MONGO SANTAMARIA: Mongo Santamaria, the pioneering Cuban percussionist, who was among the most acclaimed exponents of Latin jazz, died last Saturday at a hospital in the Miami area. His was the 1963 US Top 10 hit Watermelon Man which stands as a precursor of pop crossover in Latin music.
The retired conga player, who was 85, had been on life support after a recent stroke.
"His band was like a school for so many musicians who passed through it," his son Jose "Monguito" Santamaria said .
The elder Santamaria, the Havana-born grandson of a former slave, spent more than a half-century exploring the nexus between the polyrhythmic music of his native country and various forms of American popular music, especially jazz, funk and rhythm and blues.
In a remarkably enduring career, he worked with leading figures from both worlds, including trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, vibraphonist Cal Tjader, and fellow drummers/band leaders Tito Puente and Perez Prado.
Santamaria's bands, which also featured such jazz musicians as Chick Corea and Hubert Laws "were in large part responsible for the gradual absorption of Latin rhythms into black music", states the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.
Although he once admitted to allowing record label pressures to define his repertoire on some of his album scores, Santamaria remained true to the genuine spirit of Afro-Cuban drumming, including its religious roots. His style, studied for its simultaneous power and lyricism, influenced a generation of percussionists.
Born Ramon Santamaria in 1922, he was raised in a poor Havana neighbourhood rich in Afro-Cuban traditions. His mother wanted him to play violin, but the drum held an early allure. He dropped out of school in his teens to become a professional musician, working as a postman by day and playing at the famed Tropicana club at night.
As a member of Havana's Casino de la Playa, he rubbed shoulders with a flamboyant fellow percussionist named Perez Prado, who would soon spark the mambo craze of the 1950s. Santamaria joined Prado's band in Mexico City in the late 1940s, then made the big jump to New York, where he debuted with Prado's band in 1950.
Santamaria settled in the US at a time when jazz and Latin musicians were increasingly joining forces.
He played with the Tito Puente Orchestra during its 1950s heyday, and was featured on Puente in Percussion, an album that is still considered a classic of the genre - with a rhythm section that also featured Willie Bobo and Carlos "Patato" Valdes.
After a falling out with Puente, Santamaria and Bobo moved to California to join a jazz band led by vibraphonist Tjader, who recorded for the Fantasy label. Tjader's legendary percussion section helped spawn the West Coast school of Latin jazz.
In 1958, Santamaria started making his own recordings as a band leader for Fantasy, starting with Yambu and Mongo, later reissued as a two-record set titled Afro Roots. He made a mark from the start with his composition Afro Blue, which became a jazz standard, covered most famously by John Coltrane.
Although Santamaria never had another hit like Watermelon Man (which was written by Herbie Hancock), he enjoyed a resurgence of popularity among Latin fans during the salsa boom of the 1970s, when he recorded under the famed Fania Records umbrella. In 1977, Santamaria's Chango, his 1955 classic of Afro-Cuban ritual drumming, was reissued by Fania on its Vaya label as Drums and Chants.
That same year, he brought the first Grammy to Fania for Dawn, honoured as best Latin recording.
In a sign of his enduring legacy, 14 catalogue albums by Santamaria are still available from Fantasy. Next month, the label plans to release another, Montreux Heat, which features previously unreleased cuts from a 1980 concert, including an extended version of Watermelon Man, featuring Gillespie and Toots Thielemans.
Santamaria's greatest satisfaction, his son said, was knowing that he had nurtured many musicians in his band.
"I'm not a hero," Santamaria told Down Beat magazine in 1999, "but I did my best to make everybody happy." In addition to his son Monguito, Santamaria is survived by five other children, Nancy Anderson, Rosa Santamaria and Felipe Santamaria, all of Miami; Felicia Santamaria of Los Angeles; and Ileana Santamaria of New York; two sisters, Alicia Valdez of Miami and Rosa Mendiola of New York; nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Mongo Santamaria: born 1917; died February 1st, 2003