Reporter reunites Carlos Santana with former bandmate who is homeless in Oakland

OAKLAND, Calif. – Guitarist Carolos Santana has been reunited with a former bandmate he hasn’t seen in decades and who now lives on the streets of Oakland.

Television station KRON in San Francisco reports (http://bit.ly/JVGjGa) that one of its reporters ran into percussionist Marcus “The Magnificent” Malone while working on a story about illegal dumping last week.

Reporter Stanley Roberts initially was skeptical of the homeless man’s claim that the Santana Blues Band got its start in his mother’s garage in the late 1960s.

But Roberts checked out the story and found it was true. And on Friday, he took Santana to see Malone for the first time in decades.

Malone played congas on Santana’s eponymous first album, but left the band shortly before its seminal performance at Woodstock when he was imprisoned at San Quentin.

The two men tell Roberts they had not seen each other since then.