RIP Willie Colón

I tell you, little buddy, this whole island is bewitched.

Just the cops do it.

I don't lost anything.

I know I'm friendin' all my own.

Standin' far from home.

You remember?

We were shipwrecked together.

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You know the Desert Island jukebox game.

Greg and I have so much music that we're always eager to share with you,

listeners that we pop a quarter in the proverbial jukebox

and play a track we can't live without on this day at this moment.

Greg, give us a little hint of what you've got.

Well, Jim, 100 million plus people watched Bad Bunny

in the Super Bowl half time, you know, a few weeks ago.

And, you know, lo and behold, here's an artist that I want to play

that I'm sure greatly influenced Bad Bunny.

Ooh, I'm interested to hear what you got.

We'll find out in a minute on Sound Opinions.

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Like this story from Ed on how he scored tickets to a Cubs playoff game in 1984.

Chicago Cubs incredibly made the MLB playoffs for the first time in life forever.

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There was a place on the corner of Clark and Grace.

I got there about an hour before a first pitch

and it was really just me and the bartender there.

I ordered my first beer and before you know it,

I heard heavy footsteps right behind me.

Kind of shuffling.

It was this big Chicago beat cop and he goes,

hey kid, you know what he wants?

A ticket for the game?

I go, how much?

Where is it at?

35 bucks, he says.

Box seat, left feel.

I'll take it.

I tell the cop and in the back of my mind,

I'm waiting for a detective to walk in any moment and arrest me.

Never happened.

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312 Beer, it's a Chicago thing.

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Welcome back to Sound opinions.

Greg, you're going to add a song to the Desert Island jukebox

that you think influenced Bad Bunny.

Yeah, and who didn't influence Bad Bunny?

Loud and proud Puerto Rican heritage that he celebrated the Super Bowl halftime.

I thought it was an astonishing,

astonishingly good performance.

Not that I should not have expected that,

but I thought Bad Bunny did an excellent job.

But, man, Bad Bunny and half the world,

danced to this guy, Willie Cologne,

who at the age of 75 passed away on February 21st.

Trombonus singer, band leader, composer, producer,

born in the South Bronx to Puerto Rican parents and primarily raised by his Puerto Rican grandmother

after Willie's parents had some difficulties.

A musical prodigy, and at the vanguard of salsa music in the 60s,

what I think Willie Cologne has always talked about was that

salsa is more of a,

it's not a particular type of sound,

it's more of a melting pot of different influences.

Latin influences with African and Caribbean rhythms,

jazz, R&B, and funk.

If you listen to those records that he made in the 60s and 70s especially,

it's hard not to say that these sound,

there's musical currency there.

They don't sound dated.

They don't sound like, oh, this is,

this is old-fashioned music.

I mean, first of all, you want to get up and dance.

Secondly, there's just so much going on in the arrangement,

so much inventiveness that it sounds very much of the moment.

So this melting pot music, 60 albums over the course of his career,

was quite a character.

He worked with Ruben Blades early on,

Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, activist and politician.

There's the latter half of his life was pretty interesting.

He worked in the administration of Mayor Bloomberg in New York City for a dozen years.

And he sort of fashioned himself as sort of a bad guy on these records.

You know, there was sort of like that gangster thing.

But he always said that was tongue in cheek,

but his whole political and activist career,

in activism and the political sphere,

that's a whole other chapter.

I just want to focus on the music right here,

because I think he was a genius.

There's a great quote from him.

Celia is not a rhythm.

It's a concept.

It's a way of making music.

It's an open concept, and the reason that it became so popular

is that he was able to evolve and accept all of these other music.

And I think that's what we saw with Bad Bunny.

Superbowl.

You know, that is carried on to this day.

I want to go back to the earliest days of what he call on,

with Chichik Kole, which means, hey, hey, it's good.

It's just a celebration.

And it's basically an invitation to get up and dance,

which is what this guy was all about.

He had messages of different stripes and his music later on,

but this is where I think everybody can agree.

This is pretty cool.

Willie Kole on Son Dependence.

Come on, let's go to the dance.

Let's go to the African dance.

If you don't know, dance.

I'll teach you my brother.

So you like the bomb, and you like the machine.

So you can now play the baby.

Chechen Kole.

Chechen Kole.

Chechen Kole.

I'm dead in the river.

Kole.

Come on, come on, the boy.

Chechen Kole.

Chechen Kole.

Come on, come on, come on.

Chechen Kole.

Chechen Kole.

That is Chechen Kole.

From Willie Kole on one of his early records from 1969,

there is 60 other albums that you can explore by this man,

who passed away at the age of 75 on February 21st.

Well, you know, there's no denying Greg America

is a better place for what Willie Kole on dead as it is

for what bad money has given us music bringing us together.

That's it for this bonus episode of Sound Opinions.

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