Alfredo Armenteros

Alfredo "Chocolate" Armenteros is a Cuban jazz and Cuban music trumpet player. He was born in Ranchuelo, former province of Las Villas. He began studying music at age 11 due to the influence of his family, several of whose members were musicians.

He started playing in a band directed by René Alvarez called Conjunto Los Astros, and shortly after with Arsenio Rodríguez. (Santa Clara, 1928) is a Cuban jazz and Cuban music trumpet player.

He studied music in his hometown with Eduardo Egües and with Armando Armenteros. He began his artistic career with the group Los Jóvenes Alegres, Ranchuelo; in Sagua la Grande he belonged to the orchestra of the García Brothers, and in Santa Clara to Los Hijos de Arcaño.

He started playing in a band directed by René Alvarez called Conjunto Los Astros, and shortly after with Arsenio Rodríguez. The nickname "Chocolate" originated when someone confused him with boxer Kid Chocolate. He was a member of the famous Cuban ensemble Sonora Matancera from 1977 until 1980. He has played with some of the most renowned musicians of tropical music, including José Fajardo, Puerto Rican César Concepción, Charlie Palmieri, and Machito.

Sextets:
Apolo
Habanero
Nacional
Cauto

Ensembles:
Arsenio Rodríguez
Sonora Matancera
Anabacoa

Orchestras of:
Julio Gutiérrez
César Concepción
Machito and his Afro-Cubans
Charlie Palmieri
Harry Harlow
Mongo Santamaría
Johnny Pacheco
Israel López (Cachao)

Discography
1974 Roberto Torres y Chocolate juntos
1975 Bien sabroso
1976 En el Rincón
1980 Prefiero el son
1982 Y sigo con mi son
1983 Chocolate en sexteto
1987 Rompiendo hielo
1998 Chocolate and his cuban soul

Participations
He accompanied on Radio Cadena Habana:
Rita Montaner
René Cabel
Manolo Fernández

At the Teatro Campoamor:
Cándido Requena
Mariano Mercerón
Bebo Valdés
Banda Gigante de Benny Moré (he was one of its founders)
Fajardo y sus Estrellas
With Fajardo y sus Estrellas he traveled in 1956 for the first time to New York, where from 1957 he settled. He performed at the Birdland club with Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, and Miles Davis; at the Apollo Theater in Harlem with John Coltrane and Oscar Brown.

As a trumpet player, his fundamental influences are from Félix Chappottín and Oscar Velasco (Florecita).

He toured through:
Puerto Rico
Mexico
Dominican Republic
Peru
Chile
Colombia
Venezuela
Panama
Haiti
Curaçao
Aruba
Bonaire
Spain
Finland
Central Africa
Cameroon
Gabon
Senegal
Japan

The jazz trumpet player Alfredo "Chocolate" Armenteros at 85 continues playing and dancing and says he still feels like a child.

He played with Arsenio Rodríguez, Machito, and Benny Moré and shared stages with Dizzy Gillespie. He has performed in 76 countries over more than 60 years of a career that continues and at 85 he is still playing and dancing and says he still feels like a child. He is the Afro-Cuban trumpet player Alfredo "Chocolate" Armenteros, considered the Latin Louis Armstrong.

"They've considered me that way since I went to a jazz festival in Switzerland when I was playing with Machito's band. When they gave me my pass there to play, I saw that it said `Chocolate, the Latin Louis Armstrong'. I said my name was Chocolate Armenteros, but they called me `the Latin Louis Armstrong'", the musician recalled during a recent interview with The Associated Press at his home in the New York neighborhood of Harlem.

Armenteros explains the origin of his nickname: "A girl confused me with boxer Kid Chocolate and then that name stuck with me".

In his apartment, lined with photographs of himself and his family, of other musicians and celebrities, a notable image of Celia Cruz stands out, with whom the musician had a great friendship. Another shows Bill Cosby, when he invited him to his television show.

The cheerful octogenarian, of jovial and joking character, remains active and in good shape and has not abandoned his daily ritual of smoking cigars and having a cognac, something that, he recalls, his mother also did, who died at an advanced age. He says he eats healthy and fresh food and that he cooks himself.

The encounter is before noon and Armenteros, seated in a comfortable sofa, delights in his cigar and his glass, while listening to jazz and for a moment even gets up to dance a few salsa steps.

On his chest, he wears a gold pendant in the shape of a trumpet, an instrument that for him is a life partner.

"It's my girlfriend. It's my soul, my life, my heart", he says while pointing to a nearby briefcase where he keeps his silver trumpet, the same one he has been playing for 61 years and with which he allows himself to be photographed during the interview.

How he fell in love with music

His relationship with music began at age 12, when the director of the municipal band of his town, the Cuban locality of Ranchuelo, went to the school to ask who was interested in studying music.

"I was one of those who raised my hand because my father was also a musician. I started studying because I always liked music, from when I heard Cuban bands playing on the radio. I was born with the instinct to play my music, from the montuno, to the guajira or the bolero", he recounts.

At age 19 he recorded his first album as a member of the ensemble René Álvarez y Los Astros, and two years later he was fulfilling one of his dreams: playing with Arsenio Rodríguez's band, a Cuban musician credited with laying the foundations of current salsa.

"When I have recorded without a singer they call my music latin jazz because it is only instrumental but it is Cuban music"

"One day we were playing with René Álvarez at some open-air restaurants in Havana", Chocolate recalls. "Arsenio was playing in one hall and we were in another. When Arsenio finished playing, he came over to where we were, stood in front of the group and told them to introduce me".

"`Boy, do you want to start with me?', he told me. I jumped and said: `Sure, yes!' That was my dream. And the next day I started. It was my dream, I was 21 years old", he recounted. "Arsenio taught me how to phrase, to phrase the way the singer sang. It helped me that people liked what little I did with my solos".

This is how he developed his career and his skills improvising Cuban pieces with the trumpet. For him improvising is something natural: "it's a gift that nature gives you; it's like a singer who knows how to improvise, that can never be written in life. That is the moment".

And he adds: "I cannot do a replay of myself. Even if I play the same number, I always play it differently. Depending on the climate, the audience that is there, one feels one way or another".

In addition to playing with Rodríguez, Armenteros fulfilled another of his dreams: "I created the most danceable band in Cuba with my cousin Benny Moré".

After working with Moré between 1953 and 1956, he would become part of the Cuban radio-television station CMQ's band. "Another aspiration of mine", says the musician.

Later, Machito offered him to play with his orchestra in New York, and that's how he left Cuba and settled in this city in 1957, continuing with his prolific musical career.

"When I have recorded without a singer they call my music latin jazz because it is only instrumental but it is Cuban music", points out Armenteros, who never returned to Cuba again.

"The greatest, greatest, greatest thing in my life was when I played with Arsenio, when I managed to create the best danceable orchestra in Cuba, when I arrived here (United States) and played with the best band here, Machito's, and when later I made my own group with singers until I got tired and said I was going to dedicate myself to recording", says the artist, who for the past 25 years has been performing as a guest.

One of his most recent collaborations was with the New York group Aurora y Zon del Barrio, whose next album, "Zon de Chocolate", is dedicated to the trumpet player, who performs a solo in one of the songs. At the end of August, Armenteros also plans to travel to San Francisco to participate in a tribute to Arsenio.

Music still makes him feel like a child, assures Armenteros at age 85.

"With the trumpet I always feel like I'm in kindergarten. Music is so vast that you learn something new every day".