Ray Barretto - Success With "El Watusi"

Success With "El Watusi"

In 1960, Barretto was a house musician for the Prestige, Blue Note, and Riverside labels.He also recorded on Columbia Records with Jazz flautist Herbie Mann. New York had become the center of Latin music in the United States and a musical genre called "pachanga" was the Latin music craze of the time.

In 1961, Barretto recorded his first hit, "El Watusi," the first Latin song to enter the Billboard charts (April, 1963.) He was quite successful with the song and the genre, to the point of being typecast (something that he disliked).

After recording a number of albums for the United Artists label, Barretto joined the Fania record label in 1967, and his first recording for the new label was the 1968 album Acid, an experiment joining rhythm and blues with Latin music. The album contained the song "A Deeper Shade Of Soul", which was sampled for the 1991 Billboard Hot 100 #21 hit "Deeper Shade of Soul" by Dutch band Urban Dance Squad.

After a number of successful albums, and just as his Afro-Cuban band had attained a remarkable following, most of its members left it to form Tipica 73, a multinational salsa conglomerate. This left Barretto depressed and disappointed with salsa; he then redirected his efforts to jazz, while remaining as musical director of the Fania All Stars.

Barretto played the conga in recording sessions for the Rolling Stones and the Bee Gees. In 1975 he was nominated for a Grammy Award for the song "Barretto". From 1976 to 1978, Barretto recorded three records for Atlantic Records, and was nominated for a Grammy for Barretto Live...Tomorrow. In 1979, he recorded La Cuna for CTI records, and produced a salsa record for Fania, titled Ricanstruction, which was named 1980 "Best Album" by Latin N.Y. Magazine, with Barretto crowned as Conga Player of the Year.