Puente had never contemplated retirement. In February this year, he received his fifth Grammy - for the Mambo Birdland album - and was recently honoured by the US government on a postage stamp. His last concert in April was in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Puente was a musician's musician, a composer, arranger and bandleader, and a showman. He had a childlike delight at jokes and teasing, and realised very early on the significance of giving a performance more than just musical. In the late 30s, while playing with the band of Cuban singer Machito, he dragged his timbales drum kit to the front of the stage and never went back into the shadows. From then on, his solos were instantly a star attraction.
Ernesto 'Tito' Puente Jr, the son of a factory foreman, was born and raised in New York, though he spent a few years as a child with his family in Puerto Rico and remained devoted to the island and its culture for life. His music education - on piano - began in Manhattan, spurred on by his mother, who would secretly take 25 cents for the class from his father's coat pocket. With his younger sister Annie, he took up dancing, slick and neat as he would be all his life, and as he boasted later, one of the few bandleaders who could actually dance.
As a teenager, he played timbales and piano in several Latin bands around town, and was heard by the newly arrived Cuban pianist and bandleader, José Curbelo. Joining up with Curbelo, Puente learned about band-leading and business before moving on to play with Machito, who was creating the template for Afro-Cuban jazz with his partner Mario Bauza.
Puente's career was interrupted by the war - he served in the US Marines - but on his return he studied composition at the Juilliard School of Music and emerged to found his first band, the Picadilly Boys. By then, many Cuban musicians were in town, bringing with them an infectious and highly syncopated new dance called the Mambo; Puente was hooked. Within a couple of years, he was drawing vast crowds with performances in the Mecca of the dance, the Palladium Ballroom on 52nd Street, just along from the world famous bebop jazz club, Birdland.
For Puente this was an opportunity to see at close quarters the arrangements of musicians such as Stan Kenton and Dizzy Gillespie, who also shared a passion for Cuban music. Thus began Puente's long connection with the American jazz scene, and the foundations were laid for some brilliant collaborations on future records.
In his comprehensive biography, Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music, Steven Loza compares Puente's significance in American music to that of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. The 1997 tribute album Commemorating Tito Puente, 50 Years of Swing offers 50 tracks from all stages of his career, beginning with his first successful recording Que no, que no! in 1946, sung by his future rival for the title of Mambo King, Tito Rodriguez. As revealed on this fondly conceived box set, his range of musical styles and collaborators was exceptional: from the raucous brassy Americanised versions of Cuban rumbas, mambos and chachachas to Latin-jazz encounters with the leaders of the genre (Ray Baretto, Mongo Santamaria, pianists Charlie Palmieri, Hilton Ruiz and Michel Camilo) and also members of the American camp, George Shearing, Lionel Hampton, Woody Herman, and fellow vibraphonist Cal Tjader, to New York's more recent commercial salsa.
The 1999 tribute song, El Cien (The Hundred - to commemorate his 100th album), is a textural delight, a flash-past of the most significant voices of salsa in the past few decades, including, of course, Celia Cruz, the most significant Latin singer of the century.
Puente drew each new generation of musicians into the fold. His genuine interest in them and their ideas kept his own music fresh. Through his Tito Puente Foundation, he enabled poor Hispanic musicians to attend music college. By the 90s, he had become a mentor and unlikely icon for many young Latin hiphop crossover producers and musicians, including his son, the percussionist Tito Jr.
Puente did not always approve of new trends and commercially motivated salsa; he certainly didn't feel any compulsion to praise them or conform to the car-chase, big band merengues which dominated the charts in the late 80s. He said - in a rare flash of irritation - that he would sooner stop playing than have to play them. But he was open to serious, committed changes, especially at the jazz end of the Latin music spectrum.
Puente's repertoire of Latin jazz and salsa includes more than 100 albums and scores of singles. Individual songs are known worldwide and reappear in new guises. He reclaimed the timeless Oye Como Va from Carlos Santana who sowed the seeds of today's interest in Latin music when he gave it the electric Latin rock treatment at the Woodstock Festival in the 60s.
Since then, the non-Latin population and America's mainstream media have woken up to his presence among them (a secret privately enjoyed in the Latino communities). His music became increasingly desirable and was used in film soundtracks and signature tunes (his friend Bill Crosby adopted a Puente song as his show's signature tune and appeared frequently on stage with him at the famous "Latin Meets Jazz" nights at New York's Village Gate club). In the movie of The Mambo Kings, Puente played a musician playing at the Palladium in the mambo heyday.
In 1981, Puente visited London with his Latin Jazz Sextet - a streamlined, tight, inventive outfit which took the city by surprise. Backstage, Puente said he was amazed at the reaction and couldn't wait to come back. In 1984, he returned with his full band and Celia Cruz out front; it was an unforgettable night. This country's love affair with salsa was confirmed.
Puente's death marks a new century in Latin music, but one which is grounded entirely in his music - and his mischievous and passionate personality.
He is survived by his wife, Margie, two sons and a daughter.
Ernesto (Tito) Anthony Puente, musician, born April 20 1923; died May 31 2000
