The Santana song Carlos Santana credits with his “identity”
Anyone can recognise the guitar work of Carlos Santana. For more than 50 years, the Mexican-American musician has been the leader of his eponymous group that blends rock, blues, and traditional Latin styles together in an instantly identifiable combination. But according to Santana himself, it took a bit of time for him and his band to truly find their identity.
During their earliest years, Santana was the “Carlos Santana Blues Band”, which stuck to that specific style similar to peers like Fleetwood Mac and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. During their initial success, Santana became well-known for covering the work of other artists. Whether it was Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Black Magic Woman’, Willie Bobo’s ‘Evil Ways’, or Babatunde Olatunji’s ‘Jingo’.
In fact, all the influences and outside inspirations were beginning to wreak havoc on Santana’s own image of himself. “I remember being alone one evening- until then when I heard my records it was like seeing myself in the mirror and there was no me there, only a lot of other guitarists’ faces: B.B., George Benson, Peter Green,” Santana recalled to Mojo Magazine in 2008. It took a distinctively Santana-esque composition for that image to change.
“That evening I heard ‘Samba Pa Ti’ on the radio and I looked in the mirror and it was my face, my tone, my fingerprints, my identity, my uniqueness,” Santana claimed. “Because when I recorded it I was thinking of nothing, it was just pure feeling. I have a suspicion it came from stuff bottled up inside me, that I didn’t know how to express or articulate. I get angry because, ‘Why can’t I say what I really mean?’ Then ‘Samba Pa Ti’ comes out of me. And everybody understands it.”
“‘Samba Pa Ti’ was conceived in New York City on a Sunday afternoon,” Santana explained to radio host Redbeard. “I opened the window I saw this man in the street, he was drunk and he had a saxophone and a bottle of booze in his back pocket. And I kept looking at him because he kept struggling with himself. He couldn’t make up his mind which one to put in his mouth first, the saxophone or the bottle and I immediately heard a song. I wrote the whole thing right there”
Even though Santana felt a strong personal connection with ‘Samba Pa Ti’ from the second he recorded it, the song wasn’t seen as being commercial enough for a single release. That was, until the 1974 international release of the song in support of the compilation album Santana’s Greatest Hits. ‘Samba Pa Ti’ wound up being the first Santana single to chart in the UK, topping out at number 27 in October of that year.
Check out ‘Samba Pa Ti’ down below.
