by Eleonora Colombo
This story begins in New York in the mid-1970s. Its protagonist is Ricardo Marrero, a New York musician who came up in the Latin scene: percussionist, pianist and vibraphonist, but also arranger, composer and producer. His biographical notes credit him with two Grammys. Above all, he is one of those musicians equally at home on stage and behind the scenes.
With his group he records the material for an album that should make his career. It is called A Taste, a crossover of Latin, jazz-funk and soul with a very strong Nuyorican stamp.
Then the unforeseen happens. The masters are taken.
The most interesting account of the affair comes from Gerald “Jazzman” Short, founder of Jazzman Records, who many years later interviewed Marrero to set the facts in order. Short reports that the tapes were stolen by an employee of the recording studio, and that the album was released without Marrero knowing anything about it. Without, in other words, any authorization.
The record appears in 1976 on TSG Records, a New York label, and soon afterwards almost entirely disappears. It is precisely this scarcity that, decades later, turns it into a cult object for funk and Latin jazz collectors: Jazzman reports copies changing hands for around $4,000.
In 2009 Jazzman itself recovers and reissues it in a series with a telling name, the Holy Grail Series, devoted to record rarities. The reissue adds two alternative versions that until then had come out only as 45s.
But the story of A Taste does not end with its rediscovery. Mr Bongo, the venerable British independent label specializing in the recovery of rare music, has announced a new edition on vinyl and CD for October 30, 2026, once again presenting it as a genuine holy grail of collecting.
A record from 1976 turns fifty this very year, 2026, and returns to the shops. It was meant to vanish. It lives again, and this time with its author’s name where it belongs.