![]() ![]() How to lay out a chart, the different sections with the brass and saxes, etc. “We hit it off and became friends, and he started coaching me on how to write for big bands. “He was also an arranger,” Puente recalled. One of these pilots was a Lieutenant Sweeney, who had played trumpet in territorial bands in the Midwest. Since they had a lot of pressure on them, they would keep to themselves.” When they would fly out, even it was on a reconnaissance mission, no one would ever know if they would ever be coming back. “The pilots on the ship were the most respected,” he explained. I remember I lost it once, crying.”Īmong the unlikely skills that Puente picked up aboard the Santee was arranging for big band. ![]() He adds: “My worst time in the Navy? When I would have to play taps for someone who was killed. Anyway, the captain wisely told me to stay below deck for a few days because everyone wanted to kick my ass.” The whole ship went berserk as I started to warm up, and I was yelling that there was no attack. ![]() I was supposed to play reveille, but I forgot the mic was on. I would always make sure the microphone on the deck was off. “When I would play bugle,” he told me, “I would warm up by playing general quarters, which was the call to battle stations. Puente played alto sax and clarinet in the ship’s big band, and drum set and piano during mess hall. Escort carriers would be assigned to escort troop transport ships - and in the case of the Santee, to the Pacific theater. Smaller than a full-size carrier, its mission was nevertheless extremely dangerous. Puente reported for duty aboard the U.S.S. ![]() “And it was all done with military discipline… it was intense.” His grade point average upon graduation was 3.8.Īs was the custom of the day, musicians were assigned to aircraft carriers, battleships and large destroyers to provide moral support for the sailors on their long assignments at sea. “You got what you would normally study in a four-year music conservatory, but in three months,” Puente told me about this training. And as if that weren’t enough, Puente also took up alto saxophone and clarinet, and further applied his piano technique to the vibraphone and marimba.īut it was during his time in the Navy that he truly began to display his multi-faceted talent, with a considerable boost from the musical training program at the Navy School of Music. Williams, while also learning acrobatic tap and ballroom dancing with his sister Annie.Īpplying his jazz training to timbales - the metal drums of Cuban origin, played with sticks - Puente crossed a Rubicon that brought the instrument into the forefront, redefining it as a solo instrument in much the way that Gene Krupa had redefined the drum set. Young Ernie studied jazz drumming with an African American show drummer that he could only remember as Mr. Army 369th Regiment Harlem Hellfighters Band in the first World War. was trained on piano for eight years by Victoria Hernández - sister of the legendary Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernández, who had been a member of the U.S. And while the man we remember as El Rey de los Timbales (“The King of the Timbales”) is a defining titan of Latin jazz, there’s a distinct Asian influence in much of his compositional and arranging style that came out of his service during World War II.īorn and raised in Harlem, N.Y., Ernest Anthony Puente, Jr. Tito Puente was still a teenager when he was drafted into the United States Navy in 1942. ![]()
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