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May 15th 2008 |
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Current Issue: SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006 |
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UPCLOSE |
CARLOS SANTANA’S INIMITABLE FUSION OF ROCK, JAZZ, BLUES, SOUL AND
LATIN SOUNDS HAVE LONG EARNED HIM HIGH PRAISE. AFTER 40 YEARS IN
THE FICKLE MUSIC INDUSTRY, SANTANA REMAINS A REVERED ICON WHO HAS NEVER
SOUNDED BETTER.
También en español
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BY KAREN MURPHY & YVONNE MONTOYA
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When Jim Nash’s 1970s Rolling Stone review
of Abraxas, Santana’s second album, said
Santana “might do for Latin music what
Chuck Berry did for the blues,” few people
probably realized just how right that assessment was. Carlos
Santana almost single-handedly brought the explosive Latin
sound and energy of San Francisco’s blue collar Mission district
in the 1960s out of the barrio and onto the world stage.
Born the son of a virtuoso Mariachi violinist in Autlan de
Navarro, Mexico, Carlos Santana had music running through
his veins. He took up the violin at the age of five, but it was the
music of the blues masters—John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker,
and B.B. King—that reached deep into his soul. His first band
in San Francisco actually was called the Santana Blues Band
and it naturally mixed the music of his blues heroes with the
Latin rhythms of his heritage.
 After dropping the Blues Band moniker, the early
Santana band released its first album, simply
titled Santana, in January 1969. It featured a
fusion of Santana’s hot electric guitar solos, Gregg Rolie’s bluesy organ and lead vocals
with a three-prong Latin percussion section
featuring Mike Shrieve on traps, José “Chepito”
Areas on timbales and Michael Carabello on
congas, underpinned by David Brown’s sturdy
bass. It was, for rock and roll, both highly original
and rhythmically uncompromising. Overnight,
Santana’s music made a lot of rock music’s more
monotonous 4/4 rhythms seem redundant. The
album went gold, selling two million copies in its
initial run.
Santana had been passed over by several
producers before eventually being signed by
legendary record mogul Clive Davis at
Columbia, who focused more on the
music and less on the cash
register, according to
Santana.
As Santana said
in the foreword to the
book, Voices of Latin Rock by
Ron Sansoe and Jim
McCarthy, “The first album
was sound wise, no; music wise,
yes. We’d been playing that material
for about a year and a half. A lot of
people forget we were headlining the
Fillmore West without an album out. By
the time we recorded it, it was done very fast with people
who had no understanding of the music or how it should be
recorded....”
Abraxas, which was released exactly one year later, is now
widely recognized as one of greatest albums of all time. It
secured Santana’s place among rock royalty and true to
Santana’s love for the blues, Abraxas featured a haunting,
powerful rendition of Black Magic Woman, originally penned
by British blues guitar virtuoso Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac.
The song was released as a single and it soon hit #4 on the
Billboard music charts. The next track, Tito Puente’s classic
Latin hit, Oye Como Va, became the second single and hit the
charts at Number 13. The passion and ecstatic soloing on this
album perfectly captured the psychedelic atmosphere of the
times and showcased the incredible talent of all of the
musicians.
Although 1971 started out on a high note—a new album in
the works and a European tour preceded by an appearance in
Ghana—a series of setbacks took a toll on the band. In February
1971, Chepito Areas suffered a brain hemorrhage right before
the big tour and Coke Escovedo, whose brother Pete is the
father of Prince collaborator Sheila E, had to be
brought in to replace him.
As the band was struggling to record Santana
3 in 1971, everything began to fall apart.
“We entered one of the worst periods of my
life,” Santana said. “Success was getting to
be too much. We were trying to make
Santana 3, but overindulgence in everything
available to a successful rock ‘n’ roller was
becoming a problem. I started catching my friends
shooting
up in the bathroom.”
Santana and his band mates
were not alone in their struggles with
drugs at that time. The California music scene
was awash in cocaine and heroin and talented
musicians were dropping like flies before even reaching the
age of 30. The Doors’ Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis
Joplin all died in rapid succession the year before, the direct
result of their overindulgence.
While Santana more or less faded out of the mainstream in the
1980s and 1990s, he still continued to record and release CDs
that his followers continued to buy. The band burst back into
the limelight in 1999 with the release of Supernatural,
Santana’s 36th album. The CD won a record-tying eight awards
at the 42nd Annual Grammy Awards—including Record of the
Year, Best Rock Album and Best Rock Performance By A Duo
Or Group With Vocal. Rob Thomas/Itaal Shur of Matchbox 20
also won the Song of the Year for penning Supernatural’s
smash single Smooth.
The incredible feat tied Michael Jackson’s record for the
most Grammys won by an artist in a single year. Jackson’s 1983
album Thriller also won eight awards in a single year. Santana
followed this award-winning
CD with Shaman, released in
2002. The CD won a Grammy
for the hit, The Game Of Love.
Santana also has won three
Latin Grammy Awards, and
received the Latin Recording
Academy’s “Person of the
Year” award in 2004. His latest
album, 2005’s All That I Am,
continues his tradition of
collaboration with other
talented musicians.
Almost five decades of
performing in front of 100
million people worldwide. An
amazing 90 million albums
sold. Carlos Santana is not
only rock royalty, he is the best
ambassador for Latin music
we could ever find.
It was a gas doing Abraxas. Abraxas had just come
out and Chepito was going back to Nicaragua with
an armful of albums. He had ‘em wrapped in brown
paper. He gets on the plane, clutching this package.
He didn’t speak English very well.The stewardess
comes down the aisle; she sees him clutching this
brown paper package.
“Sir,” she says, “the package will have to go
overhead in the compartment.”
“No, iz alright. I hold it, I hold it!” says Chepito.
“Sir, it’s regulations.”
Chepito goes, “No, no, no, oh, it’s dynamite!!”
So, the plane taxis around to an empty hangar.
The FBI come on and pull him off. Bill Graham had
to call them and explain what Chepito was trying to
say—that it was a dynamite recording, that he
wasn’t a hijacker, and they finally let him go.”
—Recording Engineer Fred Catero as quoted in Voices of Latin Rock by Jim McCarthy and
Ron Sansoe
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