The induce was pneumonia, reported a son, Elis Pacheco. He also had Parkinson’s illness.
Mr. Pacheco, who was dubbed the “godfather of salsa,” was a Juilliard-properly trained musician and bandleader, but his greatest contributions might have been as an impresario.
In 1964, he and a business spouse, Jerry Masucci, launched Fania Documents, which soon turned the label of preference for foremost musicians and singers of Latin American heritage, including Ray Barretto, Mongo Santamaria, Eddie Palmieri, Willie Colón, Héctor Lavoe and Rubén Blades.
Mr. Pacheco was the expertise scout, bandleader and producer who supervised the recordings, which he and Masucci 1st bought from their cars. Mr. Pacheco freely mixed musical models, combining elements of the mambo from Cuba, the bomba from Puerto Rico and the merengue from the Dominican Republic with American jazz and rock to produce an entirely new genre of tunes called salsa (Spanish for “sauce”).
At the studio, Mr. Pacheco introduced the musicians jointly, generally actively playing the flute or percussion instruments himself. He replaced the violin sections of traditional Cuban songs with trumpets and trombones from huge-band jazz. He extra the electric powered bass and amplified keyboards from rock audio, and then layered the melodies about thunderous rhythmic styles of drummers, conga, bongo and timbale players.
“Our only goal was to make persons dance,” Mr. Pacheco explained to the Los Angeles Times in 1999.
In numerous circumstances, he chose the musicians for the recordings, such as a landmark pairing of Cuban singer Celia Cruz and Puerto Rican percussionist Tito Puente for the 1966 album “Cuba y Puerto Rico Son.” Cruz recorded an album with Mr. Pacheco, “Celia & Johnny,” in 1974.
Salsa was a dance-driven design and style of fusion songs that could have been developed only in New York. The lyrics of the mainly Spanish-language tracks — numerous of them created by Mr. Pacheco — reflected a challenging, new city sensibility, generally touching on cultural satisfaction and racial injustice.
“Back then, there was no musical design and style with which Latinos could identify,” Mr. Pacheco informed the Los Angeles Times in 1999. “When we started the label . . . we prompted an explosion of kinds. We had a really gifted roster and compensated a ton of focus to the choice of materials.”
Some of the Fania musicians, which include percussionist Barretto and pianist Palmieri, were virtuosos who frequently appeared with renowned jazz musicians. Colón was a powerful trombonist and bandleader who, at Mr. Pacheco’s recommendation in the early 1970s, employed Lavoe, a youthful singer from Puerto Rico. With songs such as “Mi Gente” (“My Folks,” created by Mr. Pacheco), Lavoe grew to become acknowledged as “la Voz” — the Voice — of salsa. Next-era salsa singer Marc Anthony starred with Jennifer Lopez in “El Cantante,” a 2006 biopic about Lavoe, who died at 46 in 1993.
Mr. Pacheco also matched Colón with Blades, a Panamanian singer-songwriter. They manufactured four albums jointly, together with 1978’s “Siembra,” which was Fania’s ideal-offering recording.
In 1968, Mr. Pacheco began to arrange his label’s major musicians for concerts of what he referred to as the Fania All Stars. He directed the live shows, which speedily outgrew nightclubs and neighborhood neighborhoods. A 1972 concert documentary, “Our Latin Point,” directed by Leon Gast, showcased the dynamic songs and the men and women who manufactured it.
“At 1st we didn’t feel we had been anything at all specific,” Mr. Pacheco instructed NPR in 2006, “until every place we went, the traces were unbelievable.”
In 1973, Mr. Pacheco and Masucci rented Yankee Stadium for a salsa live performance of the Fania All Stars, rejecting suggestions that they also e-book rock or soul functions to fill the stands. The general performance, conducted by Mr. Pacheco in his ordinarily animated type, finished early when some of the extra than 40,000 frenzied spectators still left their seats and stormed the stage.
Mr. Pacheco took his musicians, together with singer Cruz, to Zaire (now Congo), where by they done just before additional than 100,000 men and women through the buildup to the 1974 heavyweight boxing championship bout concerning George Foreman and Muhammad Ali.
Fania Records produced its final album in 1979, and Mr. Pacheco offered his interest in the organization a year later on. In a 2003 interview with the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Connect with, he looked back on the 15 years when Fania was flourishing and said, “I wanted to have a firm that dealt with most people like family members, and it came correct.”
Juan Azarías Pacheco Knipping was born March 25, 1935, in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic. His father was a musician and bandleader, his mom a homemaker. The family members moved to the Bronx when Johnny, as he grew to become identified, was 11.
He realized to engage in the accordion, clarinet, saxophone and violin, and then examined percussion instruments at the Juilliard School in New York. Through the 1950s, he labored in various bands performing what was frequently named Latin songs and also was portion of the NBC studio orchestra.
He fashioned his 1st group, Pacheco y Su Charanga — charanga is a Cuban phrase for a musical team — in 1960. His first album marketed 100,000 copies, spurred by the popularity of a dance trend known as the pachanga. He afterwards made several recordings for Fania Data, which he and Masucci begun with an original expense of $2,500 just about every. (The title derives from a Cuban music.)
In the 1980s, the two associates experienced a extended, bitter dispute above unpaid royalties that was not settled before Masucci’s death in 1997. Fania’s cata
logue is now owned by the Concord new music group.
Mr. Pacheco, who lived in Fort Lee, N.J., ongoing to perform properly into his 70s, drawing new generations of listeners in Venezuela, Colombia and in other places. His new music appeared in motion picture soundtracks, which includes “The Mambo Kings” (1992) and “Carlito’s Way” (1993). He gained a Life span Accomplishment Award from the Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences in 2005.
His marriages to Carmen Pacheco and Mona Rothman ended in divorce. Survivors include things like his 3rd wife, the former Maria Elena Sarabia, of Fort Lee two daughters from his 1st marriage two sons from his 2nd relationship and six grandchildren.
After starting his profession generally as a percussionist, Mr. Pacheco afterwards turned regarded principally for actively playing a wooden Cuban-style flute.
“When I was even now drumming — and I was a really great drummer — a further musician was going to give me a ride,” he explained in 2003. “I started packing up my drum kit but the man was in a hurry. He took his flute case, place it beneath his arm, and claimed he was leaving. I observed that and I claimed, ‘That’s my upcoming instrument.’ ”