Paquito D'Rivera
Mario Rivera
Ed Calle
David Sanchez

 

Cannonball Adderley has an album call Cannonball Bossa Nova. Some very famous songs done by a master. Not strictly latin, but it's a latin rhythm section including Sergio Mendez on piano.

 

Don't forget forum member Bob Franchescini aka franbop, Miguel Zenon, Tony Martinez, Tony Malaby, Furito Rios, i'll get back to you.

 

The guy who plays the solo is Tiger of San Pedro from the LaBarbara Big Band is a beast.

 

Gato Barbieri

and one of my favourite old timers (from Brazil) Pixinguinha

 

There's also Stan Getz of course. We may not think of him as primarily a latin jazz player, but I wouldn't mind betting there's a very large proportion of the older generation general public who do.

 

spyrogyra, jay.b!...dave koz here and there!,

 

The Cuban group that Paquito D'Rivera (along with trumpeter Arturo Sandoval) belonged to before he defected from Cuba to the U.S. was called Irakere. There was another outrageously gifted saxophonist in the band named Carlos Averhoff. He did not defect until several years later. He's now a prof at Miami Dade College.

He's worth checking out.

Also look up whoever is playing with the former leader Chucho Valdes. His site: http://www.valdeschucho.com/

 

You should hear his son. He is really talented. Carlos jr. is playing great.

 

Maybe we should categorize the players as Brazilian Jazz and 'Latin' Jazz just for better categorize their main work.

 

Not jazz, but a really good player in his thing. He has probably recorded every merengue recording you may have ever heard.

 

Crispin Fernandez is amazing! I've been listening to his stuff a lot lately...so natural and fluid--just really amazing stuff. Salsa and Merengue sax players are really amazing...

 

A lot of Latin is incorporated into the jazz repertoire and sax players tend to play a both. People like Mel Martin have played with Pucho & his Latin Soul Bros, Hubert Laws with Mongo Santamaria. British tenor players Like Dick Morrisey and Dave O'Higgins have included Latin numbers, as have people like Stanley Turrentine.
For players that are mostly Latin, I think we've mentioned the main guys, Paquito (who also played with the Fania Allstars) and Gato. I liked the horns who played with Mongo Santamaria, Pat Patrick, Bobby Capers, Jimmy Cozier, Craig Rivers. There's some good solos on Mongo's stuff.

 

chombo silva. hear him with cal tjader, charlie palmieri,the allegre allstars and many others. he also played violin.

 

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Gato I'm pretty familiar with - not exactly what I meant by Latin jazz as someone mentioned above. I think I've heard of that Parker guy, and some of the others. I'll check out some of the new names.