St. Louis Blues/El Manisero

The Orquest Hermanos Castro jazz band, which would persist as a group until 1960, also recorded one of the earliest forms of "Latin" jazz. They managed to almost seamlessly fuse "St. Louis Blues" with "El Manisero," although still not quite as successfully as efforts of the 1940s. Nevertheless, this 1931 recording may be a good indication of how early Cuban jazz bands sounded. Leonardo Acosta's history of Cuban jazz indicates that many of the groups formed in the 1920s imitated the "society" music of Paul Whiteman and other white jazz groups. This is definitely true, but the 1930s ushered in some interesting developments in Cuban jazz.