AMG Review of Vaya Puente

Thom Jurek
All Music Guide

A Tico CD reissue of an album originally released in 1962. In typical fashion for the label, there are no credits, just a brief liner note talking about how great Puente is and how on this album he runs through all of the popular Latin dances and introduces a new one that will be with us "forever": the sambaroco, or samba mambo (try saying that ten times quickly). When was the last time you did the sambaroco? As for the rest there are couple of Puente classics, such as "Mambo Gil," "Solange" (a bolero), "Yimbarco" (a montuno), and the great bembe number "Agua-Nile." There are 12 tracks included, and it's an awesome disc to use for Latin dance instruction, though Puente keeps the tempos flying high. As with other early Puente recordings issued on Tico, the sound is thin and muddy in places, more like a bootleg than an authentic remastered version of the CD; perhaps they took the masters from vinyl copies, but it doesn't say that anywhere. Oh well, you'll either dig these sounds for their steamy insistence of the dance being the very thing of love and life or you'll look for better sound somewhere else.