According to Ruy Castro's book,
"Donato himself decided
to give up the accordion to concentrate on piano, and merely played
the trombone as a hobby. The story goes that he could no longer stand
to drag his accordion around the nightclub circuit because this
obliged him to avoid having a last drink, for fear of leaving it
someplace. One one of those nights, he left the accordion in an
unlocked car and it was stolen. He felt no compulsion to buy another
and, as there was a piano in every nightclub he worked in, the
dilemma was solved.
Donato might also have recounted that he stopped playing the
accordion because he had exhausted the instrument's possibilities,
while the piano seemed to be an endless source of harmonic
possibilities. And he wanted to be able to explore them. [. .
.]
In 1959, he [Donato]
had no audience in Rio because everyone thought he played jazz, so he
went to California to play Latin music--which was what in fact he was
trying to do in Brazil, only nobody realized it. Upon his arrival
there, he was immediately adopted by the cool cats of the
genre, like the Latins Tito
Puente, Mongo
Santamaria, and Johnny Rodriguez, and the Americans Cal Tjader,
Herbie Mann, and Eddie Palmieri. Without knowing it, Donato's career
had been similar to theirs. . . .Donato felt right at home in the
middle of all those congas, timbales, and bongos of Latin jazz, with
possibilities for splitting up the wind instruments and creating the
craziest piano harmonies. Everything was allowed, given that the
rhythm was an enchilada of mambos, rumbas, sambas, and porque
no?--bossa nova. . . . From 1959 to 1961, he played piano with Monga
Santamaria and participated in the first recording of 'Para Ti' (For
You), played trombone and wrote the arrangements for Tito Puente's
brass instruments, recorded
extensively with Cal
Tjader, who was
already famous, and with Eddie Palmieri, who wasn't yet. His
appearance on the scene was quite simply stunning.
In the years that followed,
they all began to use Donato's songs in their repertoire, such as "A
ra" (The Frog), "Amazonas" (Amazon), "Cade Jodel?" (Where Is Jodel?),
and they became standards for what was later called funk music.
Donato himself soon started putting together his albums at
prestigious Pacific Records--and had his songbook recorded by other
corn-tortilla-with-chilies-loving jazz musicians,
like
vibraphonist Dave
Pike."
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