked him again about making such an incredible guitar for Montoya. “Big deal, who cares?” was more or less his response. Two nights later I retuned to the shop and Arcángel was in an unusually foul mood. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “You know who was just here?” I looked appropriately inquisitive. “¡Tío Pollas!* And do you know what he wanted? He wanted me to lower the action SOME MORE! I make him una guitarra de puta madre and he wants me to LOWER THE ACTION SOME MORE!” Whereupon it is my turn to laugh. “So you don’t give a ****, eh?”
¡Ba’! ¡Ba’!
Muy buenas
Tío Pedo
*Roughly, “Mr. Dickhead.” There’s a progression in Spanish with appellations. Prodigies start out as “niños”, then the “niño” is eventually dropped, then they become “tíos.” Thus: “Niño Sabicas” to just “Sabicas” to “Tío Sabas”. A “tío” isn’t just someone of “certain years” but must also be something of a character. “¡Que tío!” is a common exclamation for a “real character.” But Carlos Montoya was never, to my knowledge, ever a “Niño”. He just went directly to “Tío” – “Tío Pollas.”
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