He simply had locked in his head, a concept of the sound that he desired, and Mario seemed to know exactly what he was looking for. "I got just the guy for you if you want the real stuff,"" said Mario, and he took Dizzy down into Spanish Harlem on 111th Street to the home of Chano Pozo. Chano Pozo could not even speak English, and was spending his days hanging out on the streets of New York, and occasionally doing music at a Theatre or show. Pozo's real name was Luciano Pozo y Gonzales and on September 29, 1947, he made his first formal appearance with the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band at Leonard Feather's Carnegie Hall concert. It was on that day, that a new style of music that had been bursting at the seams to get out, finally got out, and turned into an almost International craze that still exists today. .
You see, it has never been difficult to identify the individuals responsible for creating and cultivating the styles that make up Jazz music. Few would argue that Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, and Louis Armstrong pioneered Swing, and that Duke Ellington and Count Basie were the two great names of the Big Band Era. Any history book will tell you that Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker were the true innovators of Be-Bop and that Miles Davis and John Coltrane were the most well know musicians to play in the Cool Style of the 1950's. You see, even the most skilled debater would have a difficult time arguing with the artistic output of these musicians as well as others, that begs for them to be hailed as the Kings, or true creators at least, of their respective styles, but the situation surrounding the genre known as Afro-Cuban Jazz or more recently and in many circles reluctantly, Latin Jazz, is somewhat different. The real founders of this style have never received the full credit that they deserve for sparking a craze that swept the nation, and is really and truly, the only Jazz style that is still enormously popular today.
