She was good looking in her younger days and toughed it out in a man’s world supporting her mother and her children.
She saw Latin music as the future of pop music because it maintained the beautiful melodies.
She got all her chops and skills from bebop jazz which is super hard. She learned advanced progressions from learning standards and brought those advanced musical ideas to the simpler world of rock and pop.
One of her basic ideas was to not waste time learning scales but rather to learn chord tones. Learn where the root, the third, the fifth and the seventh are for your chords. And, learn fingering runs on those chord tones. You don’t really have to know the names of the notes other than the roots.
If someone gives you a simple blues pattern in C, you know where the Cs, Fs, and Gs are on your fretboard and from there your fingers magically find the thirds, fifths and sevenths without knowing the names of the notes. And when you get into jazz you can flat or sharp your thirds, fifths and sevenths. You can use your seconds, fourths and sixths as passing tones, as approaches as chord extensions, etc.. Knowing your music allows you to take the basic blues up a step and fill it in with substitutions and turn arounds. Knowing your chord tones works for lead and bass.
And we haven’t even mentioned her funky boogaloo sense of rhythm. The woman is a national treasure.
