TITO PUENTE - El Rey (Salsa) Picante Records 12" Vinyl LP Album

- Tito Puente – El Rey (1984): Live at the Great American Music Hall

Tito Puente’s “El Rey”: A Pulsebeat of Latin Jazz in the American Soundscape Album Description:

In the spring of 1984, inside the hallowed walls of San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall, a storm of rhythm, brass, and nostalgia erupted under the baton of Tito Puente. The album “El Rey”—meaning “The King”—isn’t just a live recording; it’s a proclamation. An uncompromising celebration of Latin jazz, it offers a snapshot of a musical form that’s as American as it is Afro-Caribbean, as improvisational as it is militant in its danceability.

The Rhythms of Resistance

Emerging in an era where salsa and Latin jazz had been carved into the urban consciousness of cities like New York and San Juan, “El Rey” represents the genre's return to unapologetic roots. This was not the overly-polished, crossover-obsessed Latin pop of the late '70s. This was mambo with muscles, cha-cha with teeth. Puente, often cast as a cultural diplomat, here allows the timbales to speak in a primal tongue, backed by a battalion of percussionists who play not behind him but beside him.

Jazz at a Crossroads

By 1984, jazz was splintering. Fusion had cooled. Traditionalists and progressives were at odds. “El Rey” doesn’t take sides—it declares independence. The tracklist is a tour through jazz’s immigrant soul: from the standards like “Autumn Leaves” and “Equinox” to Afro-Cuban stormers like “Ran Kan Kan”. In the middle of it all is Puente, both maestro and provocateur, taking the bones of the American songbook and wrapping them in conga skin.

The Band as Battalion

The lineup reads like a fantasy draft of Latin jazz warriors. Francisco Aguabella on congas delivers heartbeat rhythms forged in Yoruba ritual. Jorge Dalto lays down piano lines that flirt with bebop but answer to clave. There’s Mario Rivera on flute, Ray Gonzales on trumpet—musicians who weren’t just accompanying Puente but conversing with him. The solos explode not because they chase complexity, but because they surge with purpose.

Oye Como Va – The Ripple Effect

A highlight of the album is “Oye Como Va”, not simply as a tune but as an artifact. Originally recorded by Puente in 1963, the song was famously reimagined by Carlos Santana in 1970—an electrified version that brought the rhythm to Woodstock and beyond. But on “El Rey”, the song returns home. Gone are the fuzz pedals and organ swells. What remains is rhythm and chant, stripped to essence. In this performance, we’re reminded that Santana didn’t create the vibe—he borrowed it from Puente.

Influence or Appropriation?

That borrowing brings us to the album’s cultural friction. Puente was always gracious about Santana’s cover, but the undertones of ownership and origin run through any serious listen of “El Rey.” This album reasserts authorship. At a time when Latin music’s textures were being lifted into other genres without always being credited, Puente offers a reminder: this sound has lineage, has names, has meaning. And it was born not in a boardroom, but in barrios and ballrooms.

Echoes in Modern Music

You don’t have to squint too hard to find “El Rey” in today’s grooves. Listen to Marc Anthony’s precision phrasing, Ozomatli’s percussive urgency, or even Thundercat’s jazz-infused basslines, and you’ll hear ripples from Puente’s tide. And while the album may not be the most commercially known in his catalog, it stands as one of his most musically assertive—a field manual for percussionists, arrangers, and anyone who ever dared to put swing into syncopation.

Tito Puente's Influence on Modern Latin Jazz

Few artists have shaped the evolution of Latin jazz as profoundly as Tito Puente. Revered as "El Rey" (The King), Puente transcended genres and generations, bringing Afro-Cuban rhythms into the mainstream and earning a place among the 20th century's most influential musicians. From his explosive timbales playing to his groundbreaking collaborations with iconic vocalists, Puente's contributions to modern Latin jazz continue to resonate around the world.

Master of the Timbales and Mambo

Tito Puente is widely credited with elevating the timbales—a pair of shallow, metal-framed drums traditionally used in Cuban dance music—to the forefront of the stage. Prior to Puente, these percussion instruments were largely confined to rhythm sections. His flamboyant solos, intricate syncopations, and charismatic stage presence turned the timbales into a lead instrument and a visual spectacle. Through albums like "Dance Mania" and live performances filled with mambo rhythms, Puente brought this energetic style to global audiences and helped define the golden era of mambo in the 1950s and 60s.

Legendary Collaborations: Celia Cruz and La Lupe

Beyond his instrumental brilliance, Puente's influence extended through his work with some of Latin music's most powerful voices. His long-standing collaboration with Celia Cruz, the undisputed Queen of Salsa, resulted in timeless recordings that fused jazz harmonies with Afro-Cuban rhythms. Their synergy electrified audiences and expanded the reach of Latin jazz beyond its traditional base.

Puente also teamed up with La Lupe (Guadalupe Victoria Yoli Raymond), an iconoclastic and emotionally raw vocalist known for her dramatic stage persona. Together, they recorded several fiery albums, including “Homenaje a Rafael Hernández”, showcasing a more experimental and theatrical dimension of Latin jazz. These collaborations pushed the genre's boundaries and brought female artistry to the forefront in a male-dominated scene.

Crossing into Jazz and Pop Culture

Puente's career spanned over five decades, during which he deftly navigated changes in musical taste and industry trends. In the 1970s and 80s, as Latin jazz fused with funk and soul, Puente adapted without losing his roots. He performed with jazz greats like George Shearing, and even appeared in pop culture touchstones such as The Cosby Show and the film The Mambo Kings. His music became a bridge between Latin traditions and American jazz idioms, winning over audiences unfamiliar with Afro-Cuban rhythms.

One of his signature compositions, “Oye Como Va”, gained iconic status when it was covered by Carlos Santana in 1970. While Santana’s version infused the song with psychedelic rock, Puente’s original salsa-jazz arrangement laid the foundation for its worldwide success—an enduring example of Latin music’s crossover appeal.

A Legacy That Endures

Tito Puente's influence is etched not only in vinyl grooves but also in music history. He received multiple Grammy Awards, released over 100 albums, and mentored generations of Latin jazz artists. Today, his legacy lives on in concert halls, dance clubs, and university curricula around the world. More than a bandleader, Puente was a cultural ambassador who opened the doors of Latin jazz to the global stage—one electrifying timbales solo at a time.

Liner notes:

Hispanics are In. And so is their music, and their music-makers.

The ladies are swooning all over handsome Julio Iglesias, who is merely the most popular singer in the world right now after Michael Jackson. And the young set is throbbing to the sounds of Menudo, which is merely the most successful rock band in the world after you-know-who. Well, this new craze named the Latin Invasion (as Jelly Roll Morton once called it) was inevitable, given the burgeoning Hispanic population (in the United States it's currently estimated at 16 per cent).

Whoever the Great Pretenders currently are, the man who is truly “El Rey” of the Latino world is the great Tito Puente, the renowned multi-instrumentalist. All hail to the King!

Tito Puente has been melding Latin rhythms and jazz sonorities for more than three decades, and making the world a happier place for millions of music lovers in the process. And to think that it was all accidental! He had intended to become a dancer, but a kind of reverse bicycle accident redirected him into music. Tito (he was born Ernest Puente Jr. on April 20, 1923, in New York City’s Harlem Hospital) became a composer, arranger, pianist, vibraphonist, percussionist and band leader.

In the Navy during World War II, he met bandleader Charlie Spivak aboard the USS Santae, an aircraft carrier, in the Pacific. Spivak was one of the talented men who tutored Puente in composing and arranging for big bands. And on his discharge in 1945, Puente headed home determined to lead a band. He studied at the Juilliard School in New York and joined an orchestra headed by Machito, the great Latin bandleader who then signed on with Pupi Campo's band. Venturing out on his own, he organized the Picadilly Boys in 1948, a strong Latin jazz combo that became the Tito Puente Orchestra. The rest is history, as music historians like to say.

Puente’s great contribution was to fuse the rhythmic roots of bebop and Latin into the enduring form it has become. Both emerging during the late ’40s out of America’s urban ghettos, jazz and salsa were a unique fusion, and whether you call it Latin jazz, salsa, or whatever, it energized both forms—it sounded and worked and worked wonderfully.

One of my colleagues—Edward Jarlim, a New York Daily News editor who was an avid young jazz enthusiast in the years after the bebop revolution—recalls that people like critic Marshall Stearns began paying a great deal of attention to the exciting sounds of Puente and Perez Prado in the early ’50s.

Something happened because in subsequent months and years these prodigious musical founding fathers, Dizzy Gillespie and Woody Herman, could be heard on records and in clubs borrowing some of the components of El Rey’s music. And, of course, like all geniuses El Rey borrowed his share from them and could himself be heard playing the music of the pioneers.

Which brings me to this latest offering, a live date recorded at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Concord President Carl Jefferson had the insight to record it live because I think El Rey’s style of music should always be live since the music is always fiery and highly combustible. I like it also because of the call and response between his superb lot of musicians and the audience, both of whom seemed to have given hugely of themselves.

As Carl pointed out, everyone thinks of Tito as the great timbalero, “Ran Kan Kan” and “El Rey Del Timbal,” etc. Concord wanted to demonstrate his ability to play vibes. The label was right. The cuts “Rainfall,” “Autumn Leaves” and the medley “Stella by Starlight” (my favorite song in the world) and “Delirio” are delightful.

Commercial radio stations will, of course, love “Oye Como Va” (Listen to How It Goes) as staple in salsa circles and “Linda Chicana,” a choreo gem. But my favorites are the thoughtful and provocative John Coltrane tunes, “Giant Steps” and “Equinox,” which has the kind of lyrical quality and burning intensity that give jazz and Latin their natural linkage.

Jazz and Latin aficionados tend to be snobs because they know how powerful their respective musics are. I wish they might put down Iglesias and Menudo. They shouldn’t because anything that focuses attention on the genius of El Rey can only be a plus.

Hugh Wyatt
Music Columnist/Critic
New York Daily News