Google pays tribute to the musician this 11th October Tito Bridge with an animated Doodle, remembering the day he received the award Awards for the arts and humanities at the White House, United States, in 1997.
Who was Tito Puente?
Ernesto Antonio Puente, better known as Tito Bridge, was not only an American composer and percussionist, but he managed to be one of the most important musical exponents of mambo and Latin American jazz. He has been recognized as “The king of timpani”, “The father of music” or “The king of Latin music”.
In his 60-year career, he has won five Grammy Awards, one of which was awarded at the first Latin Grammy festival, awarded in the category of best album of traditional Caribbean music, for the album “Mambo Birdland”.
He has also collaborated and recorded with great musicians such as Astor Piazzolla, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Ben Webster, Miles Davis, Thad Jones, Count Basie and Duke Ellington, among others.
The story of Tito Puente
Tito Bridge He was born on April 20, 1923 at the Harlem Hospital Center in New York. As a child he was known for his hyperactivity. He was constantly hitting things, like fixtures, buckets or whatever he was in front of. After receiving complaints from neighbors about the scandal he was making at the age of seven, his mother decided to enroll him in piano lessons to entertain him. But at 10 he returned to percussion to follow the example of jazzman Gene Krupa. In 1930 he formed a singing duet with his sister Anna, until he took up the position of drummer of the “Machito” group in wartime.
} After seven years of piano and drums, he began his professional career playing Latin percussion at the age of 15 in a Miami orchestra. At the same time he studied composition and orchestration at the Juillard music school, while remaining active in groups such as “Machito, José Curbelo and Pupi Campo”. Between 1947 and 1949 Tito created his own orchestra: “The Picadilly Boys”, with which he began the Latin jazz subgenre known as “cubpop”.
From there, he has made numerous collaborations with the biggest names in jazz. Later, he reached his highest level integrating genres such as cha cha chá and mambo, and released his best known album in 1958: “Dance Mania”.
In the 1960s, it became part of a new genre: salsa. The euphoria for this rhythm marked a separation from Afro-Cuban styles, which is why his work has focused a lot on dance music. In the 1970s he returned to Latin jazz and appeared at numerous festivals, as well as releasing several albums. One of the themes with which he was recognized was with the collaboration made with the Cuban the she-wolf, in the song “Salve Plena”. His unmistakable performance on timbales made him reach unexpected latitudes, like the time he brought salsa to Japan with “La Orquesta de La Luz”.
One of his best known songs is the one popularized by Carlos Santana “Oye Como Va”. This theme has been reinterpreted by artists ranging from Jalisco’s guitarist to Julio Iglesias and Celia Cruz. This 1963 song was included on the album of the same name and is one of the most successful examples of his ability to timbales which, along with Cuban rhythms, “shouts” to be reinterpreted in various genres. From this he obtained a “musical canonization” which consolidated him as one of the greats of Latin American music.
Tito Puente died on May 31, 2000, in New York, at the age of 77, after a heart operation lasting more than 17 hours. The repertoire of the King of Latin music was reflected in 118 studio albums in which, in addition to salsa, it included Afro-Cuban rhythms, along with the sound of Dominican merengue, Brazilian bossa nova and Cuban cha cha chá.
Source: Clarin
