Skip to main content

Danzón To A New Mutant Strain: “Patricia” by Pérez Prado and his Orchestra

By Marcello Carlin

The term “pootler” sounds like a pejorative but actually means somebody who moves in a slow, leisurely and relaxed manner, usually on a bicycle. If “Patricia” does anything, it pootles; by the summer of 1958, Pérez Prado was slowing down in terms of popularity and the tune, composed by Prado himself, makes a point of taking its time.

The mambo was a livelier development of the Cuban Danzón and in Haitian-Creole language the word is described as meaning “voodoo priestess.” By 1958, Prado had perfected his modified, milder variation on the two-step and “Patricia” is no exception to the format – a doleful organ, sounding as old and unearthly as the Fats Waller organ pieces used in Eraserhead, is balanced against alternately screaming and bellowing brass in a general Stan Kenton manner (hardly surprising, since the band included several Kenton stalwarts, not least the Canadian trumpeter Maynard Ferguson).

But the organ – played by Prado himself – is not in mourning; instead it plays with the rhythm and its implications and sometimes drops off abruptly in a laissez-faire manner which would subsequently become apparent in the work of people like Paolo Conte. “Patricia” was Prado’s final major hit – until his surprise (if, sadly, posthumous) return to popularity in the nineties.  But it was also the last number one of the old Billboard era, topping the Top 100 and Most Played By Jockeys lists. Here it appears as a symbolic bodhisattva, a passing of the spirit from one body to the next. Or, if you prefer, a gentle pootle.

Date Record Made Number Two: 9 August 1958
Number of Weeks At Number Two: 1
Record At Number One: “Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Nelson
UK Chart Position: 8
Other Information: “Patricia” was number one in Germany, and I’m sure people like Bert Kaempfert and James Last were taking note.

Comments

  1. Mark G10 July 2017 at 13:38

    'Patricia' was also the third track on the CD single that became his biggest hit, thanks to Guinness. And welcome back!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Threads Of Alligator Lizards In The Air: “Purple Rain” by Prince and The Revolution

By Marcello Carlin
The original idea was for a country-style collaboration with Stevie Nicks, to whom Prince sent a ten-minute instrumental backing track, asking her to come up with some lyrics. However, Nicks was overwhelmed by what she heard and feared that the task was too much for her to take on, so the song was reworked in rehearsal with The Revolution, utilising Wendy Melvoin’s guitar phrasing as a new guideline. The song appears to have existed before the film; Purple Rain the movie is best described as lucid hokum, but its soundtrack changed the atoms which constituted “pop,” far more so than much ostensibly radical music of the period. For many of that decade’s generation, Purple Rain the soundtrack was “our” Ziggy Stardust – better conceived, performed and produced in every way – and the title song, which closes the album, was “our” “Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide.” It is such a patient epic, the song, and about a lot of things, and people – each of the verses addresses a different su...
Post a Comment
Read more

“I Would Have Thought In The Middle Of The Atlantic In The Middle Of The Night That Rockets Must Mean Trouble”: “I’m Not In Love” by 10cc

By Marcello Carlin
"watching for night, with absinthe eye cocked on the lone, late, passer-by." (Sylvia Plath, "Prospect," 1956) This story begins in 1954, before most people had really recognised anything called rock, and a pop record which is half-perfect. That record, which stayed at number one in our charts for ten weeks, was “Cara Mia” by David Whitfield with Mantovani and his Orchestra and Chorus. Now, Whitfield was never the most subtle of singers and his in-your-face bellowing is somewhat distracting – it is significant that he was the first British reality media star (not from television, because at that time Opportunity Knocks was only broadcast on Radio Luxembourg) since his climactic high C at the end of “Cara Mia” is like a display of gymnastics, or an athletic field event; can he do that triple loop or throw that javelin beyond the stadium? It proves that technical prowess can often render itself unlistenable. But the magic here lies in the extraordinary ...
2 comments
Read more

A Pre-Emptive, Though Hopefully Temporary, Bowing Out: “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” by Elton John

By Marcello Carlin
This isn’t quite the last piece of music I’ll be writing about before taking a long break from writing this blog (and most other things) – there’s one more song tomorrow that I’ve been persuaded to write up before I disappear – but the situation is this; I am imminently due to go into hospital for major surgery to treat a long-standing and hugely-annoying hernia. This should have been sorted out years ago but for reasons too tedious to document it’s only being sorted out now. It is going to be a long, fairly complex and in places possibly pioneering procedure. I am being operated on by world-class surgeons whom I trust implicitly and there has been much liaison between my local hospital (where I’ll be going) and the hospital where I myself work to enable this to happen. However, I have to warn you that the procedure carries a fairly high risk of what medical people call “morbidities,” mainly to do with breathing and cardiac issues, for which I will be closely monitored in I...
4 comments
Read more