A sweet life
On Jan. 6, the day of the kings, the king of the Afro-Cuban trumpet, Chocolate Armenteros, passed away in New York at 87 due to complications from prostate cancer.
Playing his horn through seven decades of musical trends, Chocolate’s dynamically rich and lyrically vibrant tenor defined the early days of the Cuban conjunto trumpet solo style as much as his charismatic, cackling laugh punctuated his many stories. With two fingers holding onto a stogey, Chocolate’s tales took him from Havana’s Tropicana Nightclub, where he backed Nat King Cole, to the many stages he shared with names like Philly Joe Jones, Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Brown Jr. at the Apollo Theater.
A popular YouTube video features him schooling Wynton Marsalis on the art of Afro-Cuban improvisation. He played with Tito Puente, the Palmieris, Johnny Pacheco, Larry Harlow, Ismael Rivera, Gloria Estefan and too many more to mention. He lived in Spain and France, traveled the world, performed on film with Andy Garcia, and it was Chocolate’s horn that hailed from the horizon of an Infinity car commercial on national television.
An old-school, dapper dresser who disliked jeans and sneakers; a bon vivant who enjoyed his cognac, a good cigar and great music, Chocolate’s love for life mirrored the passion of his muse: reckless, free-spirited and bold.
“I approach my trumpet as I approach a woman,” he would say slyly. “I take my time with her. I ask if she wants to play with me. I respect her so she’ll respect me.”
Then he’d pick up his horn and mouth off a freewheeling, uninhibited, aggressive, kick-ass solo that oozed with creative cunning while rapturous in its brilliantly lyrical color — the color of Chocolate.
Born Teodolo Alfredo Armenteros on April 4, 1928, he described his childhood on the farm in Ranchuelo, Santa Clara, in the Cuban province of Las Villas, as fortunate and blessed.
Chocolate mastered his instrument in Cuba, recording and performing with the likes of Benny Moré, Chico O’Farrill and Bebo Valdes.
But it was in New York where Chocolate’s “fruit becomes ripened” as he put it, by joining Machito and his Afro-Cubans and opening an international door to Latin music and jazz trumpet improvisation.
Up until the summer of 2015, Chocolate didn’t miss a beat. He performed, recorded and toured the world, returning to his beloved Barrio, where he lived among the memorabilia of a glorious career that had him working with the most significant Latin music bandleaders of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s.
Indeed, through every musical milestone from the septeto to the conjunto, the big dance bands to the Latin jazz ensembles, Chocolate Armenteros and his dynamic solo style were at the cutting edge of the Latin music diaspora.