Riot

On 1970's Riot!, Joe Bataan’s fourth release for the Fania label, the young singer from Spanish Harlem and his teenaged backing band The Latin Swingers seem to have found their feet as professional musicians. Earlier Bataan albums had certainly contained flashes of mercurial brilliance, but Riot! opens with a shockingly assured broadside of tunes, including the jazz-inflected boogaloo of “It’s a Good Feeling (Riot!)” and the slow-burning, deep soul cover “For Your Love," which make it immediately clear that this is a tighter, more seasoned group of musicians than those featured on Gypsy Woman and Subway Joe. By the time Riot! was recorded, Bataan’s Latin Swingers had more than two years of steady gigging behind them, but perhaps more importantly they were starting to receive guidance from some of Fania's more experienced musicians, particularly producer and multi-instrumentalist Johnny Pacheco, whose influence can be heard in the subtle arrangements of numbers like “Mambo de Bataan” and “What Good Is a Castle."