Joe Livramento
Joseph Calasanes Livramento
New Bedford, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 1920 – U.S.A., 2003
Instrumentalist (wind instruments), composer
Clarinetist, flautist, saxophonist, band leader and composer, Joe Livramento had a 66-year career as a music professional, which began when he was still a teenager, at 17, and continued until the end of his life. At age 83, a few months before he passed, he made his last recording. He lived in New York and, at the end of his life, in Rhode Island.
His first experience was with the veterans of the Cape Verdean Ultramarine Band Club, groups that used to liven up parties in the Cape Verdean community in New England in the 1930s.
Later he studies composition, theory, orchestration, and arrangements at a conservatory, with one of the greatest teachers of the time, Jose d’Costa, according to a text published by Carlos Spínola on the website www.bravanews.com (12.01.2009, no longer available). According to this author, while studying and performing at the Cape Verdean Ultramarine Band Club, Joe Livramento also participated in the Don Verdi Orchestra (the word Verdi deriving from Verdean, revealing the musicians’ origin). Besides these, at the beginning of his career, he collaborated with 18 other bands over the years, according to Spinola’s article, at least in two of them he was the leader: Joe Livramento Combo and Joe Livramento Latin Group.
Whether in the area of Afro-Latin jazz, R&B, or the nascent Rock & Roll, from the 1950s onwards, Joe Livramento collaborated on several recordings, playing different wind instruments. Among those collaborations are the Machito orchestra, the saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and the singer Little Willie John, among others. According to Ron Barboza to Cabo Verde & a Música – Museu Virtual, the musician also played in the resident band at the famous Apollo Theater, in Harlem, New York.
His recordings are available in collections or retrieved digitally and sold online. On his album with Joli Gonsalves, there is a recording of the famous song “Tunga”, recorded by Harry Belafonte, as well as waltzes, koladeras and mornas. Bright ‘n Mellow, in turn, reveals the eclecticism of Livramento, which covered all the musical trends of the century and included mazurka, guajira and bossa nova on the album, and sometimes transformed mornas into boleros.
Discography
(in the Cape Verdean context)
- Joli Gonsalves & Joe Livramento, LP, editor?, U.S.A., 1969.
- Um Tita Bai pa Nha Terra, single, [?], editor?, c. 1980. Group of Joe Livramento; voice: Carlos Ferreira.
- Bright ‘n Mellow (Alegre e Suave), LP, FA Music, U.S.A., 1983.
- Participation in the album So Sabe, 1960, of Phill Barboza.
- Participation in the single Cabo Verde: Phill Barboza and his Latin American Music, [?].
- Participation in So Sabi: Cape Verdean Music from New England, 1999.
