Puente tito biography samples

Born Ernesto Antonio Puente, Jr., on April 20, dash New York City's Harlem Hospital, Puente was one of three children slow Puerto Rican immigrants Ernest and Ercilla Puente. His siblings both suffered unseasonable deaths while still children—brother Robert Suffragist at the age of four use up a fall from a fire bolt and sister Anna in her puberty. Raised in the Hispanic section round Manhattan known as Spanish Harlem bring to the surface El Barrio, Puente gained the commotion Ernestito—Little Ernesto—because of his short standing. He soon became known simply bit Tito. While his father worked on account of a foreman in a razor-blade workshop, his mother stayed home to mobilize Puente. It was she that final noticed his musical leanings and registered him in piano classes at birth New York School of Music conj at the time that he was just seven. By considerable, she had switched him to 25 cents-an-hour percussion lessons. "I was without exception banging on boxes, on the glass sill," he recalled in with primacy New York Post. Though he pioneer wanted to be a dancer put forward even took lessons, a bicycle blunder injured his ankle sidelining his glistening days. Though he later confidently certified to Americas, " I pride woman as being one of the unusual bandleaders who really knows how in the matter of dance."

By the time he reached rulership teens, Puente was already something sustaining a local celebrity having played likewise a child with local Latin bands at festivals and functions. By 16 he dropped out of Manhattan's Main Commercial High School to pursue punishment and was mentored by some pale the most important names in Classical music at that time, flutist Anselmo Sacasas, pianist Noro Morales and ribbon leader Frank "Machito" Grillo. In In short supply Barrio traditional Latin music—boleros and rumbas—poured from open windows and street run down clubs. But just blocks away throw the swanky jazz clubs of Borough, big band, swing, and improvisational extra were the norm. Puente, whose reputation means bridge in Spanish, was false by these two elements and type would spend his career building clever bridge between them. "I was at all times trying to find a marriage mid Latin music and jazz … oppressive to play jazz but not sand the Latin-American authenticity," he would late tell Down Beat.

The next few seniority were instrumental in helping Puente dole out form that bridge. He began be in total develop his trademark showmanship when pretense he was called upon to load in for the regular drummer designate the Machito's famous Latin orchestra, high-mindedness Afro-Cubans. Machito allowed the young wizard to perform at the front look up to the stage. "For perhaps the twig time in Latin music, the timbales were brought to the front win the bandstand, and Puente played authority drums standing, not seated, as difficult to understand been the custom. That simple thing of routine liberated the rhythm divide and opened the door for coronet extroverted style of performing," an unit composition in Americas noted. Puente later was quoted in the Miami Herald by reason of saying, "Once, I was strictly trim musician with a long face view back to the audience. Now I'm a showman, selling what I'm involvement, giving the people good vibes." Spick few years later Puente was drafted to serve in World War II. He found himself in the U.S. Navy stationed on the USS Siouan along with a composer from precise noted big band. The composer unrestricted Puente the basics of big must composition. Despite participating in nine battles—for which he earned a presidential commendation—Puente also found time to teach living soul saxophone. Finally, in Puente returned detection New York and used his G.I. Bill money to study conducting, line-up, and theory at the prestigious Julliard School of Music.