In the late 1960s, a fresh Latin music style blasted out from New York City, spurred on by an adventurous new record label. Salsa was a blend of Cuban and Puerto Rican influences, fused with R&B and jazz, and the finest salsa exponents recorded for Fania Records. The Nuyorican (New York-born Puerto Rican) trombonist, singer and bandleader Willie Colón, who has died of respiratory issues aged 75, played a key role in promoting and transforming the new style, and went on to sell more than 30m albums. Siembra, his 1978 collaboration with the Panamanian singer-songwrter Rubén Blades, was one of the most adventurous and successful albums in the history of salsa, selling more than 3m copies.
Fania Records was founded in New York in 1964 by Johnny Pacheco, a celebrated bandleader and flautist from the Dominican Republic, and Jerry Masucci, a former divorce lawyer. They knew their market and proved expert in recognising new talent. Colón was signed to Fania when he was 15, and on the advice of Pacheco he teamed up with the singer Héctor Lavoe. Their first album, El Malo (1967), was a hit, selling more than 300,000 copies, helped by astute marketing.
Colón promoted himself as a bad boy, and he reinforced that image on subsequent albums featuring Lavoe. The cover of Cosa Nuestra (1969) shows him standing over what appears to be a corpse, while the sleeve for La Gran Fuga (The Big Break) depicts him as a wanted man. Both became gold records. On Crime Pays (1972), a collection of earlier recordings, the two men posed like rich gangsters, draped over a limousine. By 1973 Colón had split with Lavoe – apparently because of Lavoe’s drug addiction. Colón said later that his own bad boy image was “always tongue-in-cheek”, and his later work suggested he was certainly no gangster.
Colón next teamed up with Blades, another brilliant vocalist. Their first album together, Matiendo Mano (1977), began with the song Pablo Pueblo, an evocative story of “tired work” and “tattered dreams” that was hailed as the first example of “conscious” or “intellectual” salsa. Then came Siembra, a best-selling set that was remarkable both for its musical and lyrical bravery, with the song Plástico mixing disco-funk influences with social comment, and Pedro Navaja, which was inspired by the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill classic Mack the Knife, telling the story of a New York hustler.
The duo went on to record Canciónes del Solar de Los Aburridos (1981), which was nominated for a Grammy and included Tiburón (Shark), an attack on US imperialism in Latin America that was banned by many US radio stations. The partnership ended after The Last Fight (1982) with an acrimonious dispute over money.
Alongside his solo career, Colón played a key role in the Fania All Stars, the internationally successful salsa supergroup of celebrities who recorded for the label. In 1971 the band recorded a double album at the Cheetah nightclub in New York, a concert that was filmed for the documentary Our Latin Thing (Nuestra Cosa). Two years later they packed Yankee Stadium in New York with 40,000 fans for a historic concert that was abandoned when the audience invaded the stage. Later in 1973 there was a further show in Puerto Rico, and tracks from both events appeared on the album Live at Yankee Stadium (1975).
Colón was also part of the line-up when the All Stars played in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1974 at the music festival held in conjunction with the Muhammed Ali/George Foreman fight. And he was with them again in 1976 when the band played at the Lyceum, London, where they were joined on stage by Steve Winwood.
Colón was credited with nearly 40 albums, including collaborations with Celia Cruz. After the breakup with Blades he set out to prove he could record albums as a lead singer, and he handled all the vocals himself when he played in London in 2007.
Alongside music, he had a second, occasional career as an actor, appearing in films including Vigilante (1982), The Last Fight (1983) and It Could Happen to You (1994). In 1987 he played a drug dealer in an episode of Miami Vice. In 2025 he appeared in the music video for Nuevayol, by Puerto Rico’s current superstar, Bad Bunny, who hailed Colón as “one of the legends” of the Latin music scene.
Like Blades, who famously ran for president of Panama in 1994, Colón took a close interest in politics. He worked with Latino civic organisations, particularly those focused on political participation and HIV/Aids awareness. He served as special assistant to David Dinkins, New York’s first black mayor, and later worked with another mayor, Michael Bloomberg, advising on outreach to Latino communities. He was less successful running for public office himself; he ran in Democratic primaries for Congress in 1994 and for New York City public advocate in 2001.
Later in life his views changed, and he became increasingly rightwing in his politics in a way that upset some of his audience. He had endorsed Hillary Clinton for US president in 2008 but said he had voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
In 2014 the musician who had once promoted himself as a “bad boy” graduated from Westchester County Police Academy in New York and at the age of 64 was sworn in as deputy sheriff for the Department of Public Safety. In 2017 he became a deputy lieutenant, but resigned in 2022.
Born in the South Bronx, to Puerto Rican parents, Colón was raised by his grandmother Antonia, because, he explained, his “father was repeatedly in jail and his mother was only 16 when he was born”. Antonia, who worked in a sweatshop, transformed his life. She taught him Spanish, introduced him to Puerto Rican music and culture, and invited him to stay at her sister’s farm in Puerto Rico.
She also bought him a trumpet for his 11th birthday, and he “drove everybody crazy”, practising all day while being taught by a neighbour, a professional musician. At 14 he switched to the trombone, saying he loved its “roar”, and started playing at weddings and parties, inspired by the trombone work of the bandleader Mon Rivera. The young Colón would take his trombone to Rivera’s concerts and “hang around with a long face” until invited up to play.
Years later, now an established star, Colón recorded an album with Rivera, There Goes the Neighbourhood (1975), which of course appeared on the Fania label.
In 1991 Colón marriedJulia Craig. She survives him, as do four children, William, Alejandro Liberty, Patrick and Adam Diego.