ABSTRACT
I’ve known Francisco for almost seven years now. I met him a few months after I finished my dissertation, in June 1995, at the house of a shady and very rich lawyer in Beverly Hills, who
was also Franciscos long-time friend. I was there with three col leagues, Raul, Nancy, and Anthony, who were interviewing Francisco for the Smithsonian Institution’s Jazz Oral History Program. This particular interview was part of a series focusing on renowned Latino jazz drummers, including Patato Valdes, and Mongo Santamaria; and Armando Peraza-Francisco cer tainly fit in. He used to perform regularly with Dizzy Gillespie and Frank Sinatra when they were alive and had long-standing gigs with the late Peggy Lee and the late Tito Puente. He did shorter tours with many other jazz musicians, great and small, and in the early 1990s began performing and touring in earnest with his own Latin Jazz Ensemble. He occasionally got into fistfights with some of his musicians on stage during a show, which earned him something of a reputation. All of this came out in the interview-eventually.
