Bobby Valentin

Bassist and trumpeter Bobby Valentín served as the Fania All-Stars’ principal arranger throughout the 1970s while issuing multiple solo albums that traced his evolution from boogaloo and Latin soul into salsa. Born in Puerto Rico in 1941, he received early guitar instruction from his father before starting school. At age eleven he led a band that won a local contest and then enrolled at the Jose Quinton Academy of Music in Coamo to study alto saxophone and, later, trumpet.

Valentín arrived in New York in 1956 at fifteen, settled in Washington Heights, and continued trumpet lessons both in school and under Carmine Caruso. He also absorbed technique on the streets, performing with trumpet trios that included Art Farmer and Louie Mucci. With Chu Hernandez and Joe Quijano he formed Los Satelites, then turned professional in 1958 inside Quijano’s newly assembled orchestra.

Over the next seven years he played trumpet, guitar, and bass behind Willie Rosario, Charlie Palmieri, Ray Barretto’s Orquestra Riverside, and Tito Rodriguez while supplying arrangements for Rosario and Willie Bobo. In 1965 he launched his own orchestra and cut its debut LP for Fonseca; later that year the ensemble recorded El Mensajero for the fledgling Fania Records.

Because Valentín had already furnished charts for label founder Johnny Pacheco earlier in the decade, joining the Fania roster felt inevitable. Although he relocated his orchestra to Puerto Rico by 1968, he made regular trips to New York to record for Fania through the late sixties and early seventies. He also became a core member of the label’s house band, the Fania All-Stars, writing arrangements and anchoring the rhythm section on bass—after 1970 he seldom played trumpet—on such mid-seventies landmarks as Live at the Cheetah, Live at Yankee Stadium, and Tribute to Tito Rodriguez.

In 1978 Valentín established his own imprint, Bronco Records, and scored one of his career milestones with the release of La Boda de Ella. His association with the Fania All-Stars extended into the nineties, yet he simultaneously assembled a roster of artists for Bronco that included Willie Rosario and Orq. Mulenze. Beyond leading his own globe-trotting orchestra, he remained in demand as an arranger in both Puerto Rico and New York, contributing to projects by Willie Colon, Ismael Miranda, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Cheo Feliciano, and Justo Betancourt, among others.