III

SANTANA

Columbia/Legacy

Let's visit yesteryear, well before Carlos became little more than a special guest star on Santana albums. Santana III showcases an exceedingly tight band digging into grooves that are even more Latin-oriented than Santana's first two LPs. Two terrific songs balance the salsa/jam workouts: "No One to Depend On" and "Everything's Coming Our Way." This album unveiled 15-year-old guitarist Neal Schon, a firebrand with a wah-wah fetish who clearly needs some seasoning. While the communally minded Carlos lets his protégé hog way too much of the solo time, at least Schon brings some beguiling dual-guitar harmonies to the party. This newly minted, two-disc Legacy edition has three previously unreleased studio jams (with a decided Latin bent) and a second disc capturing the band in a fiery live set at Fillmore West on July 4, 1971.

This article appears in Mar 22-28, 2006.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...