“Dance Mania” (1958)
Perhaps Puente’s most famous and most listened to album, “Dance Mania” began the shift from mambo to what would become known as salsa by including some tracks identified by their Cuban-derived genres. While the track list is populated with standard mambos, “Cuando te Vea,” is listed as a guaguancó, a Cuban groove quintessential to the future evolution of the salsa sound, with Santos Colón doing an early take on the soneo, or lead vocal improvisation. The album also includes an early appearance from Ray Barretto, who would become one of salsa’s most renowned congueros and bandleaders.
“Oye Como Va” (1962)
At once tracing the roots and routes of Latin music in the 20th century, the song “Oye Como Va,” while not exactly a Puente masterpiece, tells the story of how Afro-Cuban music found its way into the American mainstream. Its opening riffs are based on the Cuban bassist Israel “Cachao” López’s classic “Chanchullo,” and the track is formally a cha-cha-cha that celebrates dance floor flirting. It was famously covered in 1970 by Santana, and the band’s leader, Carlos Santana, was said to have been convinced to do the song by the rock promoter Bill Graham, who had spent much of his youth in the 1950s dancing to mambo at Puente’s Palladium.
La Lupe and Tito Puente, “Tito Puente Swings/The Exciting Lupe Sings” (1965)
While an argument can be made that “El Rey y Yo (The King and I)” from 1967 is the peak of Puente and La Lupe’s collaboration, their album “Tito Puente Swings/The Exciting Lupe Sings” seems more spontaneous while capturing Puente’s peak cha-cha-cha grooves. It also marks Puente’s attempts to reconcile the end of the Palladium era with the emergence of the Cuban/African American R&B hybrid of bugalú.
Tito Puente and Celia Cruz, “Cuba y Puerto Rico” (1966)
As Puente’s working relationship with La Lupe became more contentious, he began to turn to Celia Cruz, another Cuban vocalist who had made her mark as the lead singer of the legendary Sonora Matancera orchestra. Cruz seized the opportunity to become a solo star in her own right, ultimately becoming la Reina de la Salsa (the Queen of Salsa), largely as a result of her magisterial performances with Puente. “La Guarachera,” from the album “Cuba y Puerto Rico,” became one of her signature tracks.
Tito Puente, India and the Count Basie Orchestra, “Jazzin’” (1996)
Toward the end of his career, Puente became a prominent member of the promoter Ralph Mercado’s stable of salsa and merengue acts that proliferated in New York’s Latin club scene. He became El Rey (the King) for young people who were trying to reconnect with their parents’ music by learning to dance at clubs like the 14th Street Palladium and S.O.B.’s. This era included his team-up with La India, a salsa vocalist who began her career singing house music, on “Jazzin’” (which also featured the Count Basie Orchestra); and a collaboration with Marc Anthony that began on a 1991 album Anthony recorded with the Paradise Garage D.J. Little Louie Vega (“When the Night Is Over”), making Puente’s sound a rediscovered staple of the ’90s downtown Latin scene.
Eddie Palmieri and Tito Puente, “Masterpiece” (2000)
Going back to “Puente Goes Jazz” (1956), an underrecognized tour de force that also features Ray Barretto, and “Herman’s Heat & Puente’s Beat,” a 1958 collaboration with Woody Herman, Puente excelled at making records that strongly connected with his first love: jazz. Beginning with “On Broadway” in 1982, Puente embarked on a nine-album relationship with the jazz label Concord Records, doing covers of John Coltrane’s “Afro Blue,” Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” and Bud Powell’s “Un Poco Loco,” among an avalanche of original material that redefined Latin jazz as a genre, particularly through the spirit of underrecognized collaborators like the Dominican saxophonist Mario Rivera. His jazz period reached its peak with his 2000 collaboration with Eddie Palmieri, “Masterpiece.”
