Joe Bataan is a Latin soul musician from New York.
Early life and career
Joe Bataan was born Bataan Nitollano and grew up in the 103rd St. and Lexington Ave. part of East Harlem where he briefly led the Dragons, a local Puerto Ricanstreet gang, before being sent to the Coxsackie Correctional Facility to serve time for a stolen car charge. His father was Filipino and his mother was African American. Upon his release in 1965, he turned his attention to music and formed his first band, Joe Bataan and the Latin Swingers. Bataan was influenced by two musical styles: the Latin boogaloo and African American doo-wop. Though Bataan was neither the first nor only artist to combine doo-wop-style singing with Latin rhythms, his talent for it drew the attention of Fania Records. After signing with them in 1966, Bataan released Gypsy Woman in 1967.. He would, in full, release eight original titles for Fania which included the gold-selling Riot!. These albums often mixed energetic Latin dance songs, sung in Spanish, with slower, English-language soul ballads sung by Bataan himself. As a vocalist, Bataan's fame in the Latin music scene at the time was only rivaled by Ralfi Pagan. Disagreements over money with Fania Records head Jerry Masucci led Bataan to eventually leave the label. While still signed to Fania however, Bataan secretly started Ghetto Records, a Latin music label which got its initial funding from a local gangster, George Febo. Bataan produced several albums for other artists, including Papo Felix, Paul Ortiz and Eddie Lebron. In 1973, he helped coin the phrase "salsoul", lending its name to his first post-Fania album. Along with the Cayre brothers, Kenneth, Stanley, and Joseph, he co-founded the Salsoul label, though later sold out his interest. He recorded three albums for Salsoul and several singles, including "Rap-O Clap-O" from 1979 which became an early hip hop hit. After his 1981 album, Bataan II, he retired from music-making to spend more time with his family and ended up working as a youth counselor in one of the reformatories he himself had spent time in as a teenager. In 2005, Bataan teamed up with producer Daniel Collás to break his long hiatus with the release of Call My Name, a well-received album recorded in New York for Spain's Vampisoul label. Bataan is also the father ofAsia Nitollano, winner of . In the 2006 video game, Driver Parallel Lines, Joe Bataan's song "Subway Joe" was included in the soundtrack. In early 2009, Bataan was featured in the Kenzo Digital-produced "beat cinematic" . Bataan was featured as the narrator of the story, playing the part of an older Nas reflecting upon his youth in the street with cohorts Jay-Z, Ghostface Killah, Biggie and Raekwon. In 2013, Bataan received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York chapter of the Filipino American National Historical Society. In 2016, Bataan performed at the FANHS National Conference in New York- where 500 conference attendees danced to his music while cruising the Hudson River on the Hornblower Infinity. , the FGO, the Summer Stage in New York and the Théatre de la Mer of Fiest'a Sète. In 2015, Bataan featured on vocal on Alex Puddu's album "Soul Tiger" on three songs "The Mover,Love Talk and 50'000 women can't be wrong" The last two songs were written by Puddu/Bataan and released by schema records In 2017, Bataan collaborated with Spanglish Fly, the boogaloo revival group based in New York City, to record "New York Rules," written by Manuel Garcia-Orozco and Jonathan Goldman, released on the band's Ay Que Boogaloo!. Singing lead vocals, Bataan includes references to his famous songs "Subway Joe" and "Rap-o Clap-o." The Huffington Post calls this recording "charming, spellbinding and irresistible." A remix of the song is included on the soundtrack to She's Gotta Have It, written and directed by Spike Lee.
