# On the centennial of Frank Emilio Flynn let's talk about jazz

**Date:** 04/20/2021

On April 13th, one hundred years have passed since the birth of Cuban pianist Frank Emilio Flynn. This year also commemorates two decades since his physical passing.

Frank Emilio is one of the great legends of Afro-Cuban jazz and some of his memorable standards and melodies continue to be a source of teaching and battlegrounds for old and young jazz musicians on the island today.

Frank Emilio was one of the pioneers in bringing Cuban popular music to the language of jazz and in converting rhythms like the danzón, mambo, or cha-cha-cha into wild descargas, with percussion always occupying a starring role, although he also brought to his terrain the best of the American jazz tradition, consolidating an unmatched style. Despite this, it would be unfair to remember him only as a composer and interpreter of this genre, because despite being blind from age thirteen, Frank Emilio was a versatile pianist with solid academic training, capable of performing like no one else the scores of Debussy, Chopin, or Bach, or the exquisite Cuban dances of Manuel Saumell, Ignacio Cervantes, or Ernesto Lecuona, which he recorded on numerous albums.

"For some he is a jazz musician who masters Cuban music; for others, a Cuban pianist with a sixth sense for jazz," said musicologist Nat Chediak about him in his Dictionary of Latin Jazz. Some called him "the magician," and his influence on modern Cuban music, on filín, and on Afro-Cuban jazz is considerable, as numerous musicians and television programs have recalled these days, in which Frank has been seen again with his dark glasses playing songs of his own making, like the famous Gandinga, mondongo y sandunga, or his incredible versions of Sherezada or Toni y Jesusito (by Ñico Rojas), which even the youngest musicians know and are indispensable in any Cuban jam session.

Music and Cuba are synonymous with Frank Emilio, owner of a story of personal triumph that began from the day he was born. He is remembered in the nineties sitting at the piano at the restaurant La Roca, in Vedado, where he would entertain customers during lunch. He knew the complete repertoire of the great American jazz musicians and if asked for any Cuban bolero, the Quiquiribú mandinga, or a song by Bola de Nieve, he would make them his own with incredible sensitivity. His capacity to improvise, his subtlety, and his musical culture captivated absolutely, and so it remained until his death in August 2001.

His father was an American who worked on the island as a diver installing submarine cables for a telephone company. His mother, Digna, was a simple homemaker, but she always liked music. She liked it so much that, even though no one in the house knew how to play piano, she bought one so that the musicians who accompanied the silent films projected at a nearby theater would go and play there after the shows. It was there that Frank Emilio heard the instrument for the first time, the one that would mark his life.

At birth, the midwife's improper use of forceps left him practically blind. "Until age thirteen, when I lost my vision completely, I only perceived shapes and colors, but I stretched out my arm and began to stammer my first musical experiences on the piano, like the waltz Three o'clock in the morning, which were the ones I heard at home." One day, when Frank was five years old, Digna died and his father returned to the USA, leaving him in the care of some uncles who raised him as a son and who, upon noticing his talent for music, supported him in his studies. He then began to imitate the style of the famous pianist Antonio María Romeu, his first idol, and apparently he succeeded because in the thirties they began to call him "the only imitator of the Wizard of the Keys."

At age twelve he won a prize for amateur artists playing precisely a danzón by Romeu, Tres lindas cubanas, and thus obtained his first professional contract. Still in short pants, he began to work as a pianist in a danzón orchestra, practical training that conditioned his singular way of playing the instrument.

In the forties he decided to study music "seriously." His great piano teacher was César Pérez Sentenat and he learned harmony with Harold Gramatges and Félix Guerrero, later presenting himself at the Palacio de Bellas Artes with a program that included works by Bach, Mozart, Ravel, Debussy, and by Cubans Ignacio Cervantes and Ernesto Lecuona—in 1959 appeared Danzas y danzones cubanos, the first of a series of albums that combined the danzón repertoire with pieces by Cervantes and Saumell—.

Through the mediation of Miguel Matamoros, he began to work at radio Mil Diez, a station where he accompanied performers, hosted solo piano programs, and was part of the group Loquibambia, which played fashionable American music and numbers by young composers like José Antonio Méndez and César Portillo de la Luz, with Omara Portuondo as vocalist, becoming the pianist of filín par excellence. He would later be a founder of the legendary Grupo Cubano de Música Moderna (later called Los Amigos), composed basically of five musicians passionate about jazz: drummer Guillermo Barreto, bassist Orlando Papito Hernández, tumbador Tata Güines, güirero Gustavo Tamayo, and himself.

This was his era of unbridled bohemia. "We never went to bed before six in the morning," he would say, recalling that back then he was very flirtatious and walked without a cane. "The güaguero drivers knew me and would drop me at my house door," he would recount, and when telling these anecdotes, between song and song at La Roca or at the club La Zorra y el Cuervo, his face would light up.

He was a founder of the Cuban Jazz Club in the fifties. American musicians like Tommy Dorsey, Sarah Vaughan, or Zoot Sims would travel to Havana back then to play many weekends, and in the early morning hours Cubans and Americans would come together to jam at Las Vegas, Club 21, or Habana 1900. There were legendary jam sessions, like the one that took place at Sans Souci with Sara Vaughan and her trio, which went into the books. That night Frank Emilio and Sarah's upright bass, Richard Davis, improvised together, and at one point in the night Richard asked Frank to accompany him on The Nearness of You. Frank wasn't entirely confident and asked if he knew it, to which Frank replied: "What key do you want it in, mulato?"

One of his great friends and admirer, the director of the Tropicana orchestra, Armando Romeu, encouraged him to do Rhapsody in Blue, by his beloved Gershwin. Frank replied that he couldn't because there were no sheet music for him in Cuba. Romeu learned braille to translate the work for him, and Frank Emilio not only performed this work with the Symphony Orchestra, but also later did Gershwin's Concerto in F, something he was proud of.

Like many Cuban musicians, he fell into oblivion in the seventies, when the revolutionary offensive broke loose on the island; clubs closed and jazz became almost the music of the enemy. "Boldly, I had dedicated myself to cultivating other genres, and I continued working," he would recount. He composed, gave concerts, and dedicated himself body and soul to teaching music to other blind people. In 1996, when through commercial quirks Cuban music became fashionable, he made Barbarísimo, a genuine Latin jazz album. Then came the danzón CD Mi ayer, Tribute to Lecuona, and in 1998, he recorded for the famous Blue Note label Reflejos ancestrales, one of his great albums.

That same year, American trumpeter Winston Marshallis traveled to Havana and went to see him play at the club La Zorra y el Cuervo. He was fascinated, and invited him to play for two consecutive years at Lincoln Center in New York. Thanks to the publicity, a cousin discovered his existence and he was reunited with his family in the USA.