Carlos Santana was born on July 20, 1947, in Autlán, Jalisco, Mexico. The young Santana showed an early interest in music, beginning with the violin at age five and progressing to the guitar (which would become his hallmark instrument) at age eight. He began his studies with his father, a musician in a Mariachi band. Still, he soon began to study prominent American performers like Ritchie Valens—this at a period when rock music had not yet reached the public in Mexico. Santana and his family eventually relocated to San Francisco, CA, where his musical career began in earnest.
Personal Life
He has been a naturalised American citizen since 1965 and has been married to Deborah Santana. She filed for divorce on October 19, 2007, after 34 years of marriage, alleging “irreconcilable disagreements”. They have three children: Salvador (also a professional musician), Stella, and Angelica. He married Cindy Blackman, Lenny Kravitz’s drummer, in December 2010.
Career
Carlos Santana is a songwriter and musician who has received several Grammy Awards, Latin Grammy Awards, Billboard Music Awards, and far too many additional music honours to name here. With his band, Santana, he pioneered the Latin-fusion sound, which may best be defined as a blend of rock, salsa, and jazz, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But it wasn’t until 1966 that Santana formed his first band, the Santana Blues Band, and he began to incorporate influences from a variety of genres into his work, including psychedelic soul acts like Sly and the Family Stone and Jimi Hendrix, British rock bands like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, jazz artists like Miles Davis and John Coltrane, and Latin artists like Tito Puente and Mongo Santamaria.
All of these divergent inspirations combined to create the sound of Santana, who released its debut album under its new shorter moniker on Columbia Records in 1969. After a few personnel changes geared the band towards a more hard rock sound, Santana was booked at the now legendary Woodstock Festival, which, along with various recordings of the fest – including the award-winning documentary simply titled Woodstock – contributed greatly to the band’s early popularity and are still enjoyed by fans of 60s music today.
The next year, Santana released Abraxas, the band’s breakthrough album, and the band published an astounding 25 studio albums from 1969 to 2019, in addition to Santana’s solo efforts. Seven of them solo albums are studio albums, however, Santana has chosen to release the majority of his recordings with his namesake band.
Over the following decades, he continued to work in his unique wheelhouse of combining rock, jazz, and psychedelia, and he experienced a major resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s, when his 1999 album Supernatural was an enormous success, selling more than 15 million albums in the US alone, and 30 million worldwide. That record reached number one in 10 countries and earned eight Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year. However, the biggest hit from the record was a duet with another entirely different band – the rock trio Matchbox 20. “Smooth” was a blockbuster hit duet between the bands’ Matchbox 20 and Santana in 1999, and it still receives a lot of playing today.
After the success of “Smooth,” Santana firmly established himself as an elder statesman of rock music, regularly appearing on lists of the best guitarists of all time. He participated in the season finale of American Idol in 2009, with other great bands such as KISS and Queen. Later, in 2014, he released Corazon, his first album in his native Spanish tongue.
During his career, Santana has mostly focused on music, although he has been involved in at least one commercial venture: a chain of Mexican restaurants founded with Chef Roberto Santibaez that has a handful of sites around the southwest and southeast of the United States. It’s titled “Maria Maria,” after one of his most well-known songs. He also made his debut as a published author in 2014, when he released his memoirs under the title The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light.
Real Estate and Net Worth
Throughout the previous few years, Carlos Santana has shown a penchant for newly built residences. In 2013, he allegedly spent $6 million on an opulent modern-style property in Las Vegas, only blocks away from another four-bedroom house he bought in 2010 for $3.5 million and then listed for sale around the time he bought the latter. The home had cutting-edge technology for temperature control, security, and comfort, as well as a home movie theatre and gaming area, among other features. The home is located in an extremely upscale Las Vegas community on Bear’s Best Golf Club, and it was reported in 2013 that the $6 million he spent on the home was the most paid for any residence per square foot over the previous several years, as well as the fifth highest home purchase in Vegas at the time. He’s also been linked to a two-building estate in San Rafael, California, barely a 20-minute drive from his former adoptive homeland of San Francisco.
Carlos has numerous amazing residences in Hawaii. He offered a house on Maui near the Ritz Kapalua for $7.5 million in March 2012. He appears to have accepted $4.7 million in the end. Carlos spent $2.7 million in May 2019 on a gorgeous house on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. A year later, he spent $8 million on another Kauai mansion. Carlos spent $20.5 million for his THIRD house in Kauai in June 2021. Around the time of this acquisition, he listed his $8 million Kauai property for $13 million, $3 million more than he spent a year before. Carlos sold his second Kauai property for $11.9 million in March 2022.
Carlos Santana is a musician from Mexico and the United States with a net worth of $120 million. Carlos Santana rose to stardom in the late 60s and early 70s with his enormously successful mix of rock and Hispanic music. Santana, a group heavily influenced by blues, jazz, and folk, took Northern California by storm and was first signed by CBS Records. They performed at Woodstock just before the publication of their debut album. Their memorable 1969 performance catapulted them into an international celebrity and drove the popularity of their record. The song “Evil Ways” peaked at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the album “Santana” peaked at #4.
During the following few years, his band’s makeup would change often, and the group’s music would gradually drift towards jazz fusion. Despite the changes, Carlos Santana continued to release hit singles like “Black Magic Woman”, “Oye Come Va”, “Everybody’s Everything”, “No One to Rely On”, “She’s Not There”, “Stormy”, “Winning”, and “Hang On”. He went out of popularity in the 90s but rebounded back hugely with the 1999 publication of his album “Supernatural”. “Supernatural” spawned several successful songs, including the number-one singles “Smooth” and “Maria Maria,” and received nine Grammy Awards. Since then, he has continued to make popular singles and albums, as well as go on successful international tours.
Facts
Net Worth: $120 Million
Date of Birth: July 20, 1947 (75 years old)
Place of Birth: Autlán
Gender: Male
Height:5 ft 9 in (1.77 m)
Profession: Musician, Songwriter, Guitarist, Artist, Bandleader, Film Score Composer, Music artist
Nationality: Mexico
