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His dancing career cut short by an ankle injury, Puente turned instead to music, rocketing to fame in the 1950s during the "Mambo" craze. His unique jazz style influenced such superstars as Carlos Santana, and he played himself in the 1992 movie Mambo Kings. He also played for Presidents Carter, Reagan and Bush, and Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts in 1997. He won five Grammys for his more-than-100 albums. Ernest Anthony "Tito" Puente Jr died May 31 from heart problems. He was 77. From This is True for 28 May 2000 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: César Miguel Rondón List Price: $20.00 Amazon Price: $18.00 Editorial Review: Salsa is one of the most popular types of music listened to and danced to in the United States. Until now, the single comprehensive history of the music—and the industry that grew up around it, including musicians, performances, styles, movements, and production--was available only in Spanish. This lively translation provides for English-reading and music-loving fans the chance to enjoy C©sar Miguel Rond³n's celebrated El libro de la salsa. Rond³n tells the engaging story of salsa's roots in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela, and of its emergence and development in the 1960s as a distinct musical movement in New York. Rond³n presents salsa as a truly pan-Caribbean phenomenon, emerging in the migrations and interactions, the celebrations and conflicts that marked the region. Although salsa is rooted in urban culture, Rond³n explains, it is also a commercial product produced and shaped by professional musicians, record producers, and the music industry. For this first English-language edition, Rond³n has added a new chapter to bring the story of salsa up to the present.  By: Jim PayneTito Puente List Price: $22.95 Amazon Price: $20.65 Editorial Review: Book Description Biography of the legendary Tito Puente and a brief history of Afro-Cuban/salsa music that he popularized throughout the world. A 45 minute DVD includes Tito discussing his incredible 50-year career as a band leader and the influence of other musicians from Cachao to Celia Cruz to Santana had on him. It also features Tito soloing on his legendary gold timbales. The book includes a discography and 50 archival photos.  By: Steven Loza List Price: $28.95 Amazon Price: $26.05 Editorial Review: He is known as 'El Rey' - the king - and has come to epitomize the Latin experience in music, not just to Latinos throughout the United States and Latin America but to a worldwide audience of all backgrounds. "Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music" is the first in-depth historical, musical, and cultural look at the career and the influence of this giant of Latin music. In this seminal work, Steven Loza brings the man and his music vividly to life through exclusive interviews with Puente and a number of his close associates, including Hilton Ruiz, Ray Santos, Jerry Gonzlez, Poncho Sanchez, and Joe Conzo, as well as music journalist Max Salazar and former DJ/producer Chico Sesma. Loza shows how Puente's music evolved in tandem with the crystallization of Latin music into its current compelling mix of Afro-Cuban music, salsa, and Latin jazz.Tracing Puente's innovations as a drummer and a bandleader, Loza defines his influence over the course of half a century on Latin music as well as on other musicians and musical genres. Loza also delineates the social and cultural history of Latin music, exploring questions of nationalism and ethnic expression, the play between musical creation and commercial competition, and the politics of so-called multiculturalism as they bear on Latin music and musicians. The book includes detailed musical analyses and a discography of more than a hundred recordings. Celebrating a dynamic performer and a genre that is deeply rooted in America's rich ethnic diversity, "Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music" traces a significant current in twentieth-century culture and reveals all the vibrancy and color of a consummate artist's life, work, and world. Tito Puente (Hispanic-American Biographies) By: Mary Olmstead List Price: $9.99 Amazon Price: $9.99  By: Josephine Powell List Price: $19.95 Amazon Price: $19.95 Editorial Review: Ernesto "Tito" Puente born in 1923 in Spanish Harlem is a tale about an impoverished Puerto Rican boy who grew up with the advent of radio and American swing bands. At age ten he aspired to be a dancer: another Fred Astaire. An ankle injury gave him the opportunity to explore his talent as a musician. At fourteen he won the coveted Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa drum contest. Tito became a master percussionist. His instrument was the timbales, a pair of cylindrical drums beat upon with sticks. When he joined the dynamic Machito Orchestra at seventeen he saw a spiraling future until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941 took him off to war. With the smell of kamikaze deaths, battle smoke, and torpedoes flying he sounded taps for the dead in the morning while he led a makeshift orchestra delivering lovable American wartime tunes in the afternoon. He returned home wounded, weary and jobless. Puente's tale should have been the story of every returning American GI, who went off to war, came home to his sweetheart, attended school on the GI Bill, raised a family and settled down in a white cottage. Things were not that way. After the war his obsession for Cuban music drove him to Havana. He attended secret meetings of Santería, an Afro-Cuban religious cult with its roots steeped in mysticism often times referred to as black magic. With the lure of the sacred batá drum he discovered a world of rhythms never heard by a white mans ear. He found himself inside the beat, and thoroughly possessed. Soon Tito became a devotee of Santería and used those drum patterns and calls, which were the mainstay and backbone of his music. Today this hot hypnotic music is known worldwide as salsa. |
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