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Carlos Santana Facts & Worksheets

Carlos Santana is an award-winning Mexican-American guitarist famous for his collaboration with Rob Thomas on the hit song "Smooth”.

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Carlos Santana is an award-winning Mexican-American guitarist famous for his collaboration with Rob Thomas on the hit song “Smooth”. He and his band introduced a fusion of Latin American Jazz and rock’n’roll, which became popular in the 1960s and 1970s. He was inducted along with his band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.

See the fact file below for more information on the Carlos Santana or alternatively, you can download our 24-page Carlos Santana worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

EARLY LIFE

  • Carlos Humberto Santana Barragán was born on July 20, 1947, in Autlán de Navarro.
  • His father Jose, who was also a musician, was the most significant influence on Santana. Jose taught his son how to play the violin at age five. The young Santana turned to guitar when he was eight.
  • His father moved his family to Tijuana, Mexico, then he moved alone to San Francisco.
  • Santana grew up in Tijuana, where he honed himself as a musician by performing with a band. He was exposed to the local music and influenced by blues guitarists T-Bone Walker and BB King.
  • Santana and his family moved to San Francisco in the early 1960s. He refused to go to school and preferred to hang out with his older friends. There was a time when the teenage Santana went back to Tijuana to work on gigs to save more money. He became an American citizen in 1965.

THE ORIGINAL BAND

  • Santana was exposed to more kinds of music such as jazz and international folk in San Francisco’s flourishing hippie scene.
  • Bill Graham discovered Santana while he was substituting Paul Butterfield at Bill Graham’s Filmore Auditorium.
  • Soon, Santana formed the Santana Blues Band with his fellow street musician David Brown on bass guitar, Marcus Malone on percussion, and Gregg Rolie on lead vocals and playing the Hammond B3 organ.
  • The band gave a highly original blend of Latin-infused rock, jazz, blues, salsa, and African rhythms, which gained an immediate following on the San Francisco club scene.

A FLOURISHING CAREER

  • Santana Blues Band signed a contract with Columbia Records. They made them shorten their name to Santana. Bill Graham, a firm believer in the band, arranged to have them perform at Woodstock Music and Art Festival in 1969. This launched their career and they garnered a massive following after the event.
  • Their album ‘Santana” with its single “Evil Ways” was released in August 1969. It became a huge hit, reaching the top 4 in the US album chart and going triple platinum, selling four million copies. The single also remained on the Billboard charts for more than two years.
  • A year later, the band released their album Abraxas, which included two chart-topping singles, “Oye Como Va” and “Black Magic Woman”. It also went platinum.
  • The band released two more successful albums in 1971 titled Santana III and in 1972 Caravanserai.
  • Santana’s band suffered from members’ departures until the band’s leader was the only one left from the original trio. The band was particularly associated with Santana himself so it did not affect his career. He even collaborated with other high-profile musicians, notably drummer Buddy Miles, pianist Herbie Hancock, and guitarist John McLaughlin.
  • After being a devoted follower of the spiritual guru Sri Chinmoy in the early 1970s, Santana recorded an album with Mclaughlin entitled Love Devotion Surrender, which offered a new kind of spiritually-oriented music marked by popular jazz.
  • Santana’s band continued to release albums throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, including Amigos in 1976 and Zebop! in 1981. He also toured and occasionally recorded solo albums, although his audience was slowly dwindling in interest in jazz/rock blends.
  • However, In 1987, Santana earned his first Grammy Award for his solo album Blues for Salvador. The album allowed him to tour extensively and play in sold-out auditoriums such as Live Aid in 1985 and Amnesty International in 1986.
  • Santana signed with Polydor and left Columbia in 1991. He released two albums under Polydor, Milagro in 1992 and Sacred Fire Live in South America in 1993.
  • In 1994, he played at the Woodstock Festival, commemorating his band’s transformative performance at the same festival 25 years ago.
  • He also released a collaborative album under his label, Guts, and Grace Music, with his brother, Jorge Santana, and nephew Carlos Hernandez in 1994. Their album Brothers was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental.

SANTANA’S HITS

  • In 1998, Santana was among the inducted musicians in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
  • Santana re-signed his band with Arista Records. The label enlisted prominent musicians to perform on Santana’s 35th-anniversary album, Supernatural, in 1999. Among them were Eric Clapton, Cee Lo Green, Dave Matthews, and Wyclef Jean.
  • Less than a year later, the album had sold 10 million copies worldwide and had one of its singles, Smooth, top the charts and become an all-time hit. The single featured lyrics sung by Rob Thomas and Santana’s electrically-charged guitar licks.
  • It garnered nine nominations at the Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Song and Record of the Year. Santana won eight awards as Song of the Year was given to Rob Thomas and Itaal Shur, who wrote the song.
  • He followed Supernatural with another award-winning album, Shaman, in 2002. The song “The Game of Love”, with Michelle Branch, won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration.
  • Another album was released in 2005, All that I Am, collaborating with Mary J. Blige, Los Lonely Boys, and Steven Tyler.
  • In the same year, Santana received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Billboard Latin Music Awards. In 2013, he received a Kennedy Center Honors.

LATER LIFE

  • He recorded a mostly instrumental album titled Shape Shifter in 2012 under his own music label, Starfaith. After two years, Corazon was released on RCA Records. This was his first-ever Spanish language album and featured a roster of Latino artists such as Juanes, ChocQuib Town, Romeo Santos, and Gloria Estefan.
  • In 2016, he also made the album, Santana IV, that featured his original sound with his bandmates from the Santana III album.
  • They embarked on a brief tour which was filmed and issued as a live album and DVD titled Live at the House of Blues Vegas.
  • Santana published a guitar lesson on YouTube as part of the online education series Masterclass in 2018.
  • His Miraculous World Tour was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Santana has been married twice: first to Deborah King, whom he married in 1973 and had three children. King filed for divorce on October 19, 2007, citing irreconcilable differences.
  • Santana proposed to Cindy Blackman after her drum solo on stage during a concert at Tinley Park, Illinois, on July 9, 2010. She is Santana’s touring drummer.
  • They got married on December 19, 2010, and currently live in Las Vegas.

Carlos Santana Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about Carlos Santana across 24 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Carlos Santana worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about Carlos Santana who is an award-winning Mexican-American guitarist famous for his collaboration with Rob Thomas on the hit song “Smooth”. He and his band introduced a fusion of Latin American Jazz and rock’n’roll, which became popular in the 1960s and 1970s. He was inducted along with his band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • Carlos Santana Facts
  • Guitarist’s Life
  • Career of a Musician
  • “Milagro”
  • Santana’s Collaborators
  • Santana’s Albums
  • Four Achievements
  • Santana’s Secrets
  • Santana’s Beginnings
  • My Song
  • Four Favorite Songs

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Use With Any Curriculum

These worksheets have been specifically designed for use with any international curriculum. You can use these worksheets as-is, or edit them using Google Slides to make them more specific to your own student ability levels and curriculum standards.

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