The Rough Guide To Tito Puente

Over an astonishingly varied career, Tito Puente earned scores of awards including a number of Grammys. This album showcases his incredible musical diversity with mambo, pachanga, boogaloo, salsa and Latin jazz styles. His remarkable solos on vibes and timbales are accompanied by some of his favourite singers, including Santos Colon, Celia Cruz and the wild La Lupe, whose performances were explosions of vocal passion. A Puerto Rican-New Yorker, whose musical soul always lay in Cuba as well as Puerto Rico, this swinging master class is a must for dancers and musicians alike.

'Just when you thought you had all the Tito Puente records you needed, a new collection appears that features tracks buried in hard-to-find corners of your collection. The Rough Guide To Tito Puente captures the unbridled Latin funk Puente recorded in various independent recordings from 1965 to 1985. The 21 tracks, featuring guests from Vicentico Valdés to Celia Cruz, pack high-fidelity tracks of mambo madness into three-minute bursts of Ramones-like intensity.' Newsday, USA