Ever since Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría arrived in the United States from Cuba in the late 1940s and hooked up with bebop legend Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Cal Tjader, and Pérez Prado, he’s been the most imitated conga drummer in Latin jazz and salsa music. Further, his pioneering flute-violin charanga bands have almost singly expanded the parameters of Latin sounds in America.
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.
from Amazon credited to Eugene Holley Jr.