LOS CALVOS-ESTOS SON LOS CALVOS

Few have done as much for salsa in Venezuela as band-leader, composer and pianist Ray Pérez. He burst on to the scene in the mid-60s with his group Los Dementes, creating the blueprint for guaguanco, Pachanga, and boogaloo in Venezuela. When the name salsa began to be used as something of a catch-all-term he was still at the forefront, recording two hugely-popular salsa albums with Los Dementes in 1967. Remarkably, that very same year, he also recorded two albums with a brand-new group, Los Calvos, that showed how as well as being the genre's most visible band-leader, he was also pushing the nascent genre to its limits. Estos Son Los Calvos is the first of the two albums he made with Los Calvos. On it, he recruited a drummer (unprecedented at the time for a salsa ensemble, which always used percussionists), switched from the trombones of Los Dementes to the much harder, direct sound of trumpets, and he recruited Carlos Yanez, best known as El Negrito Calavén, as singer. Whereas Los Dem