Introducing… Rubén González

Recorded in two days in Havana in 1996 at the end of the Buena Vista Social Club sessions, the debut solo album by the veteran pianist Rubén González – he was 76 at the time – is an all-time Cuban classic. The original album featured nine tracks, recorded live without overdubs. González's piano was accompanied by a lean and supple rhythm section of Orlando ‘Cachaito’ López on bass and various percussionists on shuffling timbales and bongos, embellished with flute and trumpet. This expanded reissue adds one previously unreleased track and offers extended versions of two others that previously appeared in edited form. The new track is a six-and-a-half-minute jam simply titled ‘Descarga Rubén y Cachaito’. It is full of thrilling González arpeggios mixing jazz and classical tropes, while López runs up and down the strings of his upright bass with uninhibited abandon and ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal adds some wild trumpet stabs. The danzon ‘Tres Lindas Cubanas’, which was edited to just over five minutes on the original album, is allowed to run for a glorious eight minutes, and the dynamic ‘Tumbao’ is extended from five minutes to almost seven.
If you already have the album, it may not be worth repurchasing for an additional 11 minutes of music. But if not, you should fill the hole in your library with this expanded edition immediately.