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Carlos Augusto Alves Santana (born July 20, 1947), is a Grammy Award-winning Mexican-born American Latin rock musician and guitarist.
He became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, the Santana Blues Band, going mostly under the title "Santana", which created a highly successful blend of salsa, rock, blues, and jazz fusion. Their sound featured his melodic, blues based guitar lines set against Latin percussion such as timbales and congas. Santana continued to work in these forms over the following decades, and experienced a sudden resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. Rolling Stone also named Santana number 15 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time in 2003.
Santana's record sales in the 1990s had been very low, and towards the end of the decade he was without a contract. However Arista Records' Clive Davis, who had worked with Santana at Columbia (which is now co-owned with Arista under Sony BMG), signed him and encouraged him to record a star-studded album with mostly younger artists. The result in 1999 was Supernatural, which included collaborations with Bobby Martin,Everlast, Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty, Eric Clapton, Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, Cee-Lo, Maná, Dave Matthews, K. C. Porter, and others.
The first single was "Smooth", a dynamic cha-cha stop-start number co-written and sung by Rob Thomas, and laced throughout with Santana's guitar fills and runs. The track's energy was immediately apparent on radio, and it was played on a wide variety of station formats. It spent twelve weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming in the process the last #1 single of the 1990s; a music video set on a hot barrio street was also very popular. Supernatural sold large numbers of records and soon reached triple platinum status. The album also reached number one on the US album charts. The follow-up single, "Maria Maria", arranged by Bobby Martin and featuring the R&B duo The Product G&B, also reached number one and spent ten weeks there in the summer of 2000. Supernatural eventually sold over 15 million copies in the United States alone, making it Santana's biggest sales success by far.
Supernatural and the different tracks on it then won nine Grammy Awards (eight for Santana personally), including Album of the Year, Record of the Year for "Smooth", and Song of the Year for Thomas and Itaal Shur. Santana's acceptance speeches described his feelings about music's place in one's spiritual existence.
In 2001, Santana was featured in Michael Jackson's song Whatever Happens, from the album Invincible, playing guitar.
In 2005, Herbie Hancock approached Santana to play on, as well as to help in gathering other artists to record, an album similar to Supernatural. The resulting album, titled Possibilities, was released on August 30, 2005, featuring Carlos Santana and Angélique Kidjo on "Safiatou".
Santana's album All That I Am (2005) followed the format of Supernatural and Shaman, consisting primarily of collaborations with other artists; the first single, the peppy "I'm Feeling You", was again with Michelle Branch and The Wreckers. The song "Just Feel Better" featured Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. Another song on the album, "Trinity," featured Santana collaborating with Kirk Hammett of Metallica and Robert Randolph of Robert Randolph & the Family Band. "Cry Baby Cry" features hip-hop/reggae icon Sean Paul, as well as R&B singer, Joss Stone.
In April and May 2006 he started a tour in Europe where he promoted the band of his son Salvador Santana as his opening act.
