One of Chick’s greatest masterpieces is ‘Armando’s Rhumba’.
As the name suggests, the song has the style and the structure of a cuban rhumba. The theme and the solos have the same chord structure:
| C- | D7 | G7 | C- | C- | D7 | G7 | C- | C7b9 | F-7 | D7b9/F# | G-7 | Abo7 | Ao7 | Eb/Bb | Eb/Bb | Ab-7/Bb | G7 Eb | G+7|
The song is quite fast, and, while playing it, one should consider the fact that he must take his time to keep up with the continuous changes of chords.
This song was first released in 1976, in the album ‘My Spanish Heart’.
Apart from the original version, there are many I like a lot to listen to.
One of them is Chick’s version with the famous American jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton, famous for his 4-mallet technique he uses instead of the standard 2-mallet one. It’s just a duet version, and it’s incredible, there are a lot of interesting choruses to transcribe.
Also, I like this kind of slower version Chick Corea plays with ‘The Spanish Heart Band’. He performed this version in the 2020 GRAMMY awards.
Finally, I like this live version by Iiro Rantala, Michael Wollny and Leszek Mozdzer. They only play piano/keyboards in this take, which is very uncommon for this kind of pieces.