In a smoky New York supper club in 1962, Chick Corea had just quit, a young fill-in named Herbie Hancock was at the piano, and trumpeter Donald Byrd asked the bandleader what the missing link was between Afro-Cuban music and African-American jazz. Then Hancock played a new tune, the bandleader ran to his congas, and Watermelon Man was born. This deep dive traces the life of that bandleader, Ramon Mongo Santamaría, from the Jesus Maria neighborhood of Havana, where he was born in 1917 and learned rumba by watching mentor Chicho Piquero, to the Tropicana house band and a fateful Mexico tour.

The episode follows his 1950 move to New York, conga chairs with Tito Puente and Cal Tjader, the folkloric 1952 album Afro-Cuban Drums that credited underground rumberos by name, and the 1959 composition Afro Blue, the first jazz standard built on an Afri ...