Tito Puente

Tito Puente (actually: Ernest Anthony Puente Jr., born April 20, 1923 in New York City; † May 31, 2000 ibid ) was an influential jazz, salsa and mambo musician.

Life

Puente was how it colloquially, a Nuyorican, a born New York son of Puerto Rican parents. He grew up in Spanish Harlem - also known as El Barrio - on, a neighborhood in Manhattan, east of the actual center of Harlem.

He was called El Rey del Timbal (Spanish for "King of the Timbales " ) or King of Mambo ( " King of the Mambo " ) and is known both for its Mambo and its Latin American jazz compositions to which he his more than 50 - year career built. He played saxophone, piano, vibraphone, timbales, congas and bongos. Musically Puente Eddie Palmieri comes very close. His original career choice was mambo dancers.

In 1948 he got a recording contract by George Goldner's Tico Records Latin record label. Puente was at the height of his popularity and brought Afro-Cuban and Caribbean music such as Mambo, Son and Cha -Cha -Cha of a large public closer. He later moved to more universal genres, such as pop and bossa nova; Finally, he stayed with a mixture of Afro-Cuban and Latin American jazz, which was called salsa. For his work he received five Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts ( 1997), the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal ( 1999), the " Status" of a Living Legend of the Library of Congress (2000 ), and two honorary doctorates. He died in 2000 in New York City of heart failure. Oye Como Va His play gained great notoriety by Carlos Santana.

In addition, he was an actor in the second half of his life, for example in the 1992 film The Mambo Kings turned cinema. In the 1980s, he appeared several times in the Cosby Show on. In 1995 he also had a guest appearance on the popular animated series The Simpsons ( episode "Who Shot Mr. Burns? ", Part 1 2).

Discography

Puente brought out over 100 albums that have sold millions of copies; these include

• El Rey del Timbal 1949-1951 (1991 )
• Cuando los suenan Tambores (1992 )
• The King of the Cha- Cha Mambo (1995 )
• The Best of Tito Puente (1997)
• Tito Puente - 50 Years of Swing ( 1997)