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¡Qué Viva el Rey!--Dance Mania: Legacy Edition Pays Tribute to Landmark '50s Album by Tito Puente--Latin Music Legend, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Recipient
Michael Ricci
Lover of jazz, technology and sitting in a chair, Mick merged his three passions to create All About Jazz.“ 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.
