Pete Escovedo going strong
In his forthcoming memoir, “My Life in the Key of E,” the venerable Latin jazz percussionist and bandleader Pete Escovedo proudly recalls the night in 2009 when he and his percussionist daughter Sheila E. performed with other Latin artists at the Obama White House. She was the concert’s musical director.
“Look how far we’ve come,” Escovedo told Sheila, reminding his famous daughter of the scuffling old days in Oakland when, as he recalled the other day, “we couldn’t afford a hamburger and milkshake after the gig.”
Vital at 82, Escovedo recounts the ups and downs of his rich musical and family life in this frank, soulful and evocative story about a poor Mexican American kid who flipped for Afro-Cuban music and made his first set of bongos with coffee cans and tape.
He went on to play and become close with idols like Tito Puente and Mongo Santamaria, touring the world with Santana and leading his own Latin jazz ensembles that nurtured many of the Bay Area’s best young players.
Escovedo, who performs Thursday through Saturday, May 4-6, at the Napa Blue Note leading an octet featuring his percussionist sons Juan and Peter Michael and longtime associates like saxophonist Melecio Magdaluyo, is releasing his self-published memoir in July to coincide with his annual summer birthday bash at Yoshi’s in Oakland.
He and his wife, Juanita, moved to Los Angeles 17 years ago to be close to their children and grandchildren. But the Bay Area still feels like home to Escovedo, who writes about his life with a mix of wry humor, sadness and gratitude.
At one point, he and his younger brother Coke —a blazing timbalero who rose to fame with Santana and created the great Latin fusion band Azteca with Pete before drugs and alcohol killed him — had to live at St. Vincent’s School for Boys in San Rafael because their mom couldn’t afford to take care of them.
Several years later, they were back living with her and her boyfriend in a small upstairs apartment at Seventh and Castro in West Oakland. Pete and Coke slept in the kitchen, joined by cockroaches.
“One night, after I flipped on the light and saw what seemed like a thousand of them scattering under my cot, I swore I’d make something out of myself,” Escovedo writes. “Music had to give me some kind of way out.”
Pete always tried to protect his little brother, but in the end, couldn’t.
“It was very painful to write about,” Escovedo says. “All the stuff we went through as kids, when were just lost, and him dying so young. I tried to save him from the hard drugs and alcohol, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Creating a close, loving family of his own was paramount to Escovedo, whose longing for his wife and their children comes through the journal he kept while touring with Santana in ’78. He included some of it in the memoir to give readers a feel for life on the road, “which is not always glamorous.”
He found himself dodging Molotov cocktails onstage in Milan, hurled by people protesting high ticket prices. He feared for his life flying through a roiling New England storm in a small plane, and spent endless hours on buses.
But there were many good times. After a show in Los Angeles, he wrote, he went to see Sheila at the Roxie.
“Took the whole Santana band with me. Went to the Hong Kong Bar to see Willie Bobo and Victor Pantoja. We went to a party with Joe Cocker and friends and partied until 6 a.m.,” he recalls.
Escovedo laughs about those crazy days now.
“It was great fun,” he says. “I wouldn’t change anything. Being out on the road is an education, man.”
For more information, go to www.peteescovedo.com
Modern Houses
For a primer on Joseph Eichler — the visionary developer who built elegant, reasonably priced modernist homes on the Peninsula, in Marin and Southern California — check out the Los Altos History Museum’s new show, “Eichler Homes: Modernism for the Masses.”
For more information, go to www.losaltoshistory.org
Trumpet tales
David Green is going to Carnegie Hall — again.
The Santa Rosa Youth Orchestra’s 15-year-old trumpet star has been chosen once again as one of four trumpet players nationwide to join the National Youth Orchestra 2 at Carnegie this summer. Green has eyes to play principal trumpet in the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For more information, go to www.srsymphony.org