Born in Mexico, Carlos Santana moved to the US with his family as a teenager and was in a unique position to combine his own musical heritage (partly gained from his father, who was also a musician) with the stylistic melting pot that was taking place in San Francisco during the ’60s.
Initially, his strongest influence was the blues; B.B. King, Mike Bloomfield and Peter Green, among others, inspired him to form the Santana Blues Band in 1966. Within a couple of years, his Mexican heritage began to surface and combined with the influences of Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Tito Puente and Gábor Szabó.
