One of the most influential men in the development of Latin Jazz was born on this date in 1911 in Havana, Cuba. Mario Bauza was a child prodigy on the clarinet and was featured as a soloist with the Havana Symphony at age 11.  While still in his teens, Bauza travelled to New York City as a member of a touring orchestra and became enamored of the Harlem jazz scene of the 1920s. After the orchestra returned to Cuba, Bauza declared his goal in life was to become a New York jazz musician and began learning the alto saxophone.  Oddly enough, however, his chance to go back to America and came when a Cuban vocalist offered him a chance to record there with him, but Mario would need to learn to play the trumpet.  Bauza got a trumpet and, after practicing for only two weeks, could handle the parts for the recording session and was hired.  Now he decided to focus all of his musical energy on the trumpet and before long was playing lead for the Chick Webb Orchestra and, not long after that, was acting as musical director for the band.  Legend has it that Bauza was the one who introduced Ella Fitzgerald to Webb.

By 1938, Bauza was playing with Cab Calloway and convinced Calloway to hire Dizzy Gillespie for the trumpet section.  The next year Mario became co-founder and musical director for Machito and his Afro-Cubans.  This band played Latin style dance music like the mambo, but also performed straight-ahead big band jazz at venues like the Palladium Ballroom in New York.  Bauza hired a little known timbalero named Tito Puente for the group in 1942.  Recording their first sides in 1941 for Decca Records, in 1943 the group recorded perhaps their most famous tune "Tanga."  Bauza remained the musical director for the orchestra for more than thirty years until 1976.

After his retirement from the Afro-Cubans in the mid-1970s, Bauza seemed to slip into obscurity, but thanks to some tribute concerts his career was revived in later life and he went on to record additional music in the 1980s and received two Grammy nominations, a tribute concert on the occasion of his 80th birthday featuring Dizzy Gillespie and Celia Cruz, and an appearance by his band on the Cosby Show in the early 1990s.

Mario Bauza's contributions to the development of Latin jazz are immeasurable, as are the contributions to the music world by some of the people he discovered and promoted.  Bauza passed away on July 11, 1993.

Here is a link to a Machito recording of "Tanga," considered by many to be the first authentic Latin jazz song:

"TANGA"