Ruben Gonzalez and the Buena Vista Superhero Club challenge the Grim Reaper

Ruben Gonzalez and the Buena Vista Superhero Club challenge the Grim Reaper
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We like our superheroes to dispatch bad guys with a knockout punch and a sense of humor, so like Iron Man and the Avengers, septuagenarian Ruben Gonzalez and the elders of the Buena Vista Social Club became heroes to many by holding at bay the baddest bad guy of them of all, the Grim Reaper, wielding just their invincible swing and all-powerful winking playfulness.

This month’s World Circuit re-release of Introducing…Ruben Gonzalez with one unreleased jam and several extended tracks revisits the seemingly frail Cuban pianist’s own unlikely origin story. Producer Nick Gold came to Cuba in 1996 to record with several African musicians, but the project fell through at the last minute due to visa problems. Scrambling, he came up with a multi-generational band to re-create older, big-band Cuban sounds of the 1940s and 1950s and featured several forgotten performers, including Gonzalez, who had not played piano for three years. Along with playing on the Buena Vista Social Club and Afro-Cuban All-Stars albums, Gonzalez recorded the first solo album of his career at the age of 77 – in two days with no overdubs.

Despite declining health, he toured with the group around the world and recorded a second album, which also did well. He stopped touring for health reasons in 2001 and passed away in 2003.

At live shows, Gonzalez was an audience favorite as he gingerly made his way to the piano, sometimes with the assistance of a younger musician supporting him. At the keyboard, though, he defied stereotypes of senior citizens and let loose powerful fusillades of melodies – alternating between a sweet romanticism and an impish sense of humor.

The re-released Introducing… is being issued on appropriately retro vinyl (180-grams) and CD and comes on the heels of a new documentary, Buena Vista Social Club: Adios. The film is actually the second documentary on the loose confederacy of musicians, the first being Wim Wenders’ 1999 biopic, which helped catapult the group to unexpected worldwide success.

Throughout the recording, Gonzalez is as energetic and entertaining as any musician a third his age, tossing in musical references, playing with melodies and banging out some powerful rhythms, accompanied by an articulate, nimble band of accompanists, including old friend Cachaito Lopez on stand-up bass.

Revisiting many older Cuban styles, Gonzalez shows off his lyricism on “Melodia Del Rio,” and recreates the classic chachacha sound he helped popularize in the 1940s on “La Engañadora.” Looking even further back, he plays the elegant, half-forgotten danzon style on “Almendra.”

He and the band let loose on descarga jam sessions, such as the now-extended “Tumbao.” When Gonzalez, after some great skittering solos, comes back to the montuno refrain as the percussionists take turns improvising, he and his mates feel unstoppable.

In the years since their initial renaissance, the musicians have played in various – seemingly competing – configuations, including a farewell tour that didn’t stop them from continuing touring. A compilation of unreleased tunes – 2015’s Lost and Found on World Circuit – seemed at first glance like a financial decision more than an artistic one, but the songs were wonderful to discover.

While Gonzalez and several of the older Buena Vistas took their final bows and succumbed to The Grim Reaper, they – like so many comic-book heroes – have had the last swinging laugh with posthumous encores such as this wonderful reissue. Their music lives on.

Newly released video of Gonzalez playing for the first time outside of Cuba:

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