July Summer-Song Challenge

Goodbye to Summer

And Goodbye to Jorge

Two months ago Jorge Santana passed. He was sixty-eight years old. His name is likely familiar, at least the Santana part, as he was the brother of Carlos whose band Santana changed the lives of many rock and rollers back in the late 1960’s and 70’s. Jorge’s band, Malo, produced four albums, though none was as popular as their first, simply entitled Malo. The four albums were all released between 1972–4, and so you could say that Malo began and ended while I was in high school.

That last fact makes me wonder. How did I learn of them? Why did I not only like them, but become obsessed with their Latin-rock sound? Why did I have to have all their records, despite critical “lukewarmness?” Was there something in the air in little Bessemer, Alabama, back then, in the days long before taquerias; the days when we thought we were living exotically by eating at El Palacio or El Burrito?

Likely I discovered Malo on American Bandstand one Saturday noon. I seem to recall Dick Clark making a point of Jorge’s being Carlos’s brother, and I had every Santana record, wearing the grooves out on my bedroom record player with its less than diamond stylus. So if Malo was on AB, they must have played their only hit “Suavecito,” likely the edited AM radio version, which at 3:29 was half as long as the version you’d only hear late at night, when the pre-teens were off to sleep and the older teens like me were romanticizing their life away.

My memory says that bands always got to play two songs on Bandstand, or rather, got to lip sync two songs, and if that is true, what on earth did Malo play for their second number? Apple Music has the entire song list from Malo listed with single versions, so maybe it was “Nena,” which features a hefty kick, or “Cafe,” which shows how heavy the band could get.

I’m pretty sure, though, that if they played a second song, it couldn’t have been “Just Say Goodbye,” my other favorite song from the album.

“Just Say Goodbye” actually sounds like two songs, the early slow part blending into a faster rhythm and then almost ceasing before it blends back to the earlier ballad, reminding me of the Bossa Nova sounds of Getz/Jobim, Gilberto, and even Sergio Mendes. Give it a listen here:

The band was composed initially of fine musicians like keyboardist Richard Kermode, percussionist Coke Escovedo, and trumpet/flugelhorn-ist Luis Gasca. Jorge, of course, played lead guitar, and lead vocals were handled by Arcelio Garcia, Jr.

The lyrics, as they should be, are simply romantic, especially for a guy my age back then.

“There was a world for us to live and share together But somehow we wasted time And now you’ve taken your love away And if you have to go it’s okay. Just remember happier times, And when you leave here, ahhh Just say goodbye.”

Yeah, I would play that song over and over, not thinking of any one girl particularly, but wishin and hopin and dreamin of days when I might be big enough to both love and say goodbye, honorably, when it didn’t work out.

In the summer of 1973, I worked for my father, and next to his wholesale jewelry store was The Music Depot, “One-Stop Shopping.” It was wholesale/retail, and I would haunt it several times a week on my lunch hour. I wrote in another essay that this is where I got a DJ copy of Malo, but it’s also where I bought Journey’s Infinity in the summer of 1978, and Evolution in the summer of 1979, my last summer working at the store. I’m not proud that I liked “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’,” but I still thought that Carlos Santana’s ex-band mates, Gregg Rolie and Neal Schon who founded the band, were worth supporting.

I also purchased Neil Young’s On the Beach at Music Depot in the summer of 1974, and with it, for an extra $10, I got a poster of Neil on said beach which I hung in my freshman dorm and so became the envy of the other two Neil Young fans on campus — one of whom was a beautiful hippie girl who had no notion of having eyes for me.

Weirdly, or maybe not-so, Malo’s third album was also called Evolution, though they got there first, Journey. I couldn’t wait to buy it in that summer of 1973, the summer before my senior year in high school. When it came out, I begged the clerks at Music Depot to hold it for me until I got my paycheck the following week. They looked at me as you would figure an older clerk in Birmingham, Alabama, might stare at a seventeen year-old kid who wanted a soon-to-be obscure album by Malo.

“Don’t worry, buddy, we’ll have it waiting for you.”

And so they did. I was so happy, and when I got home that day, I put it on my turntable, and don’t think I replaced it for at least a week.

I feel relatively sure now that back in those summer days that not only was I the only guy listening to Malo’s Evolution, not only was I the only guy to own any Malo record, I was likely the only guy to know of them. I don’t want to give myself too much credit, but I am proud that I was so willing to venture into sounds that confused others, sounds that too many others would find distasteful either for pop reasons, or perhaps for “other” reasons.

I wondered at the time if there was anybody out there whom I could play Malo’s “Moving Away” or Dance to My Mambo” for. If so, I never found them back then. Now, though…

I wonder what my parents thought about their son, who could turn so quickly from Alice Cooper to Malo; who loved both Neil Young and Neil Diamond; who craved Uriah Heep and Carly Simon; who sat alone in his room with all these sounds. I’ll give them credit, though: they indulged me in my music in ways I’m not sure I would have were I in charge of a teenager in the 1970's.

As I searched Apple Music for these old Malo albums, I discovered that the last three records are out of print, though you can pick up the compilation, Celebracion: The Warner Brothers Recordings. I recommend that you do so. The songs sound as good to me today as they did back then. So much has happened culturally, politically, musically since then. But if you believe, as I do, that the music of our lives will be with us always, to whatever end we come to, then saying hello or goodbye is just another marker, another road sign to notice and pass.

So Happy Roads Jorge. You made mine richer, more “sightfull,” and certainly more insightful.

Summer hasn’t ended yet, either, and so the July Summer-Song Writing Challenge lives on. Right Jessica Lee McMillan?