Lebron Brothers Latin | Brazil 1 Items

The venerable Cotique existed at the juncture where Afro-Caribbean music met
the rootsy sounds of soul and r&b that blossomed in the United States during the
'60s and '70s. Some of the finest albums in the boogaloo and Latin soul genres
were recorded for this label, including sessions by Joe Bataan, Johnny Colón and
Larry Harlow. Cotique's product was marked by a refined aesthetic and unerring
good taste - consider Machito's foray into r&b idioms on the Soul Of Machito LP.
The label was also wise enough to invest in down-to-earth salsa, recording New
York's ultimate barrio orchestra, The Lebrón Brothers.
The Lebrón Brothers celebrated their 50th anniversary in the business in 2016.
Their career spans five decades of doing things uniquely and uncompromisingly
in their way: making funky, gritty, streetwise and relentlessly swinging music that
mixed Spanish lyrics, Latin tunes and English-language r&b/soul-oriented
numbers. “Lebrón Brothers are the only other band (besides Willie Colón) to
arrive during the boogaloo era and survive long after boogaloo was dead and
buried,” comments Ray Rosado, leader of Maña. “I believe that for these two
bands, boogaloo was merely a means to an end.” Originally called Angel Lebrón
and his Orchestra in 1965 (co-founded by Puerto Rico-born brothers Angel on
bass and José Lebrón on piano,) they changed their name to Lebrón Brothers at
the suggestion of George Goldner (1918 - 1970) when they signed to his Cotique
Records label during the peak of the 1966 - 1969 boogaloo craze. The eldest,
Pablo Lebrón, sang Spanish lead vocals with the band until 1981 - when sadly, he
suffered a stroke. Between 1967 and 1982, the band recorded 16 albums for
Cotique, during which time brothers Carlos and Frankie joined on bongo and
conga, respectively. The multitalented José and Angel wrote and arranged most of
the material. Fania Records took over Cotique in the early '70s and drafted star
bandleader Larry Harlow to produce one of the band's albums and Johnny
Pacheco, the label's co-founder, to produce another three. Reportedly, Fania boss
Jerry Masucci (1934-1997) tried to persuade the Lebrón Brothers to replace
Pablo with a younger, thinner white lead singer. Proud of their Afro-Boricua
heritage, they resisted and were consequently excluded from major industry
opportunities. Angel and José eventually took over the reins of production on the
band's 14th Cotique release in 1980, and Angel took the producer credit on the
remaining two albums for the imprint (Frankie produced a one-off return to
Cotique in 1998). “On all of their recordings, the coro is precise, the swing
formidable and the message is both timely and seemingly prescient. That's more
than enough to make up for whatever naïveté one might observe in their
recordings at first blush,” says John Walsh, trumpeter with the Grammy
Award-winning Spanish Harlem Orchestra, who began playing with
Lebrón Brothers in the mid-'80s. “And then there's the vibe. When they walk on
stage, they made their presence felt: five or six of them, not one under six feet or
less than 225 pounds!