Ernest Anthony Puente Jr. was born on April 20, 1923, at Harlem Hospital Center in Manhattan, the son of Ernesto and Felicia Puente, Puerto Ricans living in Spanish Harlem. His father was the foreman at a razor blade factory, and the family's name for the boy, Ernestito, shrank to Tito. He was a restless child who drummed on pots and window frames until his mother sent him to 25-cent piano lessons. By ten he had moved to percussion, drawing on the jazz drummer Gene Krupa, and for a while he planned to be a dancer, with a song-and-dance act alongside his sister Anna, until an ankle tendon injury ended the idea. He was regarded as a prodigy by thirteen, and as a teenager he took the drum chair in Machito's orchestra when its drummer was drafted.

Puente was drafted himself in 1942 and spent three years in the Navy. On the escort carrier USS Santee he played alto saxophone and clarinet in the ship's big band, sat in on drums and piano, served as bugler, and came out with a Presidential Unit Citation for nine battles. The long stretches at sea taught him to arrange for a big band, and his first chart, "El Botellero," went to Machito and Mario Bauzá in New York. The G.I. Bill then paid for three years at the Juilliard School of Music, where he studied conducting, orchestration and theory. A delayed return home let him stop in several Asian ports, which left a lasting mark on his writing, and it shows in titles such as "Hong Kong Mambo" and "Mambo Buddha."

After the war he worked in the Latin dance bands of José Curbelo and Pupi Campo and formed his own group in 1948. The Palladium Ballroom on Broadway, billed as the Home of the Mambo, became the center of that scene, and Puente, Machito and Tito Rodríguez were its three leading bandleaders. His first hit, "Abaniquito," backed with "Mambo Macoco" and sung by Vicentico Valdés, came out on Tico in 1949. He was a dance bandleader first. What he sold in the 1950s was mambo, cha-cha-chá and son for ballroom floors, on Tico and, from 1956, on RCA Victor, where he cut Cuban Carnival (1956), Night Beat (1957), Top Percussion (1958) and Dance Mania (1958). Dance Mania, with Santitos Colón singing and Ray Barretto on congas, was added to the National Recording Registry in 2002.

The jazz side of his work ran alongside from the start. Puente Goes Jazz (RCA Victor, 1956) arranged standards such as "What Is This Thing Called Love" and "Yesterdays" for his mambo orchestra. In September 1958 he recorded Herman's Heat & Puente's Beat! in New York with Woody Herman's band for Everest, playing timbales on the six Latin-flavored tracks of the second side. His vibraphone and marimba playing brought piano technique to mallet percussion, and his jazz training changed how the timbales were used, turning them into a solo instrument.

"Oye Có mo Va" was recorded in 1962 for the Tico album El Rey Bravo. When Carlos Santana recorded it for Abraxas in 1970, the version released as a single in 1971 reached No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100, and on Mambo Birdland Puente thanked Santana from the stage for carrying the tune around the world. In the 1960s he also recorded a run of Tico albums with the singer La Lupe, beginning with Tito Puente Swings, The Exciting Lupe Sings (1965), and with Celia Cruz. He disliked the word salsa and treated it as a marketing term for the same New York Latin music he had been playing for decades. Homenaje a Beny Moré (Tico, 1978), his tribute to the Cuban singer Beny Moré, won the Grammy for Best Latin Recording at the 1979 ceremony. He also worked with the Latin Percussion Jazz Ensemble, which recorded Just Like Magic (1979) and played the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 18, 1980.

From 1983 he recorded for Concord Picante, the Latin imprint of Concord Jazz, and the repertoire turned openly toward jazz. On Broadway (1983) won a Grammy. El Rey (1984) took on John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" and "Equinox" with a nine-piece Latin Ensemble. Mambo Diablo (1985), recorded at Coast Recorders in San Francisco in May of that year, offered Latin versions of "Take Five" and "Lush Life" and brought in the pianist George Shearing for "Lullaby of Birdland"; it won the Grammy at the 1986 ceremony. Salsa Meets Jazz (1988) was billed with the alto saxophonist Phil Woods, and Goza Mi Timbal (1990) turned to "Airegin," "Pent Up House," "All Blues" and "Straight, No Chaser." He arranged "Mambo Rockland" for Woody Herman's band on the live album Woody's Gold Star (1987), and in June 1989 he sat in at Van Gelder Studio for the CTI all-star session Rhythmstick, playing percussion on two pieces alongside Phil Woods, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Golson, Art Farmer, Charlie Haden, John Scofield and Randy Brecker.

The 1990s kept both strands going. The Mambo King 100th LP (RMM, 1991) marked his hundredth album, and he took Mambo of the Times (1992), Royal 'T' (1993, recorded January 18 and 19, 1993, with "Donna Lee," "Moanin'" and "Stompin' at the Savoy") and Master Timbalero (1994) to Concord Picante. His Golden Latin Jazz All Stars, with Mongo Santamaría, Giovanni Hidalgo, Dave Valentin, Hilton Ruiz, Paquito D'Rivera and Claudio Roditi, recorded Live at the Village Gate (1992). Jazzin' (1996) paired him with the singer India and the Count Basie Orchestra, with arrangements by Michael Philip Mossman, Hilton Ruiz and Marty Sheller. Special Delivery (Concord Picante, 1996) put him in a big band with the trumpeter Maynard Ferguson for "Be-Bop," "Misterioso," "Stablemates" and "On Green Dolphin Street." In 1998 he played percussion on one piece of Benny Golson's Remembering Clifford, a piece titled "Tito Puente." The live album Mambo Birdland (RMM, 1999), recorded at Birdland, won the Grammy at the 2000 ceremony and the first Latin Grammy for Best Traditional Tropical Album, and Masterpiece / Obra Maestra (2000), co-led with Eddie Palmieri, won a Grammy and a Latin Grammy in 2001.

Puente appeared in films including Armed and Dangerous (1986), Radio Days (1987) and The Mambo Kings (1992), in Fernando Trueba's documentary Calle 54 (2000), on Sesame Street, and in the 1995 Simpsons two-parter "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" He performed at the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. After a show in Puerto Rico on May 31, 2000, he suffered a massive heart attack and was flown to New York City for heart-valve surgery. Complications developed and he passed away later that night. East 110th Street in Spanish Harlem was renamed Tito Puente Way on August 20, 2000, and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award followed in 2003. His other honors include the National Medal of Arts (1997), a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1990), honorary doctorates from Berklee (1995) and Columbia (1999), a U.S. postage stamp (2011), and induction into the DownBeat Hall of Fame by the magazine's Veterans Committee in 2025.

Most of what Tito Puente recorded was dance music, and he said so by the way he worked: the mambo, cha-cha-chá, guaguancó and pachanga records that fill his Tico and RCA Victor catalog were built for the Palladium floor, with hard-charging brass, a rhythm section of timbales, congas and bongos, and a bandleader who stood at the front of the stage and played. Salsa, the later commercial name for that sound, was not a word he accepted for his own music. His arrangements borrow from Cuban models, and the piano figure that drives "Oye Có mo Va" closely resembles one in Israel "Cachao" Ló pez's 1957 mambo "Chanchullo," which Puente had recorded in 1959.

The jazz credentials are real and documented. He trained at Juilliard, he learned big-band arranging in the Navy, and the Concord Picante albums he made from 1983 on are Latin jazz records by any definition, with tunes by Coltrane, Monk, Parker, Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis in the book and soloists such as Phil Woods, Maynard Ferguson, George Shearing and Dizzy Gillespie as guests. DownBeat critics named him the top percussionist in 1987, 1989, 1992, 1996 and 1997, and the magazine's Veterans Committee inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2025. As a vibraphonist he played with a pianist's block voicings, and as a timbalero he used a jazz drummer's phrasing, taking an instrument from the dance band's rhythm section to the front of the stage. Gene Krupa, the Afro-Cuban bands of Machito and Mario Bauzá, and his Asian travels in the Navy are the influences that show most clearly in his own account and in his titles.