1934–1983 · American Latin jazz percussionist and bandleader
Born William Correa in East Harlem in 1934, Bobo was a percussionist’s percussionist: timbales with Tito Puente from 1954 to 1957, then work with Mongo Santamaría and Cal Tjader, then a Verve contract from 1965 and a run of Latin-soul albums under his own name. “Evil Ways” was a track on one of them, Bobo Motion, recorded in July 1967. Carlos Santana has credited him as one of the first musicians to genuinely fuse Latin music and blues on record, which is a fair description of what the original sounds like. Bobo died of cancer in 1983, aged 49.