Bio

Carlos Augusto Alves Santana (born 20 July 1947) is a Mexican American Grammy Award-winning musician and Latin-rock guitarist.

He became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, the Santana Blues Band, which created a highly successful blend of salsa, rock, blues, and jazz fusion. Their sound featured his often high-pitched and clean guitar lines set against Latin instrumentation such as timbales and congas. Santana continued to work in these forms over the following decades, and experienced a sudden resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. Over his career he has sold an estimated 80 million albums worldwide.

Early Life and Career

Santana was born to Jose Santana and Josefina Barragan in Autlán de Navarro, Jalisco, Mexico, and has two brothers – Antonio and Jorge – and four sisters – Laura, Irma, Leticia, and Maria. Carlos' father played the violin,and was a part of a mariachi troupe. Young Carlos continued the family's musical heritage, originally learning the violin before switching to the guitar when he was eight years old. After a family move to Tijuana Carlos performed occasionally with his fathers mariachi group on violin but grew to dislike it. Santana later played bass and guitar in strip clubs and bars in the Tijuana area and began his love of the American Blues, R&B, and Rock & Roll of B.B. King, Bobby Bland, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles. He was particularly impressed with a local blues guitar player, Javier Batiz. He remained in Tijuana when his family moved to San Francisco, California, but joined them at the age of thirteen.

Upon his arrival to San Francisco, Carlos was unhappy and ran away several times. He felt he didn't need to go to school and enjoyed being on his own and being a 'man of the world' back in Tijuana. He disliked the popular music of the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean which many of the kids at his high school in the U.S. liked during that era. After finally being convinced to stay in San Francisco by his family, he graduated from Mission High School in 1965. Carlos began helping the family out by working as a dishwasher and grew to enjoy the San Francisco music scene, often sneaking into Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium to listen to some of his favorites: Muddy Waters, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and many of the great rock, blues and jazz musicians who appeared there.

At the end of 1966, Tom Frazier (guitar) wanted to form a new rock band. Frazier joined Carlos Santana (guitar/vocals), Mike Carabello (percussion), Rod Harper (drums), Gus Rodriguez (bass guitar), and Seattle native Gregg Rolie (organ/vocals), to form the Santana Blues Band. Carlos has maintained that it was he and Rolie who were the most serious about music and pursuing it further, while the others were only interested in hanging out and being part of the scene. Carlos himself was not viewed by the members as the actual leader of the band that had his name. The group operated as a collective, as it would through the early 1970s. The name of the band was agreed upon due to a local musicians union requirement that there be a designated leader and a name. He met Stan 'Moon' Marcum who acted as the group's manager. During this time, his brother Jorge, a talented guitarist in his own right, became active in the music scene as well, performing with a band called The Malibu's. He later went on to start the Latin-rock group Malo, which was briefly popular in the early 1970s.

After a while the name of the band was known simply as Santana, dropping 'Blues Band' from their title. At this time the groups lineup consisted of Carlos, Rolie, with David Brown on bass, Bob 'Doc' Livingston on drums, and Marcus Malone on percussion. Promoter Bill Graham heard them and let them perform at the Fillmore (later Fillmore West). Carlos' recording debut occurred as a guest on The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper with Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield, who were also Fillmore regulars.

There has always been speculation about how the band picked up its Latin influence, since ironically neither Carlos nor Gregg Rolie had any affinity for the style in the first place. It is known they hung out often at San Francisco's Aquatic park where conga players would get together and jam. Also, around this time Carlos was being exposed to other types of music for the first time in the creative, musically fertile city. Bay Area jazz guitarist Gabor Szabo became a favorite of Carlos' and featured congas on his 1966 album, 'Spellbinder'. But more importantly Carlos realized when they had Latin percussion in the band, the girls would dance to their music by gyrating their hips wildly like belly dancers, which he liked.

More info from Wikipedia