Latin Kings: A brief history of Fania Records

By Andrew Mason

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the first release on Fania Records, a musical, cultural touchstone frequently referred to as “the Motown of Latin music.” The description is apt not only in the widespread popularity of their releases, but also in the byzantine twists and turns the organization has taken through the years, a saga every bit as complex as their Detroit counterpart’s. History, as the axiom goes, is written by the victors, and after the dust has settled on the past 75 years of New York City’s rich Latin music legacy, it is Fania that sits alone atop the mountain of treasure gathered from the numerous labels it subsumed, along with the bounty of its own sizable output.

I had a front row seat to this story when I was hired in the mid-’00s to help sort through and prioritize reissues from the vast back catalog, but more on that later. First, a brief history of how we got here and how a tiny two-man operation became the monolith it is today.

In 1964 the dominant Latin label in New York City was unquestionably Alegre Records, by then a decade in business but beginning to falter as its owner’s health failed and the chips it had placed on the popularity of the dance craze known as the Pachanga lost their luster when a new sound began emerging from the largely Puerto Rican barrios in Brooklyn, the Bronx and East Harlem. Johnny Pacheco, a Dominican-born flutist who’d attended Brooklyn Tech High School, was a star on Alegre, but saw the writing on the wall and broke from his label, teaming up with another Brooklynite named Jerry Masucci. A lawyer and a former cop, Masucci had briefly lived in Havana, where he acquired a taste for Latin music and, as the story goes, frequented a cafeteria called Fanía, itself named after an old Cuban song by the same name. Taking the name and planting their own flag, the Dominican and the Italian-American formed what would become, ironically, the unquestioned source for Nuyorican music for decades to come.

Helped by a savvy sense of showmanship and street-level awareness, not to mention a roster of grade-A talent (including household names — at least, if your household was in the aforementioned barrios — like Willie Colón, Héctor Lavoe and Celia Cruz), Fania more than held its own among other labels that ventured into the burgeoning market, including such powerhouses as Tico, WS Latino and Cotique, by some accounts commanding nearly 80 percent of Latin music sales. And when the opportunity presented itself, Fania was quick to assist label owners in financial difficulty by purchasing control of their catalogs, as it did in 1975 when it acquired its predecessors Tico and Alegre.

Fania All-Stars. From left: Ray Barretto, Louie Ramirez, Cheo Feliciano, Johnny Pacheco

By the early ’80s, Fania was sitting atop an enormous catalog, but one that was precariously balanced on shaky personal relationships, murky business decisions and an eroding market. Masucci, who had long since bought out his partner, moved to Buenos Aires and the label essentially became dormant. When Masucci died in 1997, the label’s assets entered probate, where they remained under dispute for five years (Pacheco passed away in 2021). The modern era of Fania Records began in 2005, when, over a period of years, several investment groups bought and sold the catalog, each trying to crack the code of how to squeeze profit from their new asset in a rapidly changing musical landscape.

It was here that I entered the picture, as a consultant helping pick through the assorted catalogs to find likely candidates for reissue (tasked with the daunting job of tackling Tito Puente’s legacy, I produced the compilation “El Rey: A Man and His Music” and the reissue of “Vaya Puente“). The quantity of artifacts and never-seen ephemera that was uncovered was truly astounding — not a day seemed to go by in which those of us involved weren’t marveling over carefully saved paystubs for recording sessions, handwritten labels on master tapes, or outtakes from vintage photo sessions.

In its search for a younger generation of listeners, the new incarnation of Fania has now moved beyond the simple reissue and compilation work I was involved with, and entered into a much broader range of endeavors, including apparel, events and contemporary remixes of their music. As the label’s director of marketing said in a 2014 interview, “Our focus is, ‘How do we build a relationship with the consumer and monetize that?’… Does that come from a download, a stream, a T-shirt, a party, a skateboard? We don’t care.”

While that pragmatic attitude struck some observers as mercenary, stirring debate among fans as to the best way to honor the label’s legacy, there is no question that the music — the root of it all, lest we forget — has never lost its power to stir souls and move feet, holding its own alongside the rise of modern trends in merengue, bachata and reggaeton, among others. To return to the Motown analogy, there will always be an audience for classic soul and R&B, and so it is with the Latin classics of Fania.

A Fania press photo (Courtesy Fania Records)

To that end, below are 10 classic albums from Fania’s original heyday. With the caveat that there are obviously many worthy candidates that could be listed, please take these suggestions as merely a starting point to launch your own journey.

‘Gypsy Woman,’ Joe Bataan
1967
Filipino Harlemite Joe Bataan was one of the first artists on Fania, and a sureshot trend-setter, later recording pioneering tracks in rap and disco. This early album is a perfect blend of Latin soul like “Gypsy Woman” (an impassioned take-off on the Impressions’ hit) and hard descargas (the very appropriately named “Fuego”).

‘El Exigente,” Orchestra Harlow
1967
An oft-noted irony of Fania Records, long associated with the Puerto Rican sound of New York City, is that some of its biggest contributors were non-Boriqueños, like Brooklynite Larry Harlow. El Judio Maravilloso (as he was known) was steeped in the sound from birth however, his father a mambo-nik and bandleader himself, and this early album sees Harlow going lysergic on the Latin soul sound of the day (the scorching “Freak Off”) as well as edging towards the nascent salsa sound with the help of future star vocalist Ismael Miranda (“Rhumba Me Llaman”).

‘Hard Hands,’ Ray Barretto
1968
“Hard Hands” lands at the start of a remarkable run of Barretto albums nearly a decade long that demonstrate the popular sound of the day changing on a granular level, song-to-song, from boogaloo and Latin soul trends into the rootsier, culturally deeper style that became known as salsa. Every song on “Hard Hands” hits, but standouts included “Love Beads,” “New York Soul,” and “Mi Ritmo Te Llama.”

‘Live at the Cheetah,’ Fania All-Stars
1971
One concept Johnny Pacheco brought over from his days at Alegre was the “All-Star” band. Over the years the Fania All-Stars grew to be a globally touring production but this exuberant early date at Manhattan hotspot the Cheetah is where it started, often considered to be ground zero for the incipient salsa movement. The night was filmed and later edited into Leon Gast’s landmark documentary “Our Latin Thing.”

‘The Big Break,’ Willie Colón
1971
You could pick almost any Willie Colón record from the mid-’60s through the late-’70s and come away with a winner, but this 1971 release is a great place to start, with its controversial cover (the original design, a wanted poster featuring the words “Wanted By FBI” was withdrawn when the Bureau took a less than amused view of it) and great songs like “Abuelita” and “Ghana’ E.”

‘Apollo Sound 5,’ Roberto Roena y su Apollo Sound
1973
Percussionist Roberto Roena was a secret ingredient in many of the label’s recordings, and had a string of great albums himself. “Que Se Sepa,” the lead-off cut here, is an anthem that is as popular in breakdance circles as with salsa dancers.

‘Celia & Johnny,’ Celia Cruz and Johnny Pacheco
1974
The so-called Queen of Salsa was already a well-established star when she began recording for Fania with this album, but rocketed to a new level with this wildly popular collaboration with Pacheco. The album’s one-two opening punch of “Quimbara” and “Toro Mata” has few equals as a guaranteed party-starter.

‘Latin-Soul-Rock,’ Fania All-Stars
1974
Only two short years after the Cheetah show, the Fania All-Stars sold out Yankee Stadium, a clear indication of the label’s skyrocketing success. Meant to be a live recording, the album was supplemented with extra cuts recorded elsewhere after fans stormed the field and the concert was cut short. In another demonstration of their widening appeal, they included hotshot outside musicians like Billy Cobham and Manu Dibango, and performed a much funkier set than usual, with cuts like “Smoke” and Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” alongside salsa ragers like “Mama Guela.”

‘La Voz,’ Héctor Lavoe
1975
Few figures were more beloved to the New York City Puerto Rican diaspora than Héctor Lavoe, whose growth from a shy teenager from Ponce to suave heartthrob was documented over the run of albums he recorded for Fania, initially as a guest vocalist and songwriter, and then on his own popular solo efforts. “La Voz,” elucidating the pun of his stage name, is essential for hits “El Todopoderoso” and the Latin American solidarity anthem “Mi Gente.”

‘Siembra,’ Willie Colón and Rubén Blades
1978
A true conceptual masterpiece from the mind of Panamanian singer/songwriter Rubén Blades, Siembra is one of the best-selling salsa albums of all time and a goldmine of influential hits. Marrying Blades’s richly detailed lyrics with Colón’s intricate arrangements — the disco-inflected “Plástico” and the Bertolt Brecht-inspired “Pedro Navaja” are two examples — the album stands up today as a high point in Fania’s bountiful catalog.

The Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz in concert (Courtesy Fania Records)