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Carlos Santana
Name: Carlos Augusto Alves Santana
Born July 20 1947
Guitarist,Songwriter
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Carlos is a Grammy Award winning Latin Rock Musician. He became famous in the late 1960`s and early 1970`s with his band, Santana, which created a highly successful blend of Salsa, Rock, Blues and Jazz fusion.
Their sound featured his melodic blues based guitar lines set against Latin percussion such as Timbales and Congas. Santana continued to work in these forms over the following decades and experienced a resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990`s. Rolling Stone magazine also put Santana at number 15 on their list of 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time in 2003.
Carlos Santana was born in Autlan, Navarro, Jalisco, Mexico, with two brothers and four sisters and a father who was a Mariachi violinist. Carlos began playing violin at the age of five, occasionally performing in his fathers Mariachi Orchestra. |
When his family moved to Tijuana (when he was nine) he became interested in Guitar and was soon performing in bands in the Tijuana area. When his family emigrated to San Francisco, California, thirteen year old Carlos refused to leave, prefering his independence as a working musician. After being persuaded by his family to go to San Francisco he graduated from Mission High School 1965.
Santana helped the family out by working as a dishwasher and grew to enjoy the San Francisco music scene, often sneaking into promoter Bill grahams Filmore Auditorium to listen to his favorite musical artists including Muddy Waters and The Grateful Dead.
At the end of 1966 Guitarist Tom Frazier wanted to form a band. Frazier joined Santana on guitar/vocals, Mike Carabelio on Percussion, Rod Harper on drums, Gus Rodriguez on Bass guitar and Seattle native Greg Rolie on Organ/vocals to form the Santana Blues Band. Santana has maintained that it was he and rolie who were the most serious about music and pursuing it further. Santana was not viewed by the group as the leader, the band operated as a collective.
The name of the band was agreed upon due to a local musicians union requirement that there be a designated leader and name. Santana signed to CBS records, and went into the studio to record their first album. They were not happy with the results and realized changes needed to be made. Mike Shrieve was brought in who had a strong background in both Jazz and Rock. Mark Malone was forced to leave the band due to personal problems and the band re-enlisted Mike Carabelio.
He brought with him Percussionist, Jose Chepito Areas who was already known in his country, Nicaragua, and with his skills and experience was a major contributor to the band. Bill Graham, who had been a fan of the band from the start convinced the promoters of Woodstock to let the band appear before the release of their first album, they were one of the surprises of the festival. Their set was legendary and later the exposure of their eleven minute instrumental,Soul Sacrifice, in the Woodstock film and Ijllsoundtrack albums vastly increased Santana's popularity.
Their first album simply titled, Santana, became a huge hit reaching number four on the US album charts and the catchy single "Evil Ways" reached number nine on the billboard Hot 100. In 1970 the group reached its early commercial peak with their second album, Abraxas, which reached number one on the album chart and went on to sell over four million copies. The innovative Santana musical blend made a number four hit out of the English band Fleetwood Mac`s "Black Magic Woman" and a number thirteen hit out of Salsa legend Tito Puente`s "Oye Come Va".
Carlos Santana, alongside the classic Santana lineup of their first two albums, was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1998. He performed "Black Magic Woman" with the writer of the song Fleetwood Mac`s, Peter Green. Green was also inducted on the same night. Teenage San Francisco bay area Prodigy Neal Schon was asked to join the band in 1971 though at the time he was also asked by Eric Clapton to join Derek And The Dominoes.
Choosing Santana he joined them just in time to finish their third album, Santana 3, the band now boasted a powerful duel lead guitar act that gave the band a tougher sound. The sound of the band was also helped by the return of Chepito Areas and the assistance of Coke Escovedo in the percussion section. Even further still was the support of popular bay area group "Tower Of Power`s" horn section. Santana 3 was another success reaching number one on the album charts selling two million copies and producing the hits "Everybodys Everything" and "No One To Depend On".
In early 1972 the band started working on their forth album, Caravancerai. During the studio sessions Santana and Mike Shrieve brought in other musicians, percussionists James Mingo Lewis and Latin-Jazz veteran, Armando Pereza, replacing Mike Carabelio and bassists Tom Rutley and Doug Rauch replacing David Brown. Also assisting on Keyboards were Wendy Haas and Tom Coster. With the unsettling influx of new players in the studio, Gregg Rolie and Neal Schon decided to leave the band.
After the completion of the album, even though both made spectacular contributions to the session, Rolie left and went home to Seattle opening a restaurant with his father. Although the band had concentrated on trying to produce albums with commercial appeal during the 1980`s, changing tastes in popular culture began to reflect in the bands sagging record sales of their latest effort "Beyond Appearances" in 1985. Bill Graham pulled strings for Santana to convince principal Live Aid concert organizer Bob Geldof to allow the band to appear at the festival. The groups high energy performance proved why they were still a top concert draw the world over despite their poor performance on the charts.
Personally Santana retained a great deal of respect in both Jazz and Rock circles with Prince and Kirk Hammett of Metalica citing him as an influence. Growing weary of trying to appease record company executives with formulaic hit records, Santana took great pleasure in jamming and making guest appearances with notables such as the Jazz fusion group "Weather Report", Jazz Pianist "Mcoy Tyner", Blues legend "John Lee Hooker", Aretha Franklin, Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid, and west african singer Salif Keita. |
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He and Micky Hart of The Grateful Dead, later recorded and performed with Nigerian Drummer Babatunde Olatunji, who conceived one of Santana`s famous 1960`s drum jams "Jingo". In 1968 Santana organized a reunion with past members from the Santana band for a series of concert dates. CBS records released a 20 year retrospective of the bands accomplishments with "Viva Santana". In 1990 Santana left Columbia Records after twenty two years and signed with Polygram. The following year he made a guest appearance on Ottmar Lieberts album "Solo Para Ti" on the songs "Reaching Out 2 U" and on a cover of his own number "Samba Pa Ti".
Santana`s record sales in the 1990`s was very low and towards the end of the decade he was without a contract. However Arista records Clive Davis, who had worked with Santana at Columbia, encouraged him to record a star-studied album with mostly younger artists, the result was 1999`s "Supernatural" which included collaborations with Everlast, Rob Thomas, Eric Clapton, Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, Cee-Lo. "Supernatural" won nine Grammy Awards(eight for Santana personally) including Album of the year and record of the year.
CARLOS SANTANA - Master of the Guitar. |
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