Two decades after their original interview, writer Oliver Wang caught up with Joe Bataan Joe Bataan for a conversation about the singer’s still-unfolding career revival.
BY OLIVER WANG
Since our original cover story about Joe Bataan, twenty years ago, he has stayed on the road for what feels like all that intervening time. Of all the Latin soul contemporaries he started alongside in the 1960s, it’s hard to think of any other figure whose performing career has been anywhere near as bountiful, even now at the age of eighty-three. The “ordinary guy” has enjoyed an extraordinary renaissance, and not just on stage. He was a major focus of Mathew Ramirez Warren’s 2014 documentary, We Like It Like That: The Story of Latin Boogaloo ; he has a forthcoming memoir, Streetology:The Legacy of the Afro-Filipino King of Latin Soul ; and, as he shares below, he’s actively working to reclaim copyright ownership over some of his biggest songs. For this update, we first wound the clock back to howVampi Soul’s 2004 release of Call My Name was a proverbial game-changer for Subway Joe.
Would you say that Call My Name helped to rejuvenate your career?
Joe Bataan : Oh, without a doubt. When I made that deal with [Vampi Soul], I probably never got so many magazine interviews in my career, [there] must have been over four hundred after the release of Call My Name . My career started slowly creeping back. I found out that I was mentioned in all these places around the world. It started opening up the doors, and I’ve been traveling ever since, even to this day. I’m eighty-three now, and I’m probably playing more or making more money now than I ever did. Not that I’m rich, but at least I’m in demand. For me to still be around, it’s a blessing. I’m not the same person I was twenty years ago, but nevertheless, I still have that youthful aggressiveness where I still want to accomplish things.
What do you think explains your enduring appeal to audiences?
When [people] find out [about] my upbringing, and what I went through, it becomes a point of interest because a lot of people can identify with me. I’m that street singer, that guy on the street. I guess I represent a lot of people in different walks of life, and what they went through: the unwed mothers, the uptown songs, the ordinary people, the drugs, if you ever went through the prison system, you name it.
Even now, you perform somewhere between twelve and twenty gigs a year. How do you make that kind of schedule work? I imagine it must be rather exhausting.
I have bands all over the world so it has made it far easier for me to travel to different countries with just me and my wife. I got the Fulanos in Spain, the Bamboos in Australia, the Tokyo All-Stars in Japan, and the Raza All-Stars in California. My wife...she wants to stop [touring]. She says,“We’re getting older.You’re probably going to keep doing this until you drop.” Although I’m not in perfect health, when it comes to time for me to be on that stage, everything is forgotten.All my ailments, my age, you name it. It just comes naturally. I mean, I might be dead tired after I get off but when I’m on that stage, I’m a different person.
You’ve done hundreds of shows over the past twenty years, are there any that really stand out to you?
The Smithsonian [in 2012].Who the heck would have thought that I did anything in my life
( opposite and following spread ) Photos by Sergio Lopez Borja.
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