Joe Santiago, Salsa/Latin bass, percussion

Joe Santiago was born in 1950 in Naranjito, Puerto Rico. He grew up in the Bronx, New York. His first musical instrument was the viola, assigned to him by his junior high school music teacher because of the size of his hands. Santiago was more interested in the trumpet, though, and shined shoes on the street corner until he earned enough money to buy one. Not long afterwards he met an ambitious classmate named Willie Colón and switched to the trombone so he could play in Colón’s band. Playing for dances at clubs and community centers, these teenagers’ brash trombone-heavy sound (soon to be labeled “salsa”) earned them an enthusiastic following in the Bronx and attracted attention from record producer Al Santiago of Alegre Records. Santiago went on to play trombone on Colón’s first two albums for the new FANIA label, “El Malo” (1966) and “The Hustler” (1967), before switching to the instrument he was to play for the rest of his career, the bass.

Santiago supplemented his catch-as-catch-can learning in the Bronx with formal training at the New York School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Berklee School of Music. By the 1970s he had become one of the most sought-after bass players in the burgeoning salsa scene. He stands today at the top of his profession, with a portfolio that includes recordings and performances with some of the great names in Latin music, including Machito, Mario Bauzá, Mongo Santamaria, Carlos “Patato” Valdez, La Sonora Ponceña, Johnny Pacheco, Celia Cruz, and Tito Puente, to name just a few. Since the mid-1990s he has played and recorded with pianist Eddie Palmieri, from whom he earned the nickname “Timba” (a word that refers to the sound of a drum) for the powerful rhythm of his bass playing.