Eddie Cano - Eddie Cano at PJ's (2008) [Hi-Res]

Four characters from Chicago, my home town, came to Hollywood in 1961 with a pocketful of hopes and a lot of nerve and opened a place called P.J.'s."P.J.'s who?" everybody asked. "P.J.'s, Schmee-Jay's, who knows?" headman Paul Raffles asked right back. "We picked the name out of the air." The joint was so far away from the regular Sunset Strip saloon heat all the Tinseltown cynics sneered, "Give 'em two weeks—they'll fold quicker'n you can say Liberace!" Meanwhile, of course, Liberace has made a crazy comeback and P.J.'s apparently will never have to make one because it just won't go away. The Eddie Cano Quartet is one of the reasons. Movie stars love the combo and its cool Afro-Cuban beat Bobby Darin, Sal Mineo, Frankie Avalon and Jackie Cooper like to drop in on the salty, sassy, smoky bistro and sit in with the group, playing Fred Aguirre's drums. Other regulars: Barbara Luna, Doug McClure, Elia Kazan, Ethel Merman, Stanley Kramer, Eddie Fisher. Also Jayne Mansfield, for whom the management always reserves the first seat at Cano's piano bar. There's also a regular Comedian's Table for funnymen Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Joey Bishop, Lenny Kent, Shecky Greene, etc., listening to Eddie and stepping on each others' lines. Ella Fitzgerald and Iwere sitting there one night listening to the combo pount out "Panchita." Suddenly Ella, seized with a vision, jumped up and said, "man I DIG this cat!" Next thing, Ella was up at the bar singing her heart out. The gig lasted two hours. Johnny Mathis likes to Sing Along with Eddie too. And Tony Curtis loves to sit crosslegged on the floor next to the piano, goggle-eyed and gassed over the gorgeous glissandri. Smart management and the clever publicity campaings of P.J.'s pressagent, Shelly Davis, helped make the spot a Hollywood hangout. The management's smartest move was signing Cane two months after the opening, in May of 1961. The combo keeps the customers swingin'. Eddie Cano is practically the doorman. His piano bar is right inside the door.
Three steps down and there's Eddie combining the jazz idiom with the Latin medium, greeting the customers, kidding them and carrying on from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., closing time. He kids them by crediting his arrangements to them: "Now we're gonna do that great Lindsay Crosby arrangement of 'Cal's Pals'." Lin loves it, they all love it. All entertainers like being introduced to their ever-lovin' public and Eddie has found an easy, offhand way to make those introductions. Cano's free-swinging music and happy personality have become part of the atmosphere of P.J.'s. I have a sneaking suspicion it would be just another saloon-with-four-walls without him. The non-pro's dig it too. They come from Cleveland, Ohio, from Clinchmore, Tennessee, and from Climax, Saskatchewan, with clippings from their local newspapers — not only to hear Eddie but to see where Liz Taylor and Eddie Fisher entertained the Moiseyev Ballet; where the Rev. Malcolm Boyd, Detroit's "Beatnik Priest," stood the night he exhorted the customers to hit the sawdust trail; and where Keely Smith and Bob ("Rawhide") Fuller sat the night they got engaged. Who needs the footprints of years past in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese ? P.J.'s is The Space Age Chinese.
I guess the greatest tribute to Cano comes from the waitresses and bartenders who've been there since P.J.'s opened and have never tired of his tinklings, although they hear them every night. I never tire of them either. I'm there every night too. Judge for yourself. Listen to Eddie weave those incongruous bars from "Stumbling" and "Mexican Hat Dance" into "Laura." Hear the touch of Gospel in that pounding, pulsating "Panchita," that clean-cut, brittle piano In "Taste of Honey"? Listen to those dissonant (yet pleasing!) chords swing from a whisper to a fortissimo In "Hello, Young Lovers," the great phrasing, timing and Invention in "Cal's Pals," the tribal wail (with a smidgeon of "Summertime") in "Watusi Walk," the driving base and conga of Leon Cardenas and Carlos Mejia in "Trolley Song." I hope you like it as much as I do.
—Mike Connolly
The Hollywood Reporter

Tracklist:
01. Eddie Cano - PJ's (Live) (02:09)
02. Eddie Cano - Laura (Live) (04:56)
03. Eddie Cano - Panchita (Live) (01:47)
04. Eddie Cano - First One (Live) (02:13)
05. Eddie Cano - A Taste of Honey (Live) (03:38)
06. Eddie Cano - Hello, Young Lovers (Live) (03:18)
07. Eddie Cano - Cotton Candy (Live) (02:26)
08. Eddie Cano - Cal's Pals (Live) (02:58)
09. Eddie Cano - Oye Corazon (Live) (02:36)
10. Eddie Cano - Watusi Walk (Live) (02:44)
11. Eddie Cano - Maha (Live) (02:43)
12. Eddie Cano - The Trolley Song (Live) (03:45)