![]() ![]() In 1962, Puente released “El Rey Bravo,” a descarga, or jam session album that featured his classic “Oye Como Va,” a song that found a huge audience when the rock group Santana recorded it in 1970. Puente routinely sold out the famed Palladium ballroom in New York, and along with Rodriguez and Grillo was one of the undisputed kings of the early 1950s “mambo craze.”īy the early 1960s, the Latin rhythm of choice was called pachanga, and Puente was on top of that too, releasing an album with Cuban singer Rolando La Serie. A single from the session, called “Abaniquito,” became the nation’s first crossover mambo hit, and a superstar was born. In 1949, Puente and his group made their first recordings on Tico Records. While the group was originally called the Picadilly Boys-named after the Puerto Rican meat hash dish picadillo-Puente soon named the group Tito Puente and His Orchestra. It didn’t take long for Puente to realize that he had what it took to be a bandleader.Īround 1948, Puente put together a group of musicians and recorded a few songs for Gabriel Oller’s SMC (Spanish Music Center) label in New York. In the late 1940s, Puente was working as arranger and timbales player with the Pupi Campo Orchestra, and his reputation as a stellar arranger spread throughout New York, prompting even his archrival, Tito Rodriguez, to commission works from him. After the war, he returned to New York and took courses at the Juilliard School while playing in the bands of Jose Curbelo and Fernando Alvarez. Puente was drafted and served three years in the U.S. Puente was a consummate showman, and soon Grillo moved him to the front line of the band, where he enthralled audiences with his style and humor. Grillo persuaded the charismatic Puente to focus his energies on the timbales, a pair of single-headed drums on stands, played by sticks. In 1941, Puente was hired to play with the band led by Frank “Machito” Grillo, one of the first to fuse big-band sounds with Afro-Caribbean rhythms. His professional music career began in 1936, when he was hired as the drummer for the Noro Morales Orchestra. ![]() Puente began taking piano lessons at age 7, and began to study drums and percussion at 10. His nickname came from his mother, who called him Ernestito, which eventually was shortened to Tito. His father was a foreman in a razor-blade factory. at Harlem Hospital in New York on April 23, 1923. Puente was born Ernesto Antonio Puente Jr. As a teacher, he would gather around him all sorts of young people as a bandleader he just embraced his people, and taught them.”Īmong the young people Puente taught and mentored was singer Marc Anthony, who said in a statement that he was devastated by the passing of “my friend, mentor, godfather and inspiration.” “As a teacher, he was just amazingly generous. “The human aspect of Tito Puente is, to me, the most compelling,” said Bermejo. In 1997, President Clinton awarded Puente the National Medal of Arts, two years after Berklee College of Music in Boston awarded him an honorary doctoral degree in music.īerklee associate professor Mili Bermejo, who teaches a Latin music survey course, said Puente was not only a great artist but a dedicated teacher. ![]()
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