Home » Jazz News » Recording

259

¡Qué Viva el Rey!--Dance Mania: Legacy Edition Pays Tribute to Landmark '50s Album by Tito Puente--Latin Music Legend, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Recipient

Source:

Sign in to view read count
In the mid-1950s, the backdrop for 'Dance Mania,' Tito Puente ruled his domain from the Palladium Ballroom on Broadway and 53rd Street.
"One of the 25 Most Significant Albums of the Last Century" --The New York Times


Disc One: 12-song Dance Mania hit album of 1958, plus 10 bonus tracks Disc Two: 12-song Dance Mania Vol. 2 of 1961, plus 11 bonus tracks

Liner notes capture the 1950s mambo craze in full swing--as Tito Puente becomes New York's “King of Latin Music"

Available at both physical and digital retail outlets starting May 26, 2009, through RCA/U.S. Latin/Legacy

“It reflects a perfect confluence of musical elements: superb compositions, brilliant arrangements, and flawless interpretation. It's hip, fun, and irresistibly happy. And, it's sexy, too. Brimming with mambos, cha-chas, boleros, and rumbas, Dance Mania sizzles with the snap, crackle, and pop of such essential Latin percussion instruments as congas, bongos, timbales, claves, guiros, maracas, Cajons, and cencerros (cowbells)."

from the liner notes written by Charles L. Granata and Joe Conzo





Throughout the 20th century, every genre of American music enjoyed bestowing royal titles on the greatest of the greats: from King Oliver to the King of Swing, Benny Goodman, from the King of Soul, Solomon Burke, to the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. The title of the King of Mambo, the King of Latin Music--"El Rey"--belongs forever to Ernest Anthony 'Tito' Puente, who upheld that title in glorious fashion in his kingdom of New York City, from his first official night as a bandleader in 1949, right up until his death nearly nine years ago at age 77.

An enormously prolific recording artist (composer, orchestrator, arranger, and acknowledged Grand Master of the timbales), Tito Puente recorded more than 120 albums that developed and explored every facet of Latin dance music and its dizzying intersections with jazz and soul over the course of a half-century. Yet there has never been any question as to identifying his masterwork, the one LP that was in the right place at the right time to define an historical era in music that inspired America and the world.

Recorded in November-December 1957, and released in 1958, Tito Puente's Dance Mania would become a 50-year catalog bestseller for RCA Victor.

Dance Mania: Legacy Edition now arrives as a deluxe double-CD package. For the first time, 1958's 12-song Dance Mania (on disc one, with 10 bonus tracks recorded by Puente in 1956-57) is coupled in one package with its 12-song successor of 1961, Dance Mania Vol. 2 (on disc two, with 11 bonus tracks recorded in 1959-60). Containing a liner notes essay co-written by Charles L. Granata and Joe Conzo, this newest entry to the Legacy Editions series will be available at all physical and digital retail outlets starting May 26th through RCA/U.S. Latin/Legacy, a division of SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT.

Dance Mania: Legacy Edition is a resounding tribute to Tito Puente, and a welcome followup to The Essential Tito Puente (RCA/Legacy, 2005). The centerpiece of that 40-song double-CD collection was “Oye Como Va," Puente's signature composition, immortalized on the charts by Santana in 1971. A six-time Grammy Award winner--Best Latin Recording of 1978 (Homenaje a Beny More), Best Tropical Latin Performance of 1983 (On Broadway), 1985 (Mambo Diablo), and 1990 (Lambada Timbales), Best Traditional Tropical Latin Performance of 1999 (Mambo Birdland), and Best Salsa Album of 2000 (Masterpiece/Obra Maestra, with Eddie Palmieri)--Puente also took home a Latin Grammy Award at the inaugural ceremonies in 2000, for Best Traditional Tropical Latin Performance (Mambo Birdland).

That same year, following his death on May 31, 2000, Tito Puente was the posthumous recipient of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He has a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame and received the National Endowment of the Arts Award from President Clinton. Puente was honored when a set of his namesake Tito Puente Model Timbales (for the LP/Latin Percussion company, his longtime sponsor) was placed into the Smithsonian Institute's permanent collection. Although born in Harlem of Puerto Rican ancestry, Puente was an influence and inspiration for the Cuban-based film The Mambo Kings (1992), in which he enjoyed a cameo appearance and three numbers on the album soundtrack.

In the mid-1950s, the backdrop for Dance Mania, Tito Puente ruled his domain from the Palladium Ballroom on Broadway and 53rd Street. There his band shared the stage with the great bands led by Machito and Tito Rodriguez, a scene that is lushly described by Granata and Conzo. Granata is a music historian, record and radio producer, and author of Sessions with Sinatra: Frank Sinatra and the Art of Recording, and Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music (with Phil Ramone), as well as the annotator of more than 20 Frank Sinatra CD reissues, including the Legacy box-sets, The Best of the Columbia Years: 1943-1952 (1995), The V-Discs: Columbia Years: 1943-45 (1995), The Collection (2000), and Voice In Time: 1939-1952 (2007). Joe Conzo is a Latin music expert and was a close friend to Tito Puente. He is also a record producer and author of the upcoming biography of Tito Puente, Mambo Diablo.

By 1956, the mambo craze had grabbed hold of mainstream America, a fact that is supported by Granata and Conzo as they recall the famous “Mama Loves Mambo" tv sketch from The Honeymooners in 1956: “Live a little," Alice admonishes Ralph. The radio airwaves were filled with mambo-pop too, as enumerated in the liner notes: “Perry Como's 'Papa Loves Mambo,' Rosemary Clooney's 'Mambo Italiano,' Vaughan Monroe's 'They Were Doin' the Mambo,' and Perez Prado's 'Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White.' Even Bill Haley and the Comets took a stab at the Latin beat with 'Mambo Rock'."

Meanwhile, “The real action was taking place at the Palladium, where authentic Latin musicians and dancers congregated nightly. The sights and sounds evolving at the Palladium were neither commercial nor watered down; there, the mambo (and other popular Latin dances) were treated with a passion bordering on reverence." Not only was the crème de la crème of Hollywood and Broadway celebrities to be found among the Palladium dancers, but a night rarely went by without a visit from the headliners at Birdland one block away, “the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Quincy Jones, Max Roach, George Shearing, Cal Tjader and other jazz all-stars."

Dance Mania: Legacy Edition is a vivid portrait of those years, as the original LP sequences of Dance Mania and Dance Mania Vol. 2 are nearly doubled with the added bonus tracks. Among the many percussionists (on congas and bongos) who joined Tito Puente through the sessions from 1956 to 1960, are such future stars as Ray Barretto, Ray Rodriquez, Willie Bobo, Mongo Santamaria, Carlos 'Patato' Valdes, Jose Mangual, and Louis Perez.

Dance Mania was the biggest selling record of Puente's career," Granata and Conzo sum up, “and its importance and popularity endure. Months before Puente's death in 2000, the New York Times listed Dance Mania as one of the 25 'most significant albums of the last century'--the only Latin album to make the list. And, in 2002, the Library of Congress added Dance Mania to the National Recording Registry, citing its landmark status and influence on pop culture."

Continue Reading...

Visit Website

For more information contact .

Comments

Tags

News

Popular

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.