The relationship with Mr. Lavoe, who developed a drug addiction, deteriorated, and Mr. Colón found other fruitful musical partnerships, including with his mentor, the singer Mon Rivera, on such irresistible dance songs as “Tinguilikitín,” and, most especially, with Blades, the Panamanian-born singer and songwriter.
Their release, “Siembra” (which can mean sowing or planting), was widely considered a genre landmark, with a frisson of barrio-centric political consciousness. Wildly ambitious thematically and lyrically, it even paid homage to German expressionist-era cabaret like “The Threepenny Opera” with “Pedro Navaja.” That song, modeled on “Mack the Knife,” detailed the unraveling of an East Harlem criminal after he commits a murder.
Mr. Colón, who also recorded with Celia Cruz and Tito Puente, among others, received the Latin Recording Academy’s award for lifetime achievement in 2004. In 2015, Billboard magazine named him one of the 30 most influential Latin artists of all time, and younger musicians such as Rauw Alejandro and Daddy Yankee expressed their admiration for him.
William Anthony Colón Román was born on April 28, 1950, in the South Bronx. He said his grandmother, who worked in a sweatshop, raised him because his father was repeatedly in jail and his mother was 16.
Mr. Colón’s foray into music began when his grandmother, who introduced him to the music of her homeland, bought him a trumpet for his 11th birthday. A neighbor and professional musician taught him to play the instrument and to read music. “I would practice all day, which would drive everybody crazy,” he told The Herald.
Three years later, he had swapped his trumpet for a valve trombone — he loved its “roar,” he said — and began playing weddings and other events with his own bands. At 16, he started shadowing Mon Rivera in nightclubs.
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