Ruben Gonzalez Dies
Ruben Gonzalez, whose unique way with the piano fused an angular
jazzy approach with an open invite to the dance floor, died
yesterday in Havana; he was eighty-four.
That duality — making music both sophisticated and sexual —
prompted Ry Cooder to claim that Gonzalez was a “cross between
Thelonious Monk and Felix the Cat.” There was also an element of
Jimmy Hoffa, as Gonzalez seemed to drop off the face of the earth
for years and thought dead before he was re-discovered and ushered
towards unlikely fame as part of the Buena Vista Social Club
phenomenon.
Gonzalez was born in April 1919 in Santa Clara, Cuba. His mother
pushed him towards piano lessons, but music became a hobby as
pursued a career in medicine. In 1941 he ditched his studies to
devote himself to music full time. Gonzalez played with numerous
Cuban luminaries including Arsenio Rodriguez’s ensemble, where he
served until 1946.
Starting in the early Sixties, he joined King of the Cha Cha
Cha, Enrique Jorrin, with whom he played for more than two decades
until Jorrin’s death in 1987. Shortly thereafter, Gonzalez
retired.
In 1996, an arthritic Gonzalez stumbled onto one of Cooder’s
recording sessions in Havana. He quickly loosened up his joints and
recaptured his old magic, becoming an integral part of the 1996
Buena Vista Social Club album, which garnered him an
unexpected degree of international stardom.
In addition to the BVSC record, Gonzalez toured the
world with the crew of silver-haired lost legends, appeared on
their respective solo albums, and released a pair of his own on
Nonesuch, 1997’s Introducing . . . Ruben Gonzalez and
2000’s Chanchullo.
“There’s tremendous talent in Cuba, like [Compay] Segundo, like
[Ibrahim] Ferrer, like [Manuel] Galban and like Gonzalez,” Cooder
told Rolling Stone earlier this year, “and I think there
always has been. Whether we’ll see the likes of anything like this
again, I doubt it. The world is a different place now. This kind of
expression, emotional expression, they just don’t grow people like
this anymore.”