Feb 3, 2026 12:10 AM
In Memoriam: Ken Peplowski, 1959–2026
Ken Peplowski, a clarinetist and tenor saxophonist who straddled the worlds of traditional and modern jazz, died Feb. 2…
Carlos Valdéz, the melodic percussionist who played with the likes of Herbie Mann, died Tuesday of respiratory failure in New York. He was 81.
Born in La Habana, Cuba, Nov. 4, 1926, Valdéz fashioned himself as a chef and was known for feeding dozens of fellow musicians and close friends in his Brooklyn home after gigs. He helped develop the tuneable congas and showed Bridgette Bardot how to dance the mambo in the closing moments of the 1956 film And God Created Woman.
In Cuba, Patato played with bands starting out as a teenager in the 1940s, he created the “penguin dance” while with the Conjunto Casino in the ‘50s. When Valdéz appeared on a daily Cuban television show, he would jump on top of the congas and do a penguin dance.
In 1955 his friends Cándido Camero and Mongo Santamaría sponsored his immigration to New York. Santamaría, who was with the Tito Puente band at the time, got some of his bandmates and others to go to the SMC/Coda studios and record two 78 rpms as a demo to demonstrate the skills of Patato. Those records led to his work with Kenny Dorham on the Afro-Cuban date for Blue Note, from there he went on to play with Herbie Mann for many years.
Peplowski first came to prominence in legacy swing bands, including the final iteration of the Benny Goodman Orchestra, before beginning a solo career in the late 1980s.
Feb 3, 2026 12:10 AM
Ken Peplowski, a clarinetist and tenor saxophonist who straddled the worlds of traditional and modern jazz, died Feb. 2…
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Lettuce, from left: Eric Coomes, Adam Deitch, Ryan Zoidis, Eric Bloom, Adam Smirnoff and Nigel Hall
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They were Berklee misfits. Neither jazzy enough for the straightahead crowd at Boston’s highly prestigious College of…
