Being a New Yorker, I used to dance to Latin music. There was a place called the Palladium on Broadway. And Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez used to play. So I still have that in my blood.
Jazz flute's funny. And I'm a big Latin music fan, Tito Puente, Tina Cruz, all that stuff.
At 14 and 15, I used to listen to Tito Puente, Dave Valentine and everything that was happening with American jazz. I love it.
Tito Santana was one of the hardest working guys in the business. When Tito used to make that comeback, the people went crazy because he had so much fire. He had so much damn energy. He could just go and go and go.
I remember the first time I fought somebody with a name and that was Tito Ortiz. I didn't start fighting until like the second round because I was like, 'Oh my God, that's Tito Ortiz. That's Tito Ortiz from TV. Look how big his head is, damn.'
I think the Apollo has always been the people's performing arts center and reflected the community, whether it is Stevie Wonder or Tito Puente.
At rehearsals, I began conducting the band, counting them in without thinking. I guess it came from watching salsa legends like my uncle and Tito Puente, who was very much the leader of his band on stage.
I trained with a guy named Tito Gobbi, who was the Marlon Brando of the opera world. Tito Gobbi was the greatest singing baritone in the opera world and I studied in Florence, Firenze, with him. That was my first love, as it was Frank Sinatra's, oddly enough.
I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa.
In 1942 Cachao wrote a tune for Arcao, 'Rareza de Melitn,' with a memorable catchy tumbao. In 1957 Arcao recorded a reworking of it under the name 'Chanchullo'; and in 1962 Tito Puente reworked that into 'Oye como va,' still with that same groove. In this form, audibly the same, it powered Carlos Santana's multiplatinum 1970 cover version, close to three decades after Cachao first played it.
I grew up in a big ol' Latin family, so that's all the music we used to play - salsa music. We'd always dance and have fun. You know how families get down, man! We just had fun with it.
After I started training with some of the best in the world and fighting in the UFC, I started really wanting fights with guys I used to idolize and watch on TV. Guys like Tito Ortiz and Randy Couture.
You put music in categories because you need to define a sound, but when you don't play it on your so-called radio stations that claim to be R&B or jazz or whatever... All music is dance music. But when people think of dance music, they think of techno or just house. Anything you can dance to is dance music. I don't care if it's classical, funk, salsa, reggae, calypso; it's all dance music.
William Maxwell's my favorite North American writer, I think. And an Irish writer who used to write for 'The New Yorker' called Maeve Brennan, and Mary Lavin, another Irish writer. There were a lot of writers that I found in 'The New Yorker' in the Fifties who wrote about the same type of material I did - about emotions and places.
Another example of what I have to put up with from him. But there was a time I was mad at all my straight friends when AIDS was at its worst. I particularly hated the New Yorker, where Calvin [Trillin] has published so much of his work. The New Yorker was the worst because they barely ever wrote about AIDS. I used to take out on Calvin my real hatred for the New Yorker.
Growing up, I was definitely surrounded by music all the time. My parents used to always play music; my dad used to have reggae on. I remember walking around with a cassette recorder, and I used to just record the songs I would hear on the radio so I could play it back when I feel like.
There used to be a time when people used to hold up cigarette lighters and candles at concerts, and the place was aglow to celebrate the end of the evening, or during a slow song, there was this congregational euphoria that used to exist. It still does, but now it's a question of iPhones being held up.