Latin bands?
Actually, no. Mostly rock bands. The biggest one was called Pearly Queen, a Top 40 cover band, which got pretty hot in Miami in the days before the Miami Sound Machine [the band that launched Gloria Estefan’s career]. We landed a contract to play all of the Big Daddy Flanigan’s clubs in the U.S. and Canada—90 clubs playing five sets a night, five or six nights a week. I started when I was 15, and I turned 18 in those clubs. That was where I went to school, in those clubs. Playing cover songs taught me how pop songs were arranged and played. Now I wanted to know how they were recorded.

When did you decide you wanted to produce records and work in the studio?
I was producing some local Latin artists in Miami after I came off the road, as well as writing songs for them.

You were in Miami, which had become famous for being the base for musicians like Eric Clapton and the Bee Gees, as well as studios like Criteria. Yet you were working in the Latin world. Did those two domains interact in the studio?
They didn’t. Back in those days, there may have been Latin musicians all over Miami, but not a lot of them were recording there. I started working as a gofer at Miami Sound Studios, which was owned by Carlos Granados, whose father was a legendary record guy. He pressed the first record ever made in Colombia. Bob Marley and Wild Cherry used to record there. It was the competition to Criteria in the late ’70s. It had an old, old Neve 1073 console. After I got my initial experience there, I moved over to Climax Recording in north Miami on 30th Street. I used to sleep there, because I was just going through a divorce. I would record my own songs there and do demos for my friends’ bands. One day, the owner, Pablo Cano, came in and heard this ballad I had written. He said, “Who’s that?” I told him it was me, and he freaked out and said we have to do a real record. We did, and he brought it over to Jose Menendez, who was then at RCA Records, who signed me to a contract.

I really believe that the Latin market in the U.S. is still relatively untapped. There’s something way bigger here than we can see yet.

Here’s where how I became a real producer comes in, though. I had written a ballad—“Que Voy a Ser Sine Ti?” [“What Am I Going to Do Without You?”]—and Pablo hired this arranger to work it up, with strings and everything. I came into the studio, heard the arrangement and told Pablo that that’s not the way I heard the song. We went back and forth about it, but finally Pablo said, “Let’s do it your way.” We did, and that record did okay on the radio with me as the artist, in 1983. But while I was on a promotional tour for it, I was in Puerto Rico and met José Feliciano. I had to tell him what a big fan I was of his music. Well, it turns out that Menendez had played him my version of “Que Voy a Ser Sine Ti?” and when he found out I was the writer and producer, [Feliciano] said right there, “I want you to produce my next record.” He said he loved the arrangement of the song. If I had let someone else produce it, if I had not followed my musical instincts, I never would have had the career I’ve had, my destiny would have been very different, because that record I did with José opened up all the doors for me. It won two Grammy Awards, for the album and the song “Por Ella,” which José did as a duet with Jose Jose. That’s what I try to teach any young person who works with me: Always follow your instincts.

BACK | NEXT

Reprinted with permission from Magazine, February, 2001