In early 1930s Spanish Harlem, a hyperactive seven-year-old drove his neighbors crazy banging on pots, pans, and window frames. His mother responded with 25-cent piano lessons. This episode follows how that noisy kid, Ernest Anthony Puente Jr., became Tito Puente, the King of the Timbales, and how a lifetime of unexpected experiences, from an ankle injury that ended a dance career to combat in World War II, synthesized into a sound that revolutionized Latin jazz.

We trace his early influences, including Gene Krupa and the Afro-Cuban rhythms he absorbed in San Juan, his teenage stint replacing the drafted drummer in Machito's band, and his three years in the Navy aboard the USS Santee, where he served as a machine gunner in nine battles while mailing big band arrangements home on V-mail. The conversation covers his study of Asian scales and  ...