Do it like Tito Puente.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: FROM over the HILL - Column

THIS WINTER, WHILE SPENDING SOME TIME in Florida, my wife and I went to a show put on by Tito Puente. She said she bought tickets because Puente is a guitar player and I have been taking guitar lessons. (Turns out he is a drummer, but we had a wonderful time anyway.) His father was also Tito Puente, who I remembered from the late '50s and '60s as a great salsa musician. The son saluted the father with love and respect many times during the evening.

So this theater in Stuart, Fla., The Lyric, held five hundred to six hundred people. We probably got the last tickets to be had. and were seated up in the balcony, just a few feet from the ceiling. Puente's band had three trumpets, a sax, a guitar. a base. a piano. two guys on bongos. and probably a couple more I can't remember. And of course, Puente himself on drums. For more than an hour, the decibel level in that old hall was in the stratosphere. The people in the seats couldn't keep still ... they were jumping, twisting and writhing whether sitting or standing. There wasn't a bad seat in the house.

Each of the band members had a solo or two. some more. and Puente cheered them on mightily. The piano and the horns were sensational. The bongo players made those little drums talk and the crowd went crazy. And all the while, Puente--in a full suit and tie--wailed on the drums with. what at times. seemed like four or five sticks. The band had to be wearing down as the crowd got wilder.

What really got me was the big finish. Puente took off his suit jacket, got a towel and wiped his face. As he stepped away from center stage and his drum setup, he invited one of the bongo players to sit at the maestro's drums. The bongo player stepped into Puente's territory, picked up his sticks and began to play. His sound was different than Puente's, but at least as good, if not better. Puente was swinging his towel in the air. leading cheers for the drummer, and the crowd loved it.

Then he did it again. Puente got the other bongo player to move over to his drums and play. The same thing happened, only it was better. The crowd amped up again, and Puente encouraged their roars. The band memebers all went back to their normal places and played one more, each featured one last...