Ray Santos (December 28, 1928 – October 17, 2019) was an American Grammy Award-winning Latin musician. He was born December 28, 1928 in New York City to Puerto Rican parents. He attended the Juilliard School of Music where he studied saxophone. Santos has played and arranged for such artists as Noro Morales, Machito, Tito Rodriguez, Eddie Palmieri, and Tito Puente among many others.
Santos served as music consultant and arranger for the soundtrack of the motion picture The Mambo Kings. He arranged and directed the orchestra for Linda Ronstadt’s Frenesí album.
Ray Santos taught at the City College of New York for over 20 years, directing the Latin Band. He retired from City College in December 2013 at the age of 84. He continued to stay active in Latin Music. In 2018, Ray Santos contributed arrangements to Eddie Palimieri’s Mi Luz Mayor album, on the Uprising Music Label. He was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame in 2003 and received the Latin Grammy Trustees Award in 2011.
He died on October 17, 2019 at age 90.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Santos
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Other Notable Musicians’ Deaths…
October 2019
23: Rolando Panerai, 95, Italian baritone singer.
22: Ed Cherney, 69, American recording engineer, cancer; Garry Koehler, 64, Australian country musician and songwriter, cancer; Raymond Leppard, 92, British conductor, director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (1987–2001); Hans Zender, 82, German conductor and composer (Stephen Climax).
21: Peter Hobbs, 58, Australian metal singer and guitarist (Hobbs’ Angel of Death).
20: Nick Tosches, 69, American journalist, music critic and writer (Country, The Devil and Sonny Liston, The Last Opium Den).
17: Bob Kingsley, 80, American Hall of Fame radio host (American Country Countdown, Bob Kingsley’s Country Top 40), bladder cancer; Márta Kurtág, 92, Hungarian pianist; Ray Santos, 90, American saxophonist and composer.
15: Cacho Castaña, 77, Argentine singer and actor (El Mundo que inventamos, Los Hijos de López, Merry Christmas), lung disease; Hossein Dehlavi, 92, Iranian composer (Mana and Mani), complications from Alzheimer’s disease.