Santana's Supernatural Career

 Mission Park Dolores in San Francisco

Mission Dolores Park (commonly called Dolores Park; formerly known as Mission Park) is a San Francisco, California, city park located in the neighborhood of Mission Dolores, at the western edge of the Mission District, which lies to the east of the park. To the west of the park is a hillside referred to as "Dolores Heights" or considered a part of the Castro neighborhood. Dolores Park is two blocks tall by one block wide, based on the configuration of north-south and east-west blocks in that part of San Francisco. It is bounded by 18th Street on the north, 20th Street to the south, Dolores Street to the east and Church Street to the west. The northern end of Dolores Park is located directly across the street from Mission High School.

The Fillmore

In the mid-1960s, The Fillmore Auditorium became the focal point for psychedelic music and counterculture in general, with such acts as The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Carlos Santana, The Allman Brothers Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Miles Davis, and British acts The Who, Pink Floyd, Elton John, and Cream all performing at the venue.^[2] Besides rock, Graham also featured non-rock acts such as Lenny Bruce, Miles Davis, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Charles Lloyd, Aretha Franklin, and Otis Redding as well as poetry readings.

Santana's Supernatural Career:

Carlos first began playing the strip in Tijuana at age of 11. But it was when he joined his family in San Francisco's Mission District at the age of 16 that he became truly inspired.

In San Francisco he discovered a thriving cultural scene with a diversity of musical styles, including jazz, blues, international folk music, and classical salsa by the likes of Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri. He began emulating the sounds of artists like B.B. King, T.Bone Walker and John Lee Hooker. Santana had a musical revelation at the Fillmore West in San Francisco in 1966, where he saw B.B. King for the first time. This experience would inspire his own famous guitar tone.

"It was B.B.'s first time at the Fillmore, and he got a standing ovation before he even began playing," Santana told Guitar.

World's Alan DiPerna. "He was so moved that he started crying. And I remember, because of the way the light was hitting him, all you could see was the glitter of tears in his eyes and the diamonds on his rings when he put his hand up to his face. And when you were a kid who'd just come up from Tijuana and felt like you didn't know anything, that kind of thing really hit you. B.B. King hit the note and it changed everything for me. I said, `That's it. There's the sound I've been searching for.' I felt like a kid chasing the circus." Santana added that part of what King's playing taught him was to think in terms of the individual note. "A note is like a rose," he said. "It can be closed, or halfway open, or all the way in bloom. You have to know when to hit that note the right way-choose how each note is going to be. It's like being a gardener. You want to present the best possible bouquet."

Not long after that life-changing night at the Fillmore, Santana formed a band with his friends Gregg Rolie, Gus Rodriguez, Michael Carabello, naming it The Santana Blues Band. The group was the last major act to emerge from the psychedelic San Francisco music scene of the 1960s, and it enjoyed massive success at the end of the decade and into the early '70s.

The group made its debut in 1968 at the Fillmore Auditorium and became a favorite of influential West Coast promoter and Fillmore owner Bill Graham, performing there regularly to packed houses. The band played a triumphant four-night stand at the venue, portions of which have been released by Legacy Recordings in a two-CD set, Live at the Fillmore West.

Meanwhile, Santana was signed to Columbia Records and recorded a self-titled debut album. At this point, the group was a sextet consisting of Carlos (guitar), Gregg Rolie (keyboards and vocals; born June 17, 1947, in Seattle, WA ), David Brown (bass; born February 15, 1947, in New York, NY), Michael Shrieve (drums), Jose "Chepito" Areas (percussion), and Michael Carabello (percussion; born November 18, 1947, in San Francisco).

"Merging it didn't happen overnight," he adds. "What happened was that we were playing blues, and we were supposed to play at the Fillmore with Howlin' Wolf and Steve Miller-I remember because that was the biggest break we were going to get-but then something happened. They took me to the hospital for tuberculosis. I was there for three-and-a-half months, and I couldn't get out. It was like being in jail. They put me in this ward, like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or something.

"And so we had to cancel. But people kept coming to see me from the band, and they would say, `Hey, just to keep the band together we hired a conga player.' I thought, `A conga player?

That's different.' So when I got out, we started playing with this conga player called Marcus Malone. Before that, they played with Michael Carabella. Malone was the one who brought in `Jingo,' which of course belonged to [African drummer Babatunde] Olatunji,' and all those other songs."

... fllow on http://www.sfmission.com/santana/career.htm