One of salsa’s preeminent bandleaders for four decades and one of the genre’s premier bongo players, Puerto Rican-born Roberto Roena Vázquez started as a dancer, and was later dubbed "El Gran Bailarín" (The Great Dancer). He developed parallel skills as a percussionist and got his big break in the mid-’50s when Rafael Cortijo recruited him to his legendary Combo. When pianist Rafael Ithier led a defection of sidemen from Cortijo’s Combo in 1962 to become the basis of El Gran Combo, Roena remained until Cortijo departed for New York. After a brief stint with the orchestra of Mario Ortiz, Roena was invited to replace El Gran Combo’s departing bongosero and stayed with the band until 1969. Roberto made his recording debut as a leader in 1966 with a short-lived band called Megatones on Se Pone Bueno / It Gets Better on Alegre Records. Three years later he signed with Fania International (later called International Records), a division of Fania Records, and debuted with his band Apollo Sound on Roberto Roena y su Apollo Sound. Roena hired some of Puerto Rico’s most creative arrangers to develop Apollo Sound into one of salsa’s most progressive and sophisticated outfits with their own highly distinctive style. The tail end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s was a challenging period in Roena’s career. In 1978 his groundbreaking band Apollo Sound lost trombonist and innovative arranger Julio "Gunda" Merced and haemorrhaged six other members who joined Merced in his new band Salsa Fever. Roena staged a remarkable recovery and the first album by the reconstituted Apollo Sound, El Progreso (Fania International, 1978), was one of his finest. He continued to record as a leader with the Fania family up to 1982, thereafter he made albums for the Pa’lante, Up, Sonostar, Musical Productions and Roan labels. – John Child
