Ray Barretto’s Salsa Classic ‘Barretto’ Returns To Vinyl
Set to drop on May 9th, the album returns to vinyl for the first time since its 1975 release.
Craft Latino has announced a special 50th anniversary reissue of the Grammy-nominated album Barretto, the genre-defining salsa classic from legendary conguero and bandleader, Ray Barretto. Set to drop on May 9th, Barretto returns to vinyl for the first time since its 1975 release.
Order the 50th anniversary edition of Barretto.
The reissue of Barretto was mastered from its original analog tapes by Dave Polster and Clint Holley at Well Made Music and pressed on 180-gram vinyl and housed in a replica of its classic jacket, including a die-cut flap on the front cover that opens up to album credits and the original cover notes written by Pablo “Yoruba” Guzman. A limited-edition “Yellow Smoke” 140-gram color vinyl variant (limited to 300 copies), with an exclusive bundle option that includes a classic Fania Records T-shirt, is available on Fania’s website. Additionally, the album will make its debut in hi-res (192/24) digital.
Barretto was released as the follow-up to Ray’s 1973 best-selling album Indestructible. When he returned to the studio he was joined by two new additions to his group: Panamanian singer-songwriter Rubén Blades and Puerto Rican singer Tito Gómez—both of whom would become regular fixtures in Barretto’s band before breaking out as stars in their own right.
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Barretto was an instant salsa classic. Album opener “Guararé” became a signature tune for the singer—making him synonymous with the son cubano style. Other highlights include the rumba-son “Ban Ban Queré” and the lushly arranged son montuno “Vine pa’ echar candela,” with Blades on vocals.
The album also arrived at a particularly significant time for the genre. As the percussionist and writer Bobby Sanabria once remarked, “1975 was a pivotal year, as the Latin music industry showed that it could grow commercially while retaining its integrity and embracing progressive new ideas. There is no better example of this tendency than the album known simply as Barretto.”
