A legendary bandleader, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and consummate showman, Tito Puente’s skills and flamboyance had been exceeded maybe solely by his longevity. Commencing his profession as a percussionist/timbale soloist and arranger on NYC’s mambo scene, the Spanish Harlem native catapulted to success after forming his personal orchestra in 1948, charming the crowds that swung, stepped, and swooned to his myriad Afro-Cuban rhythms at his pivotal residency at Manhattan’s Palladium ballroom. As one in all Latin music’s Massive Three (alongside his former employer Machito, and rival bandleader Tito Rodriguez) Puente would earn the title “El Rey,” i.e. the King of Latin Jazz, and luxuriate in huge recognition through basic recordings for Tico Data like “Abaniquito,” “Ran Kan Kan,” “Oye Como Va,” and lots of others.
By the early 70s, Puente had continued accumulating accomplishments – collaborating with Cuba’s queen vocalist Celia Cruz, taking part in with the Metropolitan Opera, internet hosting his personal tv program, and being coated by Santana to large notoriety. However his profile was largely eclipsed by the youth motion and progressive All-Stars of Fania Data, who represented the then-new vanguard of Latin music, salsa. El Rey, like different elder bandleaders bristled on the catch-all class as a reductive advertising and marketing time period that oversimplified the complexities of the Afro-Cuban musical heritage he’d popularized. “Salsa is sauce, I play music,” he was fond of claiming contemptuously. Looking for a recording house that revered his nominally purist pursuits, Puente signed with Harmony Data within the early 80s, leading to a rejuvenating and celebrated collection of recordings that might return him to the highlight. Perhaps none had been extra well-received than his third for the label, 1985’s Mambo Diablo, an exemplary mixture of adroitly organized jazz requirements interspersed with TP originals.
Order Tito Puente’s Mambo Diablo on vinyl now.
It’s the best of the latter, the good opening title monitor, that units the album’s tone. Puente lays down a easy however relentlessly catchy thematic line on vibraphone, nimbly leaping octaves and using the groove of his effervescent rhythm part (percussionists Jose Madera and Johnny “Dandy” Rodriguez, bassist Bobby Rodriguez) and piano (Sonny Bravo) earlier than jousting with horns (brass gamers Jimmy Frisaura and Ray Gonzalez, reeds-man Mario Rivera) and finally yielding to Rivera’s hi-octane sax solo. Cooking reinterpretations of Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” and George Shearing’s “Lullaby of Birdland” – each of which function the latter’s composer sitting in as a particular visitor on piano – present dynamic showcases for Puente’s ever-vibrant taking part in on timbales. Elsewhere on the requirements facet, the ensemble transforms Jerome Kern/Dorothy Fields’s “Pick Yourself Up” right into a energetic descarga, and manages the not-so-simple trick of infusing new life into Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,” thanks largely to Tito’s attractive, shimmering vibes and one other dexterous Rivera solo.
The album garnered Puente his third Grammy award, taking house the {hardware} for Greatest Tropical Latin Album and securing a renaissance that elevated him to dwelling establishment standing till his passing in 2000 at age 77. Someplace between being immortalized on a US postage stamp, receiving a presidential award for creative excellence, seeing his life story dramatized in The Mambo Kings, and turning into a New York Puerto Rican icon, he advised the New York Occasions, “I’m finally getting some due… Better now than never.” Mambo Diablo supplies a becoming soundtrack to his profession’s second act.
Order Tito Puente’s Mambo Diablo on vinyl now.
