It’s been a long, hot summer where I live, and it’s lingering into the fall. Latin jazz is perfect for hot weather, and here are three releases I’ve been enjoying. All of them are just a little bit different from your run-of-the-mill Latin jazz, as you’ll see.

Spanglish Fly, New York Boogaloo

“How’s yer boogaloo, baby?” came the growling voice of Wolfman Jack over the radio from super-station XERB “the mighty 1090 over Los Angeles” on summer nights of my adolescence. “What’s a boogaloo?” I wondered. Thanks to the slinky, kinky New York band Spanglish Fly, now I know, and you can too! Latin boogaloo is back.

Boogaloo was the creation of Puerto Rican musicians in mid-20th-century New York, an amalgam of blues chord structures, lyrics in English and Spanish (or “Spanglish”), soul, R&B, Latin jazz and Afro-Caribbean rhythms. Designed with one thing in mind, to get you dancing. It was overshadowed by salsa sometime in the ’70s, but some outfits like Spanglish Fly are bringing it back.
This is fun-fun-fun music, sexy as the song “Bump (And Let It Slide)” implies, subversive “Return Of The Po-Po”) and hip-sexy-subversive all at once like “Me Gusta Mi Bicicleta” in which vocalist Erica Ramos encourages a would-be paramour to get off the couch and onto a bike. Throughout there are nods to disparate American musical threads, from Woody Guthrie (the opening track “Esta Tierra” is a boogaloo version of his “This Land Is Your Land”) to Brill and Motown (the melody of “Love Graffiti Me” draws heavily on “The Loco-motion”) to “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” and even John Coltrane.

At the center of New York Boogaloo is a true old-school boogaloo song, Willie Colón’s “Mira Ven Aca,” which I surprised myself by knowing, somehow. It’s bookended by pianist Martin Wallace’s original instrumental “Martian Boogaloo” and the band’s tribute to retired Yankee closer Mariano Rivera “42 (El Cuarenta Y Dos).” That’s a powerful one-two-three knockout combination right there. And if that’s not enough, “Martian Boogaloo” gets reprised on the final track in a remixed version called “Brooklyn Boogaloo” with lyrics written and performed by Ramos.

You don’t have to be a “Nuyorican” or bilingual to love Spanglish Fly.