La señora es un vagabundo

for salsa band

When a pianist friend invited me to play bass with him at his wife’s 50th birthday party, we finished with her favourite song, the Rogers and Hart standard The Lady is a Tramp, which we played in a conventional swing style. I remarked that it might be fun to do it over a Cuban style tumbao bass, which made my friend protest that he’d be bound to get lost (whereas I was getting lost playing walking bass, which I was never much good at). So just for fun, I made and recorded an arrangement, which I’ve now remixed with better sounds and a flute solo over the previously rhythm-only second chorus and fade-out. Apart from using new and better sounds, I’ve also made the percussion sound a little looser and (I believe) more natural by the simple expedient of shifting some parts slightly ahead of or behind the beat. NB: This one’s loud!

In case there’s any doubt, the tumbao here is the classic style where, for the most part, the bass plays only on the second half of the second beat, and on the fourth beat, which anticipates the harmony of the following bar, hence my friend’s potential confusion. (Because the whole point of this was to demonstrate the tumbao bass — and because I found a particularly peachy upright bass sound — this part is given a slightly unrealistic prominence in the recording.)

The title is what Google Translate gave me, for better or worse, for The Lady is a Tramp in Spanish... and spot the Count Basie reference.

Instrumentation

Performances / broadcasts / ‘real’ recordings

Listen to MIDI version (3:40)