Chick Corea’s compositional inventiveness and improvisational brilliance were one of a kind. In 1976’s My Spanish Heart, his first record since the breakup of his Return to Forever group, he showcased a passion for traditional Latin music. The album included one of his most dramatic and sparkling improvisations on “Armando’s Rhumba.” The piece was written in honor of his father, a ’30s and ’40s Dixieland trumpeter who had introduced him to the piano at the age of four. The piece quickly gained jazz standard status. On My Spanish Heart, it is memorably performed with bassist Stanley Clarke and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty.
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