Tito Puente - Para Los Rumberos (1992) (Masters At Work mixes)

1992 - 1994 were really classic years for me. New York house was at its prime: MAW, Sanchez, Morales, MK, Johnny Vicious, Vasquez, Tomiie... It was a really stimulating time.

Masters At Work's roots in Latino and house gave rise to a few interesting collaborations with Tito Puente at the time, culminating with his contribution to the Nuyorican Soul project, but even before then the MAW boys were taking Puente tracks and housing them up for the club kids, such as Para Los Rumberos for the Mambo Kings soundtrack.

It was a great track that only saw single release on 12", but the Masters At Work Forever blog (during its short life of 9 months) made the Kenlou mix available for download, and I decided to fuse it with the dub available on the first BBE compilation of MAW tracks. The result is nearly 11 minutes of classic Latin house, great percussion (obviously) and added vocals from India. Hard to complain about really.

I cleaned up the vinyl rip, tweaked the sound a little to make the two tracks flow into each others as seamlessly as possible and repeated a bar or two that I especially liked. There's definitely enough going on to keep your interest for 10'45". Have a listen...



And once again, the track's an example of how house music of the time has been orphaned by major labels; released as a club tool to boost the film nearly twenty years ago, no-one has got round to having it released digitally, and the Kenlou mix is - as such - only available on blogs. Proof that major labels are generally just short-sighted money-making machines with no interest in the quality of their back catalogue at all.

You can download Tito Puente - Para Los Rumberos (Kenlou/Puente's Vibe mix Fist fusion)

by pressing the download button on the player above (16MB).