It’s amazing, the quantity of human activity that’s out there, waiting to be discovered. Tino Contreras, a prolific Mexican jazz dude, is new to me. A multi-instrumentalist, whose main instrument is drums, with a passion for jazz. Sounds totally up my boulevard!
I hope that some of the tracks from the above album are on the Jazzman compilation. I just ordered the latter via Discogs, for £3.99.
Rather amazingly, this dude, born in 1924, only passed quite recently, in 2021, aged 97! And he put out an album (on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood label) – above – the year before he passed. Aged 96… Pretty bonkers!
Why ‘FC’ on the kick drum display head, you might ask? Well, his full name was Fortino Contreras Gonzalez. From which he obviously derived the more contracted version. And in this early photograph, it seems he was going by his full name, albeit abbreviated to just the first two initials, a la Gene Krupa/Buddy Rich, etc.
There’s a terrific interview from 2018 with Tino here.
The above photo was allegedly taken in Turkey!
