Bandleader Tito Puente Dies 

 By DIEGO IBARGUEN, Associated Press Writer  

 NEW YORK (AP) - Bandleader and percussionist Tito Puente, who rode to fame on the heels of the 1950s mambo craze and 
 for the next five decades helped define Latin jazz, died today. He was 77.  

 Puente, who was recently treated for a heart problem, died at NYU Medical Center in New York, said his agent, Eddie 
 Rodriguez.  

 Puente recorded more than 100 albums in his more than 60 years in the business. He won his fifth Grammy in February for best 
 traditional tropical Latin performance for ``Mambo Birdland'' and has been nominated for the award 10 times.  

 Puente brought the timbales, a pair of single-headed drums mounted on stands and played with sticks, from behind the band to 
 the front of the bandstand and played standing up.  

 ``In front of a bandstand you've got to be a showman,'' Puente says. ``Once, I was strictly a musician with a long face and back 
 to the audience. Now I'm a showman, selling what I'm doing, giving the people good vibes.''  

 He also loved playing vibraphone. ``I have a nice following of people who love my vibe playing,'' he said.  

 Puente joked that he profited off the talent of Santana, whose early hits include Puente's ``Oye Como Va.''  

 ``Every time he plays 'Oye Como Va,' I get a nice royalty check,'' Puente said.  

 ``The excitement of the rhythms and the beat make people happy,'' he said in a 1997 Associated Press interview. ``We try to get 
 our feelings to the people, so they enjoy it.  

 ``It is not music for a funeral parlor.''  

 That year, RMM Records released a three-CD, 50-song compilation from Puente's recorded output through 50 years. It's titled 
 ''50 Years of Swing.'' The first cut, ``Que No, Que No,'' is from his ``El Rey del Mambo'' (``The King of the Mambo'') recording 
 of 1946.  

 One of his most successful albums of the '50s was ``Puente Goes Jazz.''  

 ``Some jazz bands, like Kenton's, had added Latin rhythms,'' Puente told an interviewer in 1957. ``It sounded good to me. So I 
 figured I might as well do the same thing, in reverse. I start off writing a straight jazz arrangement, then I just add a Latin rhythm 
 section.''  

 ``It's the same reason kids like rock 'n' roll. It has the beat. I think bop, which neglected rhythm and neglected dancers, did a lot 
 to kill big bands.''  

 The eldest son of Puerto Rican parents, Puente was born Ernest Anthony Puente Jr. in New York City on April 20, 1923. (Some 
 references give other years.)  

 His father, Ernest Sr., was a foreman in a razor-blade factory. His mother called her son Ernestito, Little Ernest, then shortened 
 the name to Tito.  

 It was his mother who first discerned his musical talent and enrolled him in a piano class when he was 7. Puente studied drums 
 for years before switching to timbales. He studied conducting, orchestration and theory at the Juilliard School from 1945 to '47 on 
 the GI Bill.  

 Puente had been released from a San Juan, Puerto Rico, hospital May 2 after two days of treatment for an irregular heartbeat. 
 Puente canceled all his events in May, including three concerts planned with the Symphonic Orchestra of Puerto Rico.  

 ``I play in jazz festivals all over the world,'' he said in 1997. ``Next year I'm going to China and Russia. Our Latin sounds are 
 really spreading out.  

 ``As long as I have my health, I'll continue to work as long as I can,'' he said. ``I may have to slow down next year a little, get to 
 the semiretirement stage. But there are a couple of things I want to do first.'' 

          By JOYCE WADLER 
 

               Time, which Tito Puente 
               could make throb, pulsate, 
               swivel, shake and finally, 
          in the pounding rhythms of 
          mambo, cross over from El 
          Barrio in Harlem to the 
          Palladium to the airwaves of 
          America, caught up with the 
          legendary band leader and 
          percussionist late Wednesday 
          night, when he died at the age of 
          77.  

          He suffered complications after 
          open heart surgery at New York 
          University Medical Center, his 
          manager, Eddie Rodriguez, said.  

          The man popularly known as El 
          Rey, The King, who put mambo 
          on the map -- and who came to 
          be nearly as much a symbol of 
          New York City as Yankee 
          Stadium -- had been scheduled 
          to perform at a benefit 
          Wednesday evening at Christie's 
          Auction House.  

          When it became apparent to Mr. 
          Puente, who had become ill 
          while performing in San Juan 
          with the Puerto Rican 
          Symphony last week, that he 
          would be unable to go on, he 
          gave the order that his band be 
          there.  

          Why was it so important for Mr. 
          Puente, with his five Grammys 
          and 118 records and CD's, that 
          one little show go on?  

          "Tito was always a band leader, 
          the last of the real, true band 
          leaders, in the line of Duke Ellington and Count Basie," said Mr. Rodriguez, 
          who had spoken to Mr. Puente Monday before he entered the hospital. 
          "He felt responsible. He said, 'Keep the boys working.' That's what he 
          always said, 'Keep the boys working. Because I want to have my band 
          when I get out; I want it to be tight.' "  

          The most important Latin musician of the last half century and a key figure 
          in the fusion of Latin music with jazz, Mr. Puente, with his distinctive 
          cherubic mug, was an ebullient and wild performer who often clowned and 
          laughed as he whapped away on his timbales.  

          "What else have I got to sell?" he said a few months ago when asked 
          about this style. "I'm not Ricky Martin, to wave my hips around and show 
          my belly button. I don't have a girl in front of the band singing. I need the 
          people to see I'm having a good time."  

          Known to the youngest of his fans as the man who wrote Carlos Santana's 
          hit "Oye Como Va," or perhaps from the 1992 movie "The Mambo Kings," 
          in which he played himself, Mr. Puente had a career that spanned five 
          decades.  

          There were few jazz stars from the bebop era and beyond who did not find 
          him a compatible playing companion, and he was a staple of the old Salsa 
          Meets Jazz series at the Village Gate nightclub in Manhattan.  

          While many jazz groups added jazz sounds to Latin rhythms, Mr. Puente 
          liked to add a Latin rhythm section to a straight jazz arrangement. A fine 
          showman, he was not beyond gimmicks like recording Dave Brubeck's 
          "Take Five" in four-four time. He was also tireless; even in recent years he 
          worked 200 to 300 performances a year.  

          But it was Mr. Puente's impact at the beginning of his career, bringing 
          Latin music to a new audience at the Palladium on Broadway at 53rd 
          Street, that made many grow nostalgic and teary at the news of his death 
          yesterday.  

          "He gave us all a life," said Robert Farris Thompson, a professor at Yale 
          University, where Mr. Puente had been awarded a Chubb Fellowship this 
          year. "And by us I mean not only Puerto Ricans, but mainland blacks, huge 
          numbers of Italians and Jews. We all loved him. There were guys my age 
          who were envious they weren't at the Moulin Rouge in the days of 
          Toulouse-Lautrec; who weren't at Minton's in the days of the birth of bop. 
          I was secure in the knowledge that I had been there on the birth of New 
          York mambo."  

          A musician who often said that he was "born in rhythm," Ernest Anthony 
          Puente was born on April 20, 1923, at Harlem Hospital and grew up on 
          110th Steet, off Madison, in the neighborhood then known as Spanish 
          Harlem, or the Barrio.  

          Both his parents were immigrants from Puerto Rico; his father worked in a 
          razor blade factory; there was a younger sister and a younger brother. Life 
          was not easy: Tito's father, Mr. Puente said in an interview in The New 
          York Times last April, was a gambler. His brother died at 4 in a fall from 
          the fire escape.  

          The young Tito was a drummer from the time he could remember, 
          drumming so loudly and so often, on the kitchen table, with pots and pans, 
          that the neighbors beseeched his mother to get her son music lessons. She 
          did, though to get the 25 cents a lesson she needed she had to go through 
          her husband's pockets for money when he was asleep.  

          Tito studied piano, then drums, then timbales -- a rack-mounted setup of 
          drums, cowbell, woodblock and other percussion instruments, which 
          provide crisp upper-register rhythms for Latin bands. He also toyed with 
          the idea of becoming a dancer, performing in the neighborhood with his 
          sister, Anna. The girls, Mr. Puente admitted in an interview in the autumn 
          of his years, were "nuts" about him.  

          But the music took precedence. Tito's big break came in the 40's, when the 
          United Stated entered World War II. The drummer from the Machito 
          Orchestra, one of the first bands to fuse jazz and Latin music, was drafted, 
          and Tito took his place. A few years later, Tito dropped out of Central 
          Commercial High in Manhattan; the band, he would say years later, would 
          provide schooling.  

          Mr. Puente served in the Navy during World War II. His was not an 
          uneventful war; he served in nine battles, later receiving a presidential 
          commendation.  

          He also suffered a personal loss: his sister died.  

          His music education, however, continued. Mr. Puente met the jazz 
          trumpeter Charlie Spivak on the aircraft carrier Santee, and Mr. Spivak 
          taught him jazz arranging.  

          After the war Mr. Puente studied at the Juilliard School of Music under the 
          G.I. Bill. But the school's emphasis on classical music made him restless. 
          In 1948 he started his own band, the Piccadilly Boys. Later, saying he did 
          not want a band whose name could be confused with something on the 
          menu (picadillo is a meat and potato hash), he changed the name to the 
          Tito Puente Orchestra.  

          His early distinctive touch, putting percussion in front, happened by 
          necessity.  

          "The pretty boys were always in front, the percussion always in the back," 
          Mr. Puente said in an interview with The Toronto Star. "But the frontmen 
          needed to get their rhythm cues from the percussion, and someone 
          suggested putting the rhythm in front instead. Now everyone does it."  

          Mr. Puente's first hit, "Abaniquito," came one year later. By the early 50's 
          the band had become the Tito Puente Orchestra and was packing them in 
          at New York's Palladium. Mambo was king, and Tito Puente was king of 
          mambo, recording dance favorites like "Barbarabatiri," "El Rey del Timbal" 
          and "Mambo Gallego." In the late 50's, Mr. Puente was fusing cha-cha -- 
          the hot Latin cross-over dance of the Catskills -- with big band 
          compositions. The people who heard Mr. Puente play the Palladium still 
          get excited when they recall his sound.  

          "He was a genius, okay? The man who made you get up out of your chair 
          no matter who you were and dance," said Cuban Pete Aguilar, who knew 
          Mr. Puente when he was a boy, drumming in the basement in El Barrio 
          and who would years later be the choreographer for "The Mambo Kings." 
          "There was a rivalry between him and another orchestra leader, Tito 
          Rodriguez, and when the two of them got together to outdo each other, 
          when they got up and played their hearts out, let's just say the world knew 
          they were playing."  

          In the 60's Mr. Puente began to collaborate with other New York 
          musicians, including Celia Cruz, who would become the Queen of Latin 
          Music to his King, with the trombonist Buddy Morrow, with Woody 
          Herman. In 1963 he recorded "Oye Como Va," which 12 years later would 
          be a hit for Carlos Santana. In 1968, Mr. Puente had his own television 
          show, on Hispanic television, "The World of Tito Puente."  

          The 70's were a down time for Mr. Puente.  

          "It was kind of a boogaloo era, and there were some other nonmusical 
          fads, and he had to do things to keep up with the Jones that were not so 
          good for his records," said Johnny Rodriguez, Mr. Puente's longtime road 
          manager.  

          But in the 80's, and particularly in the 90's, he was coming back. He 
          recorded with the jazz musicians Phil Woods, George Shearing, James 
          Moody, Dave Valentin, Hilton Ruiz and Terry Gibbs; he and his band often 
          performed with symphony orchestras.  

          He also became a sort of symbol of the New York Puerto Rican identity, 
          marching prominently in Puerto Rican parades. In 1995 Mr. Puente opened 
          a popular 250-seat restaurant on City Island.  

          The Oscar Hijuelos novel "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love," which 
          became the film "The Mambo Kings," also offered sweet vindication.  

          In that story two Cuban brothers move to New York in the 50's and form a 
          mambo band; Mr. Puente is portrayed as the King, the center of the 
          mambo universe.  

          "I never thought playing in those places, writing that music, experiencing it 
          all, that there would be a movie of it," Mr. Puente said in The Times. "It's a 
          place and time that has really been overlooked."  

          And on a more personal note: "I'm finally getting some due. It's too bad it 
          happened at this stage in my life, but better now than never."  

          Mr. Puente's personal life, as befitting a big band leader, was not tame. 
          During the war, on leave, he married a longtime girlfriend, Mirta Sanchez. 
          In 1947 they had a son, Ronald. The marriage ended in divorce. Today 
          both live in New York.  

          In the 50's, Mr. Puente also had a longtime relationship with Ida Carlini, a 
          dancer, now living in Miami, who says she met Mr. Puente at the 
          Palladium as a girl of 15. ("An Abby Lane type, gorgeous," one Palladium 
          regular recalls, still smitten many decades later.) Their son, Richard 
          Anthony Puente, was born in 1953. He became a musician.  

          There followed a 30-year relationship with Margaret Acencio, with whom 
          Mr. Puente had a son, Tito Puente Jr., a musician, and a daughter, Audrey 
          Puente, a weather forecaster at Channel 4. Ms. Acencio and Mr. Puente 
          were married, Mr. Puente told The Times, "four or five years" ago, with 
          their 28-year-old son and 30-year-old daughter serving as their parents' 
          best man and maid of honor. There was no honeymoon.  

          "I have not taken a vacation in my whole life," Mr. Puente said in that talk 
          four months ago. "Let me ask you a question: Have you ever known a 
          musician to take a vacation? You know when you're on vacation? When 
          the phone don't ring."  

          Mr. Puente, in that conversation, was happy, his spirits high. He was 
          recording, he believed, his 119th record. He said he felt wonderful -- like a 
          12-year-old kid.  

          Asked in that conversation what the King might want as his obituary, he 
          couldn't be bothered to give it a serious thought.  

          Or maybe he did.  

          "Nuthin'," Mr. Puente said, in that perfectly paced, musician's rhythm. 
          Then, laughing, which he liked very much to do, "Or maybe put a pair of 
          timbales on my grave."