Customer Reviews

Cocinando!: Fifty Years of Latin Album Cover Art

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I find COCINANDO! FIFTY YEARS OF LATIN ALBUM COVER ART, to be a model of what such a book should be. Its creator, Pablo Ellicott Yglesias, has created a true work of art. (Review by Whiteford, a bibliophile.)

If you're going to be stuck some place without music - Bring This Book With You! This book swims with visual excitement and indepth analysis of an exciting genre that is poorly understood. Pablo Yglesias acts a curator Extraordinaire in this not to be missed work.

Other books have been written on rock album cover art: here's the first to cover fifty years of the brightest and best album covers in Latin music history - and those who fostered them. Using album covers over the decades, Cocinadndo is an artistic, visual treat of the best Latin record covers from all genres of Latin music, from congo and bassa nova to salsa. Cocinando! is a simply gorgeous, rich presentation with full-page color album covers packing every page.

I bought this book on a friend's recommendation. It's pages are filled with great album art that spans the range of great Latin Jazz and Rock, from Desi Arnaz and Mongo Santamaria to Carlos Santana and Los Lobos. It is like a pictoral history of great Latin music in America, including a section on Brasilian music. Tito Puente, Poncho Sanchez....even Dizzy Gillespie (who helped introduce Latin Rhythms to America) is represented....all in glorious vintage styles that you forgot you loved!

So if you love Jazz, buy this one.

Now I need to add these albums to my record collection.

How wonderful that someone has at last collected and memorialized the music and musicians from the Afro-Cuban and Latino bands that too often went unnoticed in this country. I wish that the publisher had included a CD or two to go with the book, since many of the musicians represented in pictures are not widely available on disc any more to a public which needs to hear as well as see.

In any case, gracias, Senor Yglesias - do it some more!

Many people who love Latin music and vintage Latin album graphics will snatch up this book. Be forewarned that there are disappointments to be found inside. The author/compiler seems to look down his nose at the garish, exotic, sexy and sensational album sleeves from the '40s and '50s that we gringos adore, choosing for the most part to showcase politically correct, bizarre abstract art creations from the 1970s. No me gusta! It's not that there are none of the earlier variety of album sleeve on display here, but there are not nearly enough. What's worse, the author interprets "latin music" to mean Cuban, Brazilian and Puerto-Rican-derived product; if you're looking for reproductions of some great old ranchera, flamenco or merengue album sleeves, you're out of luck. The richness and diversity of Latin music is missing from this book. COCINANDO! is certainly a groundbreaking collection, but by no means is it definitive. I hope someone follows up this incomplete history with another that presents the Golden Age of latin music from a more unbiased viewpoint. I'd like to take the opportunity here to tout the collectability of vintage Mexican album sleeves; many of them are absolutely gorgeous, and they need to be recognized as the works of art that they are.