La Playa Sextet - Salsa

Extract From Andy Harlow: Interview with a Salsa Brother In A conversation with John Child In Descarga.com Link - http://www.descarga.com/cgi-bin/db/archives/Interview50?ecc97Kqh;;693

Paul "Payo" Alicea was founder of the La Playa Sextet, a guitarist and bassist. La Playa Sextet was one of the first Latin bands to become popular amongst the American and mostly Jewish "mambo" "Palladium" crowd in the '50s. I'm not sure, but I think Puerto Rican born Alicea founded the band in the early '50s along with his wife Marie who sang with the band. It was two guitars, Payo and Frankie Sánchez (who later on left and formed the rival La Plata Sextet), timbales, bass and a trumpet or two. They played all the top hotels, beach clubs and dance halls in New York and the Catskills. Later on, their son, Paul Jr. (now known as Papillon) was the timbalero. He joined the band as a teenager. Bands like La Playa and Joe Cuba had a distinct advantage business wise in that they were only six people and could work for a lot less. Also, imagine having a sextet, and three of the six salaries stay in the family.

Tito Rodríguez was either the first or one of the first singers with La Playa, then Vitín Avilés. Payo and Marie did real well in the music biz. In the 1960s La Playa worked at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach for about five years steady year round. Payo had remarried and relocated here to Miami. He was a great guy. When I got here in 1977, he was getting up in years already, but could still play and sing as good as ever.