Manolín González — Manuel “Manolín” González, who died on 23 August 2012 — was a Dominican saxophonist, bandleader and composer who spent his working life inside New York salsa. He played saxophone, flute, clarinet, piano and Dominican percussion, and his alto is on records that belong to other people’s legends.

Tambora before the saxophone

He grew up listening to Cuban music with his father and was playing the tambora before he turned twelve. As a teenager he entered the Conservatorio Nacional, and it was there that he fell for the saxophone. He also studied with Rafael Ignacio, one of the serious Dominican composers of the century, and took orchestral arranging and composition — a formal grounding most of his later New York colleagues did not have.

With the saxophone under control he joined Johnny Ventura’s orchestra, where he stayed a short time.

El barrio latino

His family settled in New York, in the Latin barrio, at the height of the salsa fever, and he went straight to work. He played with Chuito Vélez and Mario Bauzá at the same time, then with Machito y sus Afrocubans, Cortijo y su Combo, Charlie Palmieri and Primitivo Santos y su Orquesta.

It was with Rafael Cortijo that he met Ismael Rivera, and the two became friends. He debuted with Maelo’s Cachimbos on De Colores in 1969, and his saxophone became part of what that band sounded like. He said it plainly: everything he learned, he learned with Rafael Cortijo and Ismael Rivera. He came back to them in 1973 for Vengo Por La Maceta.

The record with no merengues

In 1970 he launched his own project. He had passed briefly through the orchestra of his brother Jorge “George” González, cutting an obscure 45, and had run a short-lived group called Manolín González y Sus Merengueros; that group was renamed Manolín González y su Tribu for a self-titled LP, recorded in 1970 and released the following year on Ansonia — the New York label that had recorded Ángel Viloria y su Conjunto Típico Cibaeño two decades earlier.

Vitín López and Willie Torres sang it. The ten tracks were Tápate De La Lengua, Canción De La Serranía, I’ll Never Fall In Love Again, El León Afeita’o, Movin’ With Manny, Quiero Amanecer, Imagines, By The Time I Get To Phoenix, Esperaré and Bilongo.

It was saxophone-led and it anticipated the sound the Cachimbos would have — the two groups shared the Cuban pianist Javier Vázquez. It ran from cumbia to bolero and from instrumental rock to Latin soul, and it contained, from a man who would name his next band after the tambora, not one merengue. Canción De La Serranía, the guaguancó, is the track collectors chase: a Roberto Cole lyric longing for the Puerto Rican countryside, sung over music that is entirely urban New York.

Orquesta Tambora

In 1981 he built another band, Manolín González y su Orquesta Tambora, named for the drum at the centre of merengue, and put out Eso Sí Me Gusta: Mercedes La Loca, El Limpiabota, Marinero, Eso Sí Me Gusta, Muchacha De 15 Años, Yo Te Quiero Así, Canta Mundo, Santiago and A Lo Oscuro.

He lived for a stretch in New Jersey. In those later years he worked with Juan Luis Guerra 4.40, with Dominica y su Banda, and with The New York Band — a Dominican who had spent two decades making Puerto Rican and Cuban music in New York, playing at the end with the Dominican bands the city produced.