What's a nice Jewish guy like Harvey Averne -- the Brooklyn-raised son of a Russian immigrant father and a mother of Polish heritage -- doing in a place like this? That place in the late 1960s was swinging Manhattan, which found Averne playing vibes and fronting a hip Latin music band that fused funk, R&B and rock 'n' roll into its mix.
That place now is the Daytona area, particularly Port Orange. After "the bloom fell off the rose" of his music career, Averne says, he became bitter, even agoraphobic. But he found a "Garden of Eden" after moving here in 2004 following a fateful call from a long-ago friend.
And now even Averne's recorded music is experiencing a renaissance.
"Never Learned to Dance: Anthology 1967-71," a 20-track CD, was
released in May on Fania/Universal/Emusica Records.
Having honed his Latin music skills in Catskills resorts as a teen, Averne recorded a handful of critically respected albums from 1967 to '71. All were in a style commonly described as Latin soul, although music historians use such forgotten terms as "boogaloo" and "popcorn music" to name the genre that fuses Latin and funky stuff.
Averne's albums included such songs as the frantic, horn-driven "Never Learned to Dance" and a frisky ditty titled "The Micro Mini." (The latter was inspired, Averne says, by an actual woman who wore that style of ultra-short dress, but who "didn't wear panties. But we couldn't put that in the song.")
So how did a Jewish kid from Brooklyn become hooked on Latin music? For one, Averne's father would come home from his factory job singing songs he had heard from his Puerto Rican co-workers. And, as a teen cleaning pools and playing accordion in a combo at a Catskills resort, Averne heard the hotel's Hispanic dishwasher strumming a guitar and singing in Spanish during his breaks. Averne convinced the resort manager to allow the dishwasher to perform with his band.
Averne became hooked, to the point where he began billing his band as "Arvito and His Latin Orchestra."
"I didn't think it strange because it was the music of the day for a lot of Anglos," the 72-year-old Averne says by phone from his mother's home in Queens, N.Y., where he commutes regularly to look after her. "Every hotel, every resort every beach club had a Latin band."
As a young adult, Averne paid his bills by founding a successful and lucrative home renovation business -- until he encountered a friend of a friend who was starting a Latin music label, Fania Records. He drafted Averne to run the company and record for it.
"I was trying to do this blend of what I'm hearing," Averne says. "From uptown I'm hearing the soul music I love, and I'm involved in the Latin music. How do we blend it? There was no Santana."
The album "Viva Soul" was released by the Harvey Averne Dozen in 1968, although on the Atlantic Records label. With Averne playing vibes and writing or co-writing most of the songs, the album included "The Micro Mini" and other funk-meets-Latin tunes, as well as instrumental covers of the Mamas and the Papas' "Monday Monday" and the Beatles' "The Word." The albums "Harvey Averne Dozen," "Brotherhood" (inspired by Martin Luther King) and "Harvey Averne Barrio Band" followed.
He was married to a model "for seven years, but I would say the marriage lasted for two years -- we were too busy to get rid of each other," Averne says. "I made the decision right off -- music is my lover. Music is my woman. A woman who can't get with the program -- hey, I'll see you later. I told them all that.
"The women kept saying, 'I wish you were cheating with another woman because I know how to deal with that. But I don't know how to deal with the goddess of music.' I heard that more than once."
Ask Averne about one of his highlights from that era, and he says, "The era was the highlight. We were part of a movement and we were making it happen. And we were babies. We were all feeling our way. I went to Woodstock. My latter music reflects that."
His music, he says, integrated "rock 'n' roll and the flower children movement, the Latin movement and the R&B movement that was blossoming with Aretha and stuff. So I'm really getting it three ways. It's a menage a trois, man (laughs). And also the sexual revolution. We could add that to the menage a trois. It was free love at that time, too."
After gladly giving up performing, Averne dove into roles as record company executive and producer, including Grammy-winning work on Latin albums by Eddie Palmieri.
Then, Averne says, "The bloom fell off the rose. Latin music went down. Disco came in. Blah blah blah. I got broken-hearted. I was bitter. I retreated. For a while I was agoraphobic."
Then, about five years ago, Averne got a phone call from Port Orange resident Sam Karchin. Back in the 1950s, Karchin, a bass player and singer, had played occasionally with "Arvito" and his band, and the two had become friends.
Karchin "threw me a life preserver," Averne says. He invited Averne to come down and stay at his Port Orange home. After arriving, Averne began attending the Port Orange YMCA, exercising and getting in shape and making new friends.
Then he received a phone call from Bob Davis, the president of the Hotel and Lodging Association of Volusia County.
"He said, 'Is this the Harvey Averne I know?'" Averne recalls. "I knew Bob back in public school in Brooklyn. I hadn't talked to him for 50 years."
Davis said he "was shocked" to discover his long-lost friend living in town.
"We went to the prom together," Davis says. "We were best friends. Immediately we went to breakfast and reinvented the wheel again."
"It was like the day after I saw him the last time," Averne says. "Now, he's like a brother. He's like my best friend."
For Averne, who now calls this area home, "this Daytona Beach thing is like the Garden of Eden. The back of that house (Karchin's home in Spruce Creek) is like a jungle. I'm meeting old friends. I'm meeting the nicest kind of people. It brought me back to life, bro."
He talks about gleefully giving up his high rise on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
"I'm enjoying living closer to the ground since I went to Daytona," he says. It's clear Averne means that both literally and figuratively.
Having honed his Latin music skills in Catskills resorts as a teen, Averne recorded a handful of critically respected albums from 1967 to '71. All were in a style commonly described as Latin soul, although music historians use such forgotten terms as "boogaloo" and "popcorn music" to name the genre that fuses Latin and funky stuff.
Averne's albums included such songs as the frantic, horn-driven "Never Learned to Dance" and a frisky ditty titled "The Micro Mini." (The latter was inspired, Averne says, by an actual woman who wore that style of ultra-short dress, but who "didn't wear panties. But we couldn't put that in the song.")
So how did a Jewish kid from Brooklyn become hooked on Latin music? For one, Averne's father would come home from his factory job singing songs he had heard from his Puerto Rican co-workers. And, as a teen cleaning pools and playing accordion in a combo at a Catskills resort, Averne heard the hotel's Hispanic dishwasher strumming a guitar and singing in Spanish during his breaks. Averne convinced the resort manager to allow the dishwasher to perform with his band.
Averne became hooked, to the point where he began billing his band as "Arvito and His Latin Orchestra." "I didn't think it strange because it was the music of the day for a lot of Anglos," the 72-year-old Averne says by phone from his mother's home in Queens, N.Y., where he commutes regularly to look after her. "Every hotel, every resort every beach club had a Latin band."
As a young adult, Averne paid his bills by founding a successful and lucrative home renovation business -- until he encountered a friend of a friend who was starting a Latin music label, Fania Records. He drafted Averne to run the company and record for it.
"I was trying to do this blend of what I'm hearing," Averne says. "From uptown I'm hearing the soul music I love, and I'm involved in the Latin music. How do we blend it? There was no Santana."
The album "Viva Soul" was released by the Harvey Averne Dozen in 1968, although on the Atlantic Records label. With Averne playing vibes and writing or co-writing most of the songs, the album included "The Micro Mini" and other funk-meets-Latin tunes, as well as instrumental covers of the Mamas and the Papas' "Monday Monday" and the Beatles' "The Word." The albums "Harvey Averne Dozen," "Brotherhood" (inspired by Martin Luther King) and "Harvey Averne Barrio Band" followed.
He was married to a model "for seven years, but I would say the marriage lasted for two years -- we were too busy to get rid of each other," Averne says. "I made the decision right off -- music is my lover. Music is my woman. A woman who can't get with the program -- hey, I'll see you later. I told them all that.
"The women kept saying, 'I wish you were cheating with another woman because I know how to deal with that. But I don't know how to deal with the goddess of music.' I heard that more than once."
Ask Averne about one of his highlights from that era, and he says, "The era was the highlight. We were part of a movement and we were making it happen. And we were babies. We were all feeling our way. I went to Woodstock. My latter music reflects that."
His music, he says, integrated "rock 'n' roll and the flower children movement, the Latin movement and the R&B movement that was blossoming with Aretha and stuff. So I'm really getting it three ways. It's a menage a trois, man (laughs). And also the sexual revolution. We could add that to the menage a trois. It was free love at that time, too."
After gladly giving up performing, Averne dove into roles as record company executive and producer, including Grammy-winning work on Latin albums by Eddie Palmieri.
Then, Averne says, "The bloom fell off the rose. Latin music went down. Disco came in. Blah blah blah. I got broken-hearted. I was bitter. I retreated. For a while I was agoraphobic."
Then, about five years ago, Averne got a phone call from Port Orange resident Sam Karchin. Back in the 1950s, Karchin, a bass player and singer, had played occasionally with "Arvito" and his band, and the two had become friends.
Karchin "threw me a life preserver," Averne says. He invited Averne to come down and stay at his Port Orange home. After arriving, Averne began attending the Port Orange YMCA, exercising and getting in shape and making new friends.
Then he received a phone call from Bob Davis, the president of the Hotel and Lodging Association of Volusia County.
"He said, 'Is this the Harvey Averne I know?'" Averne recalls. "I knew Bob back in public school in Brooklyn. I hadn't talked to him for 50 years."
Davis said he "was shocked" to discover his long-lost friend living in town.
"We went to the prom together," Davis says. "We were best friends. Immediately we went to breakfast and reinvented the wheel again."
"It was like the day after I saw him the last time," Averne says. "Now, he's like a brother. He's like my best friend."
For Averne, who now calls this area home, "this Daytona Beach thing is like the Garden of Eden. The back of that house (Karchin's home in Spruce Creek) is like a jungle. I'm meeting old friends. I'm meeting the nicest kind of people. It brought me back to life, bro."
He talks about gleefully giving up his high rise on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
"I'm enjoying living closer to the ground since I went to Daytona," he says. It's clear Averne means that both literally and figuratively.
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