Latin Soul

Recorded live and running hot, this album catches Poncho Sanchez's band doing what a studio never quite allows: stretching a groove until the room itself becomes an instrument.

Take the medley of "Listen Here/Cold Duck Time," where the horns pass the melody like a bottle around a table and the congas refuse to sit still under them. Sanchez built his reputation carrying the Latin-jazz torch lit by Cal Tjader, and the fun here is hearing him do it with an audience talking back. The reworked "Watermelon Man" leans on Herbie Hancock's bones but swings them into something sweatier, more Cuban, less polite. By the time the crowd noise bleeds into the next tune, you understand that the point was never the arrangement on paper — it was the people in the room.