Tito Puente: 50 Years of Swing.

• Author: Holston, Mark

For five decades, he has been in the vanguard of Afro-Caribbean music, his name all but synonymous with the internationally acclaimed styles that bear the indelible imprint of his fathering role--mambo, Latin jazz, and salsa. Today, the seventy-four-year-old Puerto Rican maestro remains one of the most vital forces in tropical music, a mentor to the up-and-coming vocalists and instrumentalists of today and a creative presence whose dynamic personality and flair for great music making remain undiminished.

50 Years of Swing is a long overdue showcase of Puente's singular talent and, with 114 albums to his credit, his remarkable legacy as one of the world's most prolific recording artists. The master musician's multifaceted artistry--composer, arranger, musician, and band leader--is surveyed on the boxed set's fifty tracks, ranging from his earliest recordings in the late 1940s, when the emerging Latin jazz style was being fashioned out of traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms and cutting-edge bebop improvisations, to recent...