“Camina Con Los Codos” – notes by Steve Roitstein

Written by Leslie Cartaya, Roly Rivero and Steve Roitstein, produced by Steve Roitstein

I’ve always loved the phrase “Camina con los codos” to describe a cheap person. I wanted to write a song about that, and I put it together with a beat I’d been working on. The beat was a funky tribute to the great Mambo innovators. I was thinking mostly of Perez Prado, Tito Puente, Machito, and Cachao. Leslie and I wrote the coro and the verse melody, and then left it to Roly to come up with some verse lyrics. Then we adapted those lines to our music.

This song became a great vehicle for Ed Calle’s virtuosity. I’m always amazed at the wide array of incredible melodic and harmonic variety he’s able to generate on a song that basically has one chord!