"Not very fluent, but I did get by." He and artists like Willie Colon and Celia Cruz collaborated to create the salsa supergroup Fania All-Stars. Their iconic, incomparable sound still resonates.
A Panamanian singer-songwriter, he arrived in New York in the early ‘70s, got a job in the Fania mailroom and from there persuaded some of the label’s stars ... and sell all of them.