Description

Rare Swedish pressing with unique Swedish cover artwork ‘Oye Como Va’ is a song written by Latin jazz and mambo musician Tito Puente in 1963 and popularized by Santana's rendition of the song in 1970 on their album Abraxas, helping to catapult Santana into stardom with the song reaching #13 on the Billboard Top 100. The title is Spanish and translates to ‘Listen to how it goes’ literally meaning ‘Hey, what's up’ or ‘Hows it going’. Santana's arrangement is a driving, cranked-up version in a new style of Latin rock adding electric guitar, Hammond B-3 organ, and a rock drum kit to the instrumentation and dropping Puente's brass section. The electric guitar part takes on Puente's flute melody, and the organ provides accompaniment (with organist Gregg Rolie's discretional use of the Leslie effect). There are several guitar solos and an organ solo, all of which are rooted in rock and the blues but also contain licks similar to those of the original arrangement. This Swedish single version features another track from the ‘Abraxas’ album on the B-side. The instrumental ‘Samba Pa Ti’ (‘Samba For You’) was covered by Jose Feliciano, who added lyrics, and also by Angelique Kidjo, who put lyrics in Yoruba on her album Oyo. It was also used in the UK as the background music for TV ads for Marks and Spencer food in 2006. Track listing: 1. Oye Como Va-Tito Puente cover 2. Sama Pa Ti-instrumental