I just listened to something Eddie stated that I believe is inaccurate. At the 30:47 mark, he claims that he rented the Tritons bar/club from the owner for a month. And it was here that he developed the trombone sound.
With all due respect to Mr. Palmieri and his account, record label owner AL SANTIAGO was running the live music taking place at the Tritons at this time. Weekly Jam Sessions that would take place on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays. It included Pacheco's earliest charanga, as well as Eddie's brother's band and, of course, what would become the Alegre All Stars.
As far as the trombone sound or concept of an all trombone conjunto, Eddie HAD to have been influenced by what others were doing before La Perfecta debuted. On the LP entitled QUE GENTE AVERIGUA that was a "comeback" album for Mon Rivera, this LP was recorded at the start of '61, but was released in '63 and was produced by Al Santiago. It was Al who insisted that the Mon Rivera recording feature an all trombone sound. In fact, on this record both Charlie and Eddie are playing piano. Eddie is on two tracks and Charlie is on the rest [8 tracks]. It features 3 trombones and 2 of them are played by Barry Rogers and Mark Weinstein. Both of whom were original members of La Perfecta, which band would launch at the tail end of '61, as Eddie states in this interview.
Throughout the interview he mentions several things that we discussed here about the Palladium. So he corroborates a lot of what was touched on. But on this issue about the Tritons Bar and how the T-Bone *sound* came about, I have to disagree with how he states it all went down.
