Tito Puente slated for five Indonesian concerts

By Paul W. Blair

JAKARTA (JP): Perez Prado? Machito? Tito Rodriguez? Xavier Cugat? Desi Arnaz? Tito Puente, now a super-energetic 72, has outlived them all to become Latin music reigning monarch.

Widely known as El Rey, he has been dubbed King of Salsa, King of the Mambo and King of the Timbales. Along the way, he has recorded well over 100 record albums, won four Grammy Awards and even had his star added to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Now he is in Indonesia with his band to begin a three-nation Southeast Asian tour.

Last night's concert at Hotel Equatorial was the first of five scheduled for Indonesia. Tonight, the group plays at Bandung's Hotel Preanger. On Monday, Aug. 11, the venue is Hotel Santika in Yogyakarta. On Tuesday, Aug. 12, the band appears at the Shangri- La in Surabaya. Their last Indonesian stop is the Taj Mahal in Bali next Wednesday, Aug. 13. Then it is on to the Philippines for two shows and to Singapore for a single concert, on the evening of Sunday, Sept. 17.

Born in New York's Spanish Harlem district, Puente grew up in a Puerto Rican family as Tito, an abbreviation of Ernestito (itself the diminutive of Ernesto, his given name). After a stint in the U.S. Navy, he studied composition and arranging at the Juilliard School of Music and eventually formed an ensemble called The Piccadilly Boys that soon become the Tito Puente Orchestra.

During the 1950s, as various Tito Puente groups helped fuel the national craze for mambos and chachachas, they also served as training schools for many of the sidemen who would go on to become Latin music stars themselves: Mongo Santamaria, Willie Bobo, Charlie Palmieri, Ray Barretto, Johnny Pacheco and others.

At some point in the early 1970s, the word salsa began to be used (first by publicists and disc jockeys, then by the general public) as a general catch-all term for all spicy up-tempo Latin music, no matter what the source or style. Puente is one of many musicians who says he is not entirely comfortable with so broad a category ("When I hear someone talk about hot sauce, man," he told one interviewer, "it just makes me hungry.") but admits he is pleased that Latin music is finally reaching a broader international audience outside the Latin community.

He is, incidentally, still collecting royalty checks for the version of his tune Oye Como Va recorded by Carlos Santana back in 1970.

By dint of his outgoing nature, Puente has become a familiar face and personality even outside of music. He had a featured role in the movie The Mambo Kings and he is one television talk- show guest who can always be counted on to come up with lively anecdotes with little prompting. His current publicity photo, instead of showing him playing an instrument, merely depicts him in a pose not unlike that of a stage magician preparing to dazzle an audience.

Puente has always been best known for his exciting improvisation on the paired bottomless drums called timbales, from which he leads the band. Yet his work on vibraphone is equally important to his group's trademark sound. Though he is not a virtuoso vibes soloist who aims to impress listeners with speed, his playing always adds color and excitement to those band arrangements which include it.

Some of his best playing ever is currently available, even in Indonesia, on a series of albums recorded by the group he calls his Latin Jazz All-Stars for the Concord Picante label. Even with just six horns (half the number in the typical jazz big band) the ensemble playing is always rich and full, a tribute to the imaginative arrangements throughout. What's more, Puente's current group is full of soloists who bristle with good ideas.

In addition to originals, composed by himself and others in the band, he is making it a point to adapt tunes from the standard repertoire by other jazz musicians, among them Charlie Parker, Charlie Mingus, Horace Silver, Benny, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. The 1993 CD called Royal T even includes a revitalized version of Stompin' at the Savoy, a reminder of Puente's own long-running success at New York's famous Palladium dance hall. One of the catchiest tracks on the 1994 CD called Master Timbalero is his transformation of the old Japanese song Sakura Sakura into a slinky bit of business called Cherry Blossom Bossa Nova.

"Sometimes jazz can be boring," he told DownBeat magazine in 1991. "But I like to give it a new twist. Latin music can be boring, too, because the harmony tends to be nothing but dominant and tonic. But you take an exciting progressive melodic line, then combine it with rhythms that grab you -- like Dizzy Gillespie did years ago with the conga drummer Chano Pozo on Manteca (I think this is a song) -- that's the marriage we're after. And you've got to know about jazz to play these things."

No matter where in the world he performs it these days, Puente's music is, to use the familiar clich, very New York: at once exuberant and precise, always stylish and never without a pronounced strut, even on the slowest and most languorous tunes. Moreover, because the pulse is ever-present, virtually every number is one that can easily be danced to.

With Tito Puente on his current Asian swing is a ten-member ensemble that includes several of the top-flight musicians who have been featured on his most recent Concord Picante albums: trumpeter Ray Vega, saxophonists Bobby Percelli and Mario Rivera (an excellent jazz soloist on piccolo, by the way), pianist Sonny Bravo, bassist Bobby Rodriguez, conga drummer Jose Madera and bongo player Johnny Rodriguez. Also onstage will be singer Yolanda Duke.

Bill Saragih, Indonesia's own multi-threat jazzman (piano/vibes/flute/saxophone/ vocals), has been recruited as MC for the group's Indonesian appearances and will no doubt add considerably to the merriment. The promoter also guarantees that dancing space will be available for those who feel compelled to move their bodies to the beat.