Rudy Regalado (musician)
Encyclopedia
Héctor José Regalado was a Venezuela
n Latin music
bandleader
, percussionist, composer
and educator
. He played professionally under the name Rudy Regalado.
, which surfaced during the Santana
and Malo
Latin-tinged rock era in the early 1970s. Besides this, he led his own groups and performed on countless recording sessions with distinguished artists. In addition to recording five albums with El Chicano, Regalado also collaborated in projects led by Alex Acuña
, Quincy Jones
, Alphonse Mouzon
, Bill Summers and Joe Zawinul
, among others.
, the capital city of Venezuela. Largely self-taught, he started to play drums
and timbales
as a teenager in his home town. A devoted baseball fan, he adopted his nickname after former Cleveland Indians
infielder Rudy Regalado
.
and started playing in hotels and clubs in the San Juan
area, while studying harmony
and percussion at Pablo Casals Conservatory of Music. He settled in Los Angeles, California
in 1970, where he played with local jazz and Latin groups before joining El Chicano late in the year.
Regalado spent twelve years with El Chicano, singing and playing the timbales in five albums, which included Top 40 hits during the 1970s with the songs "Viva Tirado" and "Tell Her She's Lovely". El Chicano also created the theme song for the television series Baretta
, which ran on ABC
from 1975 to 1978.
After spending 12 years with El Chicano, Regalado formed his own Latin Jazz All-Star Band in 1983, which included a select group of musicians from Los Angeles. Initially known as Todos Estrellas, the band eventually became known as Chévere and appeared at the Playboy Jazz Festival
, Disneyland and Fiesta Broadway, among other engagements. The band also performed overseas in summer festivals in Canada
, Hong Kong
, Indonesia
, Kuala Lumpur
, Malaysia, Singapore
, Thailand
, and throughout the Europe
an continent.
As part of an El Chicano reunion in 2009, Regalado performed during the 40th anniversary of Woodstock Festival
at the Golden Gate Park Music Concourse
in San Francisco
, where the group actually celebrated their own 40th Anniversary, and last played with them at the Greek Theatre
of Los Angeles.
in charge of her percussion section, was a drummer for Los Melódicos
on its 1980 tour of United States, and performed on the Tonight Show, the Nancy Wilson Show and American Bandstand
.
His film credits include The Skeleton Key
(2005), as well in the television series Pepe Plata
(1990) and Clubhouse (2004).
Regalado moved later to Las Vegas, Nevada
, where he died from complications of pneumonia
at the age of 67.
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
n Latin music
Latin American music
Latin American music, found within Central and South America, is a series of musical styles and genres that mixes influences from Spanish, African and indigenous sources, that has recently become very famous in the US.-Argentina:...
bandleader
Bandleader
A bandleader is the leader of a band of musicians. The term is most commonly, though not exclusively, used with a group that plays popular music as a small combo or a big band, such as one which plays jazz, blues, rhythm and blues or rock and roll music....
, percussionist, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and educator
Music education
Music education is a field of study associated with the teaching and learning of music. It touches on all domains of learning, including the psychomotor domain , the cognitive domain , and, in particular and significant ways,the affective domain, including music appreciation and sensitivity...
. He played professionally under the name Rudy Regalado.
Profile
Although he toured extensively in a career spanning more than 50 years, Rudy Regalado is better known for being one of the founding members of El ChicanoEl Chicano
El Chicano is an American chicano rock and brown-eyed soul group from Los Angeles, California, whose style incorporates various modern music genres including rock, funk, soul, blues, jazz, and salsa...
, which surfaced during the Santana
Santana (band)
Santana is a rock band based around guitarist Carlos Santana and founded in the late 1960s. It first came to public attention after their performing the song "Soul Sacrifice" at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, when their Latin rock provided a contrast to other acts on the bill...
and Malo
Malo
Malo was an American Latin-tinged rock and roll group. The San Francisco-based ensemble was led by Arcelio Garcia and Jorge Santana, the brother of Latin-rock guitarist, Carlos Santana....
Latin-tinged rock era in the early 1970s. Besides this, he led his own groups and performed on countless recording sessions with distinguished artists. In addition to recording five albums with El Chicano, Regalado also collaborated in projects led by Alex Acuña
Alex Acuña
Alejandro Neciosup Acuña aka Alex Acuña is a Peruvian drummer and percussionist, in the Afro-Cuban jazz style.Born in Pativilca, Peru, Acuña played in local bands from the age of ten, and moved to Lima as a teenager. At the age of eighteen he joined the band of Perez Prado, and in 1967 he moved...
, Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is an American record producer and musician. A conductor, musical arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend...
, Alphonse Mouzon
Alphonse Mouzon
Alphonse Mouzon is a well-known jazz-fusion drummer and percussionist, and the Chairman/CEO of Tenacious Records. He also composes, arranges and produces, as well as acts...
, Bill Summers and Joe Zawinul
Joe Zawinul
Josef Erich Zawinul was an Austrian-American jazz keyboardist and composer.First coming to prominence with saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, Zawinul went on to play with trumpeter Miles Davis, and to become one of the creators of jazz fusion, an innovative musical genre that combined jazz with...
, among others.
Early life
Regalado was born and raised in a working class family in CaracasCaracas
Caracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...
, the capital city of Venezuela. Largely self-taught, he started to play drums
Drum kit
A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
and timbales
Timbales
Timbales are shallow single-headed drums with metal casing, invented in Cuba. They are shallower in shape than single-headed tom-toms, and usually much higher tuned...
as a teenager in his home town. A devoted baseball fan, he adopted his nickname after former Cleveland Indians
Cleveland Indians
The Cleveland Indians are a professional baseball team based in Cleveland, Ohio. They are in the Central Division of Major League Baseball's American League. Since , they have played in Progressive Field. The team's spring training facility is in Goodyear, Arizona...
infielder Rudy Regalado
Rudy Regalado
Rudolph Valentino Regalado is a former Major League Baseball player. He was an infielder for the Cleveland Indians from 1954 to 1956, and played in the 1954 World Series. He was born in Los Angeles, California and is of Mexican descent....
.
Professional career
In 1963, Regalado moved to Puerto RicoPuerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
and started playing in hotels and clubs in the San Juan
San Juan, Puerto Rico
San Juan , officially Municipio de la Ciudad Capital San Juan Bautista , is the capital and most populous municipality in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 395,326 making it the 46th-largest city under the jurisdiction of...
area, while studying harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
and percussion at Pablo Casals Conservatory of Music. He settled in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
in 1970, where he played with local jazz and Latin groups before joining El Chicano late in the year.
Regalado spent twelve years with El Chicano, singing and playing the timbales in five albums, which included Top 40 hits during the 1970s with the songs "Viva Tirado" and "Tell Her She's Lovely". El Chicano also created the theme song for the television series Baretta
Baretta
Baretta is an American detective television series which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1978. The show was a milder version of a successful 1973–74 ABC series, Toma, starring Tony Musante as chameleon-like, real-life New Jersey police officer David Toma...
, which ran on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
from 1975 to 1978.
After spending 12 years with El Chicano, Regalado formed his own Latin Jazz All-Star Band in 1983, which included a select group of musicians from Los Angeles. Initially known as Todos Estrellas, the band eventually became known as Chévere and appeared at the Playboy Jazz Festival
Playboy Jazz Festival
The Playboy Jazz Festival is an annual event sponsored by Playboy Enterprises to celebrate jazz as well as feature both established and up and coming musicians of the genre. It was founded by Hugh Hefner and was first held in Chicago, Illinois at the Chicago Stadium in 1959. However, the second...
, Disneyland and Fiesta Broadway, among other engagements. The band also performed overseas in summer festivals in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur is the capital and the second largest city in Malaysia by population. The city proper, making up an area of , has a population of 1.4 million as of 2010. Greater Kuala Lumpur, also known as the Klang Valley, is an urban agglomeration of 7.2 million...
, Malaysia, Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, and throughout the Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an continent.
As part of an El Chicano reunion in 2009, Regalado performed during the 40th anniversary of Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Music & Art Fair was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969...
at the Golden Gate Park Music Concourse
Music Concourse
The Music Concourse is an open-air plaza within San Francisco's Golden Gate Park originally excavated for the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894. After the fair, it underwent a significant redesign in order to be repurposed as a venue for public gatherings centered around music...
in San Francisco
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
, where the group actually celebrated their own 40th Anniversary, and last played with them at the Greek Theatre
Greek Theatre (Los Angeles)
The Greek Theatre is a 5,700-seat amphitheater, located at Griffith Park, in Los Angeles, California. It was built in 1929, opening on September 29 of that year...
of Los Angeles.
Other credits
Regalado also toured with Aretha FranklinAretha Franklin
Aretha Louise Franklin is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Although known for her soul recordings and referred to as The Queen of Soul, Franklin is also adept at jazz, blues, R&B, gospel music, and rock. Rolling Stone magazine ranked her atop its list of The Greatest Singers of All...
in charge of her percussion section, was a drummer for Los Melódicos
Los Melódicos
Los Melódicos are a Latin dance band from Venezuela that plays a blend of Colombian, Cuban and Dominican rhythms. The orchestra was assembled by Renato Capriles in Caracas during the late 1950s, making their debut in a local radio station on July 15, 1958...
on its 1980 tour of United States, and performed on the Tonight Show, the Nancy Wilson Show and American Bandstand
American Bandstand
American Bandstand is an American music-performance show that aired in various versions from 1952 to 1989 and was hosted from 1956 until its final season by Dick Clark, who also served as producer...
.
His film credits include The Skeleton Key
The Skeleton Key
The Skeleton Key is a 2005 American supernatural horror film starring Kate Hudson, Gena Rowlands, John Hurt, Peter Sarsgaard, and Joy Bryant. The film focuses on a young hospice nurse who acquires a job at a Terrebonne Parish plantation home, and becomes entangled in a mystery involving the house,...
(2005), as well in the television series Pepe Plata
Pepe Plata
Pepe Plata was a 1990 Spanish-language sitcom produced by DIC Entertainment and aired on Univision with 65 episodes.-Episodes:#Recuerdos de Alfonso#Tortilla Mistica#Rock & Roll Pepe#Vamos a Bailar#El Dinosaurio de Pepe#El Chiquito Adame...
(1990) and Clubhouse (2004).
Regalado moved later to Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
, where he died from complications of pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
at the age of 67.
Selected discography
| Year | Album | Artist | Credit |
| 1972 | Celebration | El Chicano | Percussion, Drums |
| 1973 | Chicano | El Chicano | Percussion, Drums |
| 1974 | Cinco | El Chicano | Percussion, Drums |
| 1974 | Yaqui | Yaqui | Drums |
| 1975 | Pyramid of Love & Friends | El Chicano | Percussion, Drums |
| 1976 | Viva El Chicano! Their Very Best | El Chicano | Vocals, Timbales, Percussion |
| 1977 | Blue Note Live at the Roxy | Alphonse Mouzon (Various Artists) | Timbales, Percussion |
| 1977 | Roots | Quincy Jones | Percussion |
| 1988 | Immigrants | Joe Zawinul | Vocals, Percussion |
| 1990 | Thinking of You | Alex Acuña and the Unknowns | Percussion |
| 1992 | Iroko | Bill Summers | Composer |
| 1994 | La Gloria | Rudy Regalado y Chévere | Producer, Drums, Vocals, Timbales |
| 1996 | My People | Joe Zawinul | Percussion, Composer |
| 1998 | Painting the Moment | El Chicano | Percussion, Timbales |
| 1999 | Suckers | Original Soundtrack | Percussion |
| 2000 | Late Night Sessions | Caravana Cubana | Cata, Timbales |
| 2000 | Acuarela de Tambores | Alex Acuña | Maracas, Chekere |
| 2002 | Faces & Places | Joe Zawinul | Percussion |
| 2002 | Cinco de Mayo Celebration | Various Artists | Timbales, Percussion |
| 2002 | Del Alma | Caravana Cubana | Timbales, Cata |
| 2004 | 20th Century Masters - Millennium Collection | El Chicano | Timbales, Percussion |
Selected videos at YouTube.com
- El Chicano - Viva Tirado (Live, 1971)
- El Chicano - Mas Zacate (Live, HD, 16:9)
- Rudy Regalado with Tito Puente in Telemundo
- Rudy Regalado & Chevere in Good Day LA