HACKENSACK, New Jersey (AP) - Ray Barretto, the Grammy-winning Latin jazz percussionist who had recently undergone heart surgery, died Friday, hospital officials and friends said. He was 76.

George Rivera, a friend who has been serving as a family spokesman, said Barretto died with his wife and two sons by his bedside at the Hackensack University Medical Center. Barretto had undergone heart bypass surgery in January and was operated on again two weeks later after an artery burst.

"He survived the bypass, he was feeling really good," Rivera said. "He was starting to talk and feeling strong, then something happened that night."

Barretto also had been recovering from pneumonia.

"He was suffering too much, so the Lord took him," Fidel Estrada, another family spokesman, told The Associated Press in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Barretto grew up listening to the music of Puerto Rico and to the jazz of Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Benny Goodman.

After playing in Tito Puente's band in the late '50s, his popularity grew in the New York jazz scene, and he recorded with Cannonball Adderley, Freddie Hubbard, Cal Tjader and Dizzy Gillespie.

Barretto, known for integrating the conga drum into jazz, won a Grammy award for best Tropical Latin performance in 1989 for the song Ritmo en el Corazon with Celia Cruz. His 1979 album Ricanstruction is considered one of the classic salsa recordings.

Barretto was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame in 1999. In January, he was honoured as one of the National Endowment for the Arts' Jazz Masters of 2006, the nation's highest jazz honour.