Carlos Montoya- An essay by Brook Zern on the guitarist’s centennial

An essay by Brook Zern on
the guitarist’s centennial

“For thousands
of record and concert fans he is
Mr. Flamenco Guitar” – Don Pohren, “Lives
and Legends of Flamenco”

Carlos Montoya was born in Madrid
on December 7th, 1903, one century ago this month.

By some measures, he is an exceptionally important figure
in the history of the flamenco guitar. By other lights, he
can be dismissed as a mere footnote. He was a small man I
recall as having long fingers and nails that partly determined
his sound – strong yet somehow insecure and occasionally
sloppy.

Nevertheless
he cannot be ignored since he was, for many decades, the most
successful flamenco guitarist in the world – if success
can be measured by worldwide audience size and the acclaim
of non-expert critics, guidelines that are alive and well
in our modern world. He was also the first player to make
a career of solo playing.

These accomplishments took place outside of Spain because
during most of the twentieth century the very idea of solo
flamenco guitar seemed absurd in Spain. The instrument was
viewed strictly in terms of accompaniment, and while an occasional
solo number might be tolerated between the serious acts, the
concept of a solo concert or recording was seen as unviable
at best, ridiculous at worst. It was a bit like a singerless
blues guitar concert or record might have seemed in the United
States – a pointless exercise that simply underlined
the absence of the essential performer. Spain's flamenco community
“knew” that the guitar could never stand alone.

Carlos Montoya

Carlos Montoya knew better. He had faith in himself, and
faith in the flamenco guitar. He led a historic fight to have
this great instrument shine on its own, and he succeeded.
Millions of people in America and the Western Hemisphere,
and many in Europe, were introduced to the idea of flamenco
guitar by Carlos Montoya, and in retrospect this was probably
his most significant triumph. He came, saw and conquered –
an accomplishment that would have been unique had it not so
closely echoed the parallel achievements of Andrés
Segovia in the classical sphere.

But….

But the story has another side. It relates to the fact that,
in essence, the flamenco guitar music played by Carlos Montoya
wasn't top caliber.

He was the first player to make
a career of solo playing.

There are various possible explanations for this. Perhaps
the most poignant lies in the fact, stated on the jackets
of more than one of his recordings, that as a youngster in
Madrid, he was rejected as a student by the great genius who
virtually invented the flamenco guitar as a serious instrument.
And that this man was none other than his uncle, the immortal
Ramón Montoya. Liner notes say: “Carlos had to
face the fact that his uncle had little or no interest in
him, and wished to teach another member of his family on the
grounds that young Carlos did not, in uncle Ramón's
eyes, have the ability to succeed to his mantle.”

What was it in Carlos that led Ramon to prefer another student,
as the record jacket says (and for that matter, who was the
preferred student who presumably came to naught?).

I don't know, of course. But Carlos Montoya subsequently
said he wanted it known he “owed nothing” to his
famous uncle – and when you listen to his playing, the
truth of that statement becomes sadly evident. By rejecting
the many indispensable innovations of his uncle, Carlos was
simply left with insufficient resources to create great solo
flamenco guitar.

But he tried. A Gypsy “por los cuatro costados”,
through and through, he was playing guitar at age eight, learning
his first licks from his mother “La Tula” and then
from the little-known “Pepe el Barbero” in Madrid,
who said after a year that he had no more to show the young
Carlos. At fourteen, he was playing in the fabled “cafés
cantantes”, with outstanding singers and dancers.

Carlos had to face the fact that
his uncle,
Ramón Montoya, had little or no interest in him

Invited
to join touring troupes, he had ideas beyond accompanying
in the shadows. At the age of 42, he gave his first solo guitar
recital, and never really looked back. Relocating to New York,
he went on to give hundreds of concerts worldwide and make
more solo records than any other flamenco guitarist. The above-cited
liner notes conclude, with what seems to be vengeful glee,
“Montoya's uncle lived to see his nephew succeed to his
mantle and raise it to a peak which had not been dreamed of
in his own prime. Carlos Montoya today is King of the Flamenco
Guitar, without peer or rival in the world, a statement impossible
to make of any other living instrumentalist”.

Ramón Montoya

Not so fast, fellas. Let's look at the record.

A typical recording among the dozens of LP's (I know of 48
separate and distinct records, not counting the many reissues)
from his mid-century apogee reveals a core of serious flamenco
knowledge surrounded or even submerged by a series of mannerisms
and effects. While the basic sound is interesting –
often strong and steely – there's a choppiness and disconnectedness
that goes beyond funky gypsy to become distracting. And there's
also a lack of melodic brilliance that prevents his falsetas
from attaining the memorable magic of flamenco's great creators.
Pohren writes: “His playing often contains an undeniable
gypsy drive and ‘duende’, only to be too quickly
destroyed by some absurdity, some flashy misplaced ‘picado’,
or sixty seconds of continuous ‘ligado’”.

This reliance on “efectismo” (a useful Spanish
term for going for flashy effects at the expense of serious
content, often applied to the flashy 60's bullfighter El Cordobés)
was on display at a long-ago Montoya concert where I was sitting
behind Sabicas and his brother, Diego Castellón. Montoya
began his arrangement of the “Saeta and Siguiriya”
by crossing two guitar bass strings which when plucked imitated
the sound of a snare drum and evoked the sound of Holy Week
in Spain.

Well, the audience went bananas. Sabicas and his brother
took due note, poking each other and laughing – and
sure enough, Sabicas used this same gimmick at his next concert,
also bringing down the house. (“Amazing, Maestro,”
I said fecklessly afterwards. “You made your five thousand
dollar Santos Hernández guitar sound exactly like a
two-dollar drum.”)

For
better or worse, Montoya should be
acknowledged for pioneering the mixing of flamenco guitar
with other music, notably jazz

He had a truly astounding left-hand legato. But he tended
to overuse it, so that his rondeña (employing his uncle's
haunting tuning, but boycotting Ramón's ravishing and
definitive falsetas) soon wears out its welcome and becomes
an endless liquid gliss. He also tended to lower the string
tension of his guitar by a half-tone or more to facilitate
the legato, which tended to muddy the overall sound. Estela
“Zata” recalls that Montoya would sometimes raise
his right hand during long legato passages and point to his
busy left hand, milking still more applause from his enthralled
audience.

Carlos Montoya

I grew up in New York, Montoya's adopted stomping ground,
and my father – a very unSpanish Pennsylvania Dutchman
— studied flamenco guitar diligently in the 1940's and 50's.
But the material he learned, beyond the chestnuts from the
central tradition, was that of Ramón Montoya or Sabicas,
never Carlos Montoya. When I took over the family flamenco
guitar responsibilities in the late 1950's, I managed to bag
lots of marvelous falsetas that were not in the virtuoso style
— by Ricardo, Melchor, Perico del Lunar, Borrull, Diego del
Gastor, Román el Granaíno, Manolo de Huelva
(allegedly) and others. But I recall only two good falsetas
(one for alegrías, one for siguiriyas, each very rhythmic
and danceable) that were clearly Carlos Montoya's. His material
was clearly not valued by guitarists in the U.S.

For better or worse, Montoya should be acknowledged for pioneering
the mixing of flamenco guitar with other music, notably jazz,
as typified by a 1958 recording of “St. Louis Blues”,
along with “Blues in the Night – My Momma Done Tol’
Me”.

(At
the time, this struck us as disconcerting or even laughable.
How could we know that a few decades later, the world's greatest
guitarist, Paco de Lucia, would be striving to create a jazz-flamenco
mixture, this time with more advanced and abstract jazz rather
than the old New Orleans style, and this time to the general
acclaim of many hard-core flamenco-lovers.) (You can still
count me out – I believe such blending can't work, because
jazz in its unlimited immensity could swallow flamenco whole,
just for a snack, and not even burp afterwards.)

Summing up, Carlos Montoya didn't cut much ice in the hard-core
flamenco community, and we tended to feel sorry for those
earnest young people who came to the big city to study with
him and struggled to become his protégées, but
Carlos was hardly perturbed and his overwhelming impact cannot
be overlooked.

How could we know that a few decades
later,
the world's greatest guitarist, Paco de Lucia,
would be striving to create a jazz-flamenco mixture…

Among the general public, his reputation continued to grow.
His name was synonymous with the flamenco guitar, just as
Jose Greco’s and Carmen Amaya’s were with flamenco
dance. Of course, Carlos had a secret weapon that helped him
immeasurably in his ambitious quest: his dancer wife Sally
McLean, whose professional moniker was Trianita. She was charming,
adoring and utterly indefatigable in promoting her husband
– sometimes to an almost comical extent. One afternoon
I was in the small second-floor guitar shop of Juan Orozco
when a woman appeared at the door, assumed a position with
her back to the wall, threw her head back, and bellowed in
a stentorian voice: “VIENE… CARLOS MONTOYA!!”

And “viene” he did, shuffling up the stairs to
talk to Juan. Apparently, he was accustomed to being heralded
with everything but an actual trumpet flourish wherever he
went.

In 1973, on the 25th anniversary of his first solo U.S. concert,
I was asked to speak briefly about Carlos Montoya prior to
his receiving one of the many awards he was given, this one
the Order of Civil Merit from the Spanish Government (or was
it the Cruz de Isabel La Católica, or the keys to the
City of New York, or all three?) I said some nice things about
how he had raised the profile of the flamenco guitar and generated
millions of new admirers for this great art. But he came up
to me afterwards and said, “You don't like my music much,
do you?”

I
said I hoped it wasn't too obvious, and he said in essence,
“No, no, your remarks were quite complimentary. But you
clearly love flamenco guitar, and that means you probably
don't like my playing. Well, I'd just like to tell you one
thing: I do not play the way I do to please the public, though
it certainly does, on five continents so far, and no other
flamenco guitarist will ever fill the Houston Astrodome as
I have. No, I play the way I do because to me, that is exactly
the way the flamenco guitar should sound. It seems strange
to me that the unknowing public should agree, while the real
flamenco aficionados clearly do not…but that's the case.”

I said I appreciated the information. He then asked me questions
that I assumed were merely polite, about my favorite singer
and dancer. But he said, “Yep, just as I thought: my
family.” And it occurred to me that indeed El Chocolate's
real name was Antonio Núñez Montoya, and El
Farruco's real name was Antonio Montoya Flores, and I even
recalled that El Farruco was the grand-nephew (or somesuch)
of Ramón Montoya, which indeed made him a relative
of Carlos as well. I looked at him with what must have been
a newfound respect.

I then asked him who his favorite guitarist was. “You
wouldn't know,” he said. “He died a long time ago,
in an automobile accident.” “Currito de la Geroma!”,
I said, pulling this obscure name out of some odd memory bin.
I like to think Montoya looked at me a bit differently, as
well.

He
was accustomed to being heralded with everything but an actual
trumpet flourish wherever he went.

All in all then, it seems Carlos Montoya is a sort of open-and-shut
case – an idiosyncratic guitarist vastly overrated by
the ignorant public, rather like Manitas de Plata. But there's
another important facet to Carlos Montoya: He was a pretty
damn good accompanist. In his formative years, he accompanied
great dancers including La Argentina, La Argentinita, Vicente
Escudero, El Estampio, Faíco, Antonio de Bilbao, La
Malena and La Macarrona. Add his stint with the very young
Carmen Amaya, and you may have the greatest lineup of dancers
that a single guitarist ever backed.

Macandé with Carlos Montoya

His earliest U.S. recordings were 78's on the Stinson label.
On one, he backs his dancing wife, who earnestly describes
all the steps, as if one could learn the art from the record:
“Alegrias: …When you hear 3 stamps, that is the traditional
'aviso' or warning to the guitarist to begin a slow variation.
Next we have 4 measures of posturing, then a 'paseo' making
time first to the left then right then left again. Now a slow
step called 'escobilla'…” Instructions aside, it's
a solid dance performance well accompanied – or so it
sounds. (Of course, flamenco dance records can be hard to
distinguish from field recordings of red-headed woodpeckers
at work, but that's another story.)

It's easier to judge Carlos Montoya's cante accompaniment,
which can be quite correct and effective. Among them, the
recordings with Niño de Almadén and with Porrina
de Badajoz stand out – solid, even tasteful backing
that elicits good work from each singer.

But though he must have played for many serious singers in
his early career in Spain and with touring troupes, those
two are apparently the only noted singers he ever accompanied
on record. And this interesting aspect of his artistry is
far overshadowed by his solo and concert work, which left
aficionados unimpressed even before a new generation of virtuosos
raised the bar to stratospheric levels.

Not many Spanish authorities have written seriously about
Carlos Montoya. Ángel Álvarez Caballero, cited
in the Diccionario Enciclopédico del Flamenco, says
“In the 1950's, Montoya was already a well-established
and celebrated artist, the first to play flamenco at New York's
Village Gate. His art evolved rapidly. Without breaking radically
with the central tenets of flamenco, he introduced American
folk, country and jazz into his playing.” A gentle assessment,
especially when contrasted to the book's withering dismissal
of Manitas de Plata, the other popular sensation in the flamenco
guitar field outside of Spain: “Effect-seeking music
totally alien to the true values of flamenco”.

“I play the way I do
because to me, that is exactly the way the flamenco guitar
should sound…strange the unknowing public should agree,
while the real flamenco aficionados clearly do not”
– Carlos Montoya

Maybe
Carlos Montoya wasn't so bad after all. And viewed as an echo
(or relic) of the flamenco guitar's distant past, there's
a certain intrinsic interest in his music. Still, it's hard
for me to judge since I happen to really like the solo flamenco
guitar – a rare defect in the circles of serious flamenco
followers, where it is again outmoded, and even Paco de Lucia
surrounds himself with other musicians before venturing onstage.

I recall watching Montoya on television when a serious buff
scoffed at one of his musical gimmicks. “Hey,” I
said, “show some respect. This is the guy who introduced
the solo flamenco guitar to millions of people years ago”.

“Yeah,” was the reply. “And why do you think
that nowadays nobody can stand it?” Nevertheless, Carlos
Montoya’s impact, particularly outside Spain, was extraordinary,
and as America’s flamenco expert, Don Pohren writes:
for thousands of record and concert fans he is Mr. Flamenco
Guitar

Photograph of Macandé with
Carlos Montoya from the Diccionario Enciclopédico
Ilustrado del Flamenco by José Blas Vega and Manuel
Ríos Ruiz.