Exuberance is the word that applies perfectly to any discussion of the music of Jack Costanzo. His long and varied career as a musician, bandleader, and composer has left a great legacy of Afro-Cuban music known for heavy emphasis on bongos and conga which Costanzo excelled at. Although he started as a dancer touring with his wife during World War Two and then had a stint as a dance instructor after the war in Los Angeles, his best talents emerged as a bongos player.
His gift for playing these small, open-bottomed drums quickly got him noticed by bandleaders around Los Angeles, particularly at the Beverly Hills Hotel where he had been the dance instructor. Costanzo soon got to work with several popular Latin bands such as Desi Arnaz and Rene Touzet. He also played with other popular big band acts such as Stan Kenton, and Nat King Cole through the 1940s and 50s along with some of the most acclaimed and popular singers of the era such as Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra.
Most notably though, Costanzo became unique in the professional music realm, known not only as the world’s best bongo player by the mid-1950s, but also for making it a wildly popular jazz element, starting during his stint with Sam Kenton’s orchestra. By this time he also started recording on his own, with the creation of his first album Jack Costanzo: Mr. Bongo Has Brass (1956), but perhaps his best fusion of Jazz and Latin rhythms came with Latin Fever two years later.
Costanzo’s Latin Fever is absolutely brimming with verve and enthusiasm as the first track “Sax Con Ritmo” amply provides the listener with audio razzle-dazzle! The interplay of the cymbals, cowbell, bongos, bass, and tenor sax is amazing to hear and makes you wanting more! Even one of the more relatively subdued numbers on this album like “Taboo” which is heavy on the flute, but wonderfully combines timbales, bass, trumpet, saxophone, cowbells, and Costanzo on conga is also a feast for the ears.
The liner notes on Latin Fever say that “Taboo” “will take you to the heart of the steaming jungle where the whole rhythm section is pounding out a tribal dance…” There is no doubt about that! These incredible, enviable talents of Costanzo and his band brought Afro-Cuban musical style to the American mainstream in the mid-20th century and greatly altered the nation’s musical tastes – much as Rock & Roll did, overtaking the sedate popular music which had largely dominated the charts during the 1940s.
Costanzo had other hits such as “Man With The Golden Arm” which was also the title of a controversial, but successful Frank Sinatra film from 1955 about a heroin addict struggling to stay clean. The song has become something of a classic, memorable for it’s outstanding brass and percussion, an indelible contribution to jazz of the 1950s. Between his solo efforts and collaborations with other artists Costanzo has a impressive discography of nearly thirty recordings spanning 1947-1971.
By the early 1970s Costanzo went into a long retirement, but made a comeback in the late 1990s and started to tour again. In 2001 he recorded his first album in many years titled Back From Havana and a second one called Scorching The Skins (2002) and then toured again for a time. He was 98 when he died on August 18, 2018.
