Many of the artists are lesser known, even obscure, but some prominent names also appear - Dave Bartholomew and R&B singer and lyricist Percy Mayfield, vocalist Mabel Scott and jazz musicians such as the drummer Cozy Cole and the bassist and bandleader Red Callender. Jukebox Mambo, a compilation from the British label Jazzman of 22 tracks recorded from 1949 to 1960, documents the considerable influence of Afro-Cuban and other Latin rhythms on jazz and rhythm and blues. From the immediate post World War II era to the years right before the modern rock epoch arrived with The Beatles, African American blues, R&B and jazz artists made recordings that were built on the rhythmic foundations of rumba, mambo, and cha cha cha (and occasionally samba). And you can’t miss the clave in the rollicking rumba of the legendary pianist Roy “Professor Longhair” Byrd.īut the influence of ritmo Cubano hardly stopped at Bartholomew and Byrd. In New Orleans, where Cuban and African-American rhythms first came together, Dave Bartholomew, mentor to Fats Domino and one of most influential figures in Crescent City R&B, worked clave into his compositions during the late ’40s and ’50s. The Bo Diddley beat, one of rock’s essential ingredients, was a clave pattern. But the Spanish tinge didn’t color only jazz in later decades, its influence came to be felt in rhythm and blues and rock n’ roll. The 3/2 or 2/3 clave pattern of Afro-Cuban son and rumba, and Cuban dances like the habanera and contradanza, nurtured early jazz and helped shape its development. Latin rhythms have been ingrained in the DNA of American popular music ever since New Orleans jazz founding father Jelly Roll Morton coined the phrase “the Spanish tinge” to describe the Cuban elements he and other Creole musicians were incorporating in their compositions.