My musical autobiography started out in the 1990s as simply a couple of audio clips and photos to share with a couple of RMAL News Group friends at rec.music.afro-latin. When several additional members expressed an interest on hearing and seeing more, I began to fill in and expand this musical autobiography and eventually created this site.

"My Mainly Musical Autobiography" spans my life from birth to the present day with mainly musical recollections, recordings, anecdotes, photos, etc., and includes original 1962 recordings of Guy Hoffman's Latins featuring Carlos Federico and original 1964 recordings of Cesar's Men (Cesar Ascarrunz). Photos also include original 1970s pictures of Celia Cruz and Pete Escovedo (Sheila E's father) taken by Rudi Petschek.

I later added non-musical events and items to my autobiography and I have added many additional non-musical topics to the site.

The table format is frequently used to allow easy updates and additions. Please feel free to submit comments or suggestions regarding any aspect of this site.

In recent years, Mary and I have been privileged to host a couple of dinners for Larry Harlow bands and photos of these events are included in the autobiography (see 1999/07/17 and 2000/01/28).

Please note that the date sequences may be a little mixed up, as it is difficult to recall some of the dates (dates such as 1953/00/01 indicate probably 1953, the 00 month means unknown, and the 01 day is a probable sequence number; "00" in day with a non-zero month means the month is known but exact day is unknown). The influential LPs/CDs are samples of musical influences (the dates are approximate).

Most photo thumbnails may be clicked for viewing a larger version and you may use the browser Back Button to return to the page on which you clicked the thumbnail.