Mongo Santamaria - Mongo Santamaria Greatest Hits

List Price: $6.99
Our Price: $5.54
You Save: $1.45 (21%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $4.65 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more CD details

CD Details

Music reviews of Mongo Santamaria Greatest Hits

Music Review: thumping
Rating: 4 Stars

Description of Mongo Santamaria Greatest Hits

These 1960s Columbia Records sides contain his coveted hip-shaking pop covers with flutist Hubert Laws, master santero Julito Collazo, drummer Bernard Purdie, and trumpeter Marty Sheller, with Santamaría and company conjuring up fun and campy red-beans-and-rice versions of Top 40 soul classics. Santamaría lays the boogaloo down on James Brown's "Cold Sweat," the Temptations' "Cloud Nine," Ritchie Valens's "La Bamba" and Booker T. and the MG's' hit, "Green Onions." But make no mistake, Mongo Santamaría was no novelty act. His rendition of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" and his own composition, the 6/8 syncopated standard, "Afro Blue"--recorded by legions of musicians, including John Coltrane, and captured live on this compilation--best showcases his thunderous and articulate polyrhythmic genius linking Africa and the Americas. --Eugene Holley Jr.

International CDs

• Music > Styles
• Jazz
• Latin Music
• Pop