The Salsoul Orchestra

The music world's prime disco big band, the Salsoul Orchestra recorded several of the tightest, chunkiest disco themes of the 1970s and early '80s, both on its own productions and as the backing group for several prime vocalists. Organized by Vincent Montana, Jr. in 1974, the group was an experiment in fusing funk, Philly soul, and Latin music together in a highly danceable discofied style with plenty of room for solos by individual members. With arrangers, conductors, and whole sections of instruments (including up to 18 violinists) contributing to the sound, the Salsoul Orchestra routinely included up to 50 members. Though the Salsoul sound became passé in the wake of disco music's explosion and rapid commercialization, Salsoul was a heavy influence on house music in the '80s and even the return of disco-inspired electronica during the following decade. The Top 40 crossover hits "Tangerine" and "Nice 'n' Naasty," along with the Loleatta Holloway collaboration "Run Away," are among their most successful and enduring floor-fillers. The beginnings of the Salsoul Orchestra (and Salsoul Records) lie with nominal head Vincent Montana, Jr. A longtime jazz vibraphonist, bandleader, and session man with Philly soul groups like Harold Melvin & the Bluenotes, the O'Jays, and the Spinners, Montana dreamed of constructing a large studio orchestra that could fuse polished soul and brassy funk with Latin percussion and live strings. In 1974, he was introduced to local entrepreneurs Joe, Ken, and Stan Cayre (who ran a local Latin music label) by Afro-Cuban pianist Joe Bataan. With their blessing (and financing), Montana spent months recruiting dozens of musicians from the streets and studios of New York -- including more than a half-dozen percussionists alone. The collective recorded three tracks, which impressed Bataan and the Cayres so much that they decided to form a new label -- named Salsoul for its connotations of salsa and soul -- to release a full-length LP. One of the original Salsoul Orchestra recordings, "The Salsoul Hustle," was released in mid-1975 and it placed well on the charts. Salsoul's second single, "Tangerine" (an unlikely cover of a Jimmy Dorsey tune), hit the Top 20 in early 1976 and pushed the eponymous Salsoul Orchestra LP to number 14 on the album chart. Follow-up singles like "You're Just the Right Size" and "Nice 'n' Naasty" did moderately well on the charts, but soon a glut of similar-sounding material began to flood the market, cheap imitations of the amazing instrumentation of Salsoul Orchestra members -- guitarist and producer Norman Harris, bassist Ronald Baker, drummer Earl Young, arranger Don Renaldo, percussionist Larry Washington, and vocalists Jocelyn Brown, Phyllis Rhodes, Ronni Tyson, Philip Hurt, and Carl Helm. Many Salsoul contributors played on the biggest and best disco tracks of the era, including Trammps, Grace Jones, the Whispers, Loleatta Holloway, and First Choice. Salsoul's third LP, Christmas Jollies, displayed a predilection toward the growing disco novelty trend. It continued with 1977's Cuchi-Cuchi (which teamed the Orchestra with Charo) and 1978's Up the Yellow Brick Road (a takeoff on The Wiz). After disintegrating the Salsoul Orchestra in the early '80s, Vince Montana led the studio group Montana and recorded with several pop stars of the '80s as well as dance inheritors of the '90s like Mondo Grosso and Nuyorican Soul. Salsoul records repeatedly went out of print and back into circulation over the next few decades. The SoulMusic label was behind the group's most expansive anthology, the eight-disc It's Good for the Soul: The Vince Montana Years 1975-1978, in 2024. ~ John Bush, Rovi