Ray Barretto (April 29, 1929 – February 17, 2006) was a Grammy Award-winning Latin/Latin jazz musician of Puerto Rican ancestry. Ray Barretto, a percussionist extraordinaire and legend in the Salsa & latin Jazz music community has left the music scene with his death in February 2006 at age 76. Born of Puerto Rican descendence in Brooklyn during the depression, he lived with his mother in East Harlem, The South Bronx and other "boricua" districts before he joined the army, where in the latter 1940's he heard Dizzy Gillespie's hard bebop.