Mambos, cha chas, son montunos, pachangas, Latin jazz… Tito Puente played all of those, and he apparently never liked the catch-all term “salsa” (and he stayed out of Fania Records’ orbit, for the most part). And he has a point – each of the sub-genres and rhythms (and there are many more than those listed here) have their own backstory and sensibility….
Nevertheless, nobody is going to say you are wrong for associating Puente with “salsa.” He had a bunch of collaborations with Celia Cruz, whose name is practically synonymous with it. But they were of the generation – like the Palmieri brothers, or Joe Cuba, or countless others – who were the godfathers (and mothers) of that genre. The elder statesmen (and women), if you will. This collection features some famous tunes: a version of the Mario Bauzá tune Mambo Inn, Babarabatiri (a less famous rendition here than the one he recorded with Celia), and a good number of Puente originals, including the iconic Oye Como Va! There is a version of the bossa nova staple, Recado, which is really a samba first made famous in a recording by the iconic Maysa. The sound of my Tico LP isn’t audiophile quality, but most of the CD pressings of material from this era suffer from awful noise reduction filters and other foibles, so hopefully this will be a pleasant listen for you, warts and all!
A1 – Ran Kan Kan (03:08)
A– Mambo Inn(02:30)
A3– Recado (02:24)
A4 – Africa Habla [i](02:46)
A5 – Chino [i](02:27)
A6 – A Bailar Pachanga [i](02:15)
B1 – Caramelos [i](02:00)
B2 – Kwa-Kwa [i](02:20)
B3 – Azukiki [i](02:44)
B4 – Oye Como Va [i](04:26)
B5[ – Babarabatiri [i](03:41)
B6 – Pa Borinquen [i](03:13)
Total length: 33:54
DIG THAT CRAZY SOUND, MAN!
LINEAGE: Tico (TRLP-1109) vinyl; Pro-Ject RM-5SE with Audio Tecnica Signet TK7E cartridge; Speedbox power supply; Creek Audio OBH-15; Audioquest Black Mamba and Pangea Premier interconnect cables; M-Audio Audiophile 192 Soundcard ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 192khz; ClickRepair stereo->mono, output monitored manually; furtherclicks and pops removed manually with Adobe Audition 3.0; dithered and resampled using iZotope RX Advanced. Converted to FLAC in either Trader’s Little Helper or dBPoweramp. Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename.
Thank you Dr V! I look forward to hearing this “warts and all”.
Thanks for sharing. Listening to celebrate 100 years of Tito Puente!