Drums Keep Mongo Santamaria’s Life in Rhythm

Instrumental hits that make the pop charts are rare items, and those by jazz musicians rarer still. And since the clamor created by a top-selling single can sometimes make one’s career, one wonders what would have been the fortunes of Dave Brubeck had he not scored with “Take Five,” or of Mongo Santamaria without “Watermelon Man.”

Santamaria, a renowned Cuban conguero who has served tenures with Tito Puente and Cal Tjader, had been a leader less than two years when, in late 1962, pianist Herbie Hancock sat in with his band at a club in the Bronx. Hancock played his new composition, “Watermelon Man,” Santamaria added it--with plenty of Latin flavor--to his band’s book, and it soon became his group’s most popular number.

“At the time, Symphony Sid (Torin, famed New York jazz disc jockey) was already playing my records of ‘Para Ti’ and ‘Afro Blue,’ but people started to call in and ask for my version of ‘Watermelon Man,’ which they’d hear in clubs,” Santamaria said over the phone from Seattle, where he was in the middle of a successful two-week stint at Blues Alley. He plays Concerts by the Sea tonight through Saturday and the Los Angeles Salsa Festival at the Ford Theatre on Saturday afternoon.

“Sid had been playing Herbie’s recording (from “Takin’ Off,” on Blue Note) but they still wanted to hear one by me. Finally Sid called my label (Riverside Records) and told them, ‘You better record the tune with Mongo because they’re calling every night.’ We did it and it was a big hit from the beginning.”

The tune made the Billboard Top 10 in April, 1963, and the resulting exposure made Santamaria one of the biggest names in Latin/jazz.

Santamaria, 59, still plays the song (available on “The Watermelon Man,” Riverside). “I have to. People request it all the time,” he said, his English revealing a thick Spanish accent, then he laughed resoundingly. “I don’t mind playing it, I love it, but we have so much material.”

His band’s book consists of tunes based on “a combination of Afro/Cuban jazz with American and African influences,” he said. “It is what I have been playing since I became a leader.”

At the core of what Santamaria offers are his conga drums. “It’s the base of the whole thing, the center of the rhythm, of the beat,” he said. “Yet sometimes I’m in the middle, sometimes I improvise around the beat. It depends on the kind of tune that we play.”

The drums have always been his choice of expression. “I love the drums,” Santamaria said. “When I was a kid in Havana, my mother wanted me to take up the violin, but I was already fascinated by the drums. They entered my life and I’m still fascinated.”

Unlike many Latin leaders, Santamaria--who makes an appearance in the new film, “Salsa”--also uses trap drums in his performances. “We’ve been carrying them ever since I had a band,” he said. “Whenever we play a tune that sounds really jazzy, we need the drums to give it the right flavor.”

In the past, Santamaria worked a lot of dances, whereas today he plays mainly jazz clubs. He favors the atmosphere of the latter.

“In clubs, people have time to sit down and enjoy and see what it is that we’re doing,” he said. “If people are dancing and they have a few drinks and they get happy, they don’t know what you’re doing,” he added, chortling.

Santamaria arrived in New York, where he lives today, in 1949, and soon he and fellow Cuban conguero Armando Peraza--currently with Carlos Santana--were being billed as “The Black Cuban Diamonds.” Later came work with Puente and Tjader, and in 1958 his first major-label disc, “Yambu” (Fantasy).

Just as Riverside tried to come up with a follow-up hit for Santamaria in the ‘60s, his current label, Concord Picante, saw fit to have him include covers of tunes recorded by Anita Baker and Sade on his most recent “Soy Yo” LP.

“A record company thinks that a tune like (Sade’s) ‘Smooth Operator’ will be probably commercial,” he said. “And even though I think it’s a good tune--because it had the African thing combined with England and we did it in our own way, I wouldn’t have done it since I have a lot of originals that sound much better, I think,” he laughed. “When I made ‘Watermelon Man,’ I did it because it was a good tune. When I first made records, (Fantasy) wasn’t interested in doing a popular thing, but that was another day.”