Recalling a half-century of music

HAVANA -- When 85-year-old trombone master Generoso Jimenez learned he was up for a Grammy, he flashed back to a night more than a half-century ago when legendary band leader Benny More shouted a compliment that became the title of his award-nominated album.\n"Generoso, que bueno toca usted!" More cried at a concert in Venezuela: "Generoso, how well you play!"\n"How could I not think about Benny?" Jimenez says, his gnarled hands sorting through ragged black-and-white photographs that show him playing his slide trombone with various groups over the decades, including More's orchestra.\nJimenez seems almost surprised by the Grammy nomination, which comes so late in life. He is excited about the possibility of traveling to New York for the Sunday ceremony, and remembers exactly the only other time he traveled there: for a concert on April 18, 1959, just four months after the Cuban revolution.\nNominated in the Traditional Tropical Latin category, "Generoso Que Bueno Toca Usted" was recorded with Jimenez's Grand Afro Cuban Orchestra. It features many of Jimenez's original compositions, as well as his arrangements of compositions by other Cuban musicians.\nAlso up for the same award are albums by other Cuban groups, including "En Route," by Orquestra Aragon, and "Cuban Masters Los Originales," by various artists.\nSeated recently in an overstuffed chair in his modest Havana apartment, Jimenez spat out a few notes on the old trombone given to him decades ago by a fellow musician -- just the second of two trombones he has owned in his lifetime.\nHe was born to a family of musicians in 1917 in the small town of Cruces in central Cuba, where he played a variety of instruments with the municipal orchestra. Jimenez bought his first slide trombone in 1940 when fellow musicians pooled their wages from a radio show -- about $9 -- and a friend in Havana sent the remaining $5 he needed.\nThe photographs and sepia prints piled on a table in Jimenez's living room tell the story of his long career.\nHere's the smiling young man in uniform who played with a police orchestra. "That was the hardest job I ever had," he recalls. "We played concerts in parks, at social clubs."\nHere's the more sophisticated man in white jacket and bow tie who performed at smoky Havana nightclubs under world-famous band leaders.\nOne was Afro-Cuban jazz pioneer Chico O'Farrill before he emigrated to the United States in 1948. O'Farrill, a trumpeter who went on to compose big band be-bop for Benny Goodman and Dizzy Gillespie, died in New York two years ago at 79.\n"I learned a lot, really a lot under O'Farrill," Jimenez says.\nThen there was More, known as the Barbarian of Rhythm, who gained fame for his all-black orchestras and rich, velvety voice. He died of liver disease at age 43 in 1963.\nAt that 1956 concert in Venezuela, with 10 minutes left in the performance, More, known for his broad smile and spontaneity, invented a song to fill the remaining time and celebrate his band members.\n"How well you dance!" he sang of one band member.\n"Generoso, how well you play!"\n"It was because of that phrase," Jimenez says with a little smile, "that the world knew there was a musician named Generoso"