Our good-news story of the day comes from the Bay Area, where a KRON-TV report earlier this month has led to a homeless man's reunion with a famous former friend — guitarist Carlos Santana.
Percussionist Marcus Malone, who was part of Santana's band before it played Woodstock in 1969, happened to be among those interviewed by KRON's Stanley Roberts during a report about illegal dumping in Oakland.
"At one time," Malone told KRON during that piece, "I was with Santana band, the original Santana blues band. I'm homeless and on the streets because I got in some trouble that put me in jail, I lost everything."
Santana heard about the report and with help from Roberts was reunited with his former bandmate last week. There's video of that moment here. And now, says Santana:
"I want to offer my brother Marcus Malone an opportunity to record on the next album with the original band, with Greg Rolie. We wrote a song for him called Magnificent Marcus Malone. We want him to play on it and we're going to start, Lord willing, in January or February. So I would like to get him some congas so he can get his hands hard again because he hasn't been playing the congas in a while."
The Daily Dot writes that Malone's "fiery conga rhythms were an early driving force in Carlos Santana's Latin psychedelia. ... You can hear Malone in his prime on Santana's Live at the Fillmore 1968, a scorching double album with original drummer Bob Livingston that premiered most of the material that would appear on the band's groundbreaking debut LP. The closing ecstatic 30-minute rave on Freeway is, in a word, magnificent."
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