Twist with Xavier Cugat

Twist With Cugat holds great promise, but no real progress is made for Latin, twist, or Latin-twist. It is an album of contrasts, such as the jacket photo of Abbe Lane twisting while a beaming, reflective, pipe-smoking Cugat looks on. The liner notes warn "hold on to your sacroiliac," as if these are the uptempo dance tracks of the future. But they are all dated, non-exotic instrumentals. Someone had played it too safe, not wishing to alienate decades' worth of aging, nostalgic Cugat fans. Side two starts off well with the surefire standards "Chattanooga Choo Choo," "The Hucklebuck," and "Patricia." The last was Perez Prado's smash of the summer of 1958; four years later Prado updated it on his own Latin-twist album.