Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music.

• Author: Holston, Mark

Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music, by Steven Loza. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

This long overdue survey of the life and times of the legendary master musician, composer, arranger, and bandleader Ernest Anthony "Tito" Puente was published just months before his death in 2000. Fortunately, the so-called "King of Latin Music" had availed himself to the author, an associate professor of music at the University of California at Los Angeles, on a regular basis in recent years, providing the detailed and colorful firsthand descriptions that account for much of the book's value. Extensive interviews with Puente intimates and musicians with whom he worked provide telling insights into this singular artist and the music that he successfully championed for over haft a century.

Readers, however, should not be misled by the book's title, for there are many dozens of styles of Latin...