[10] On November 24, 2022, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, on its 60th anniversary, was featured on Norberto Vélez's YouTube channel titled "Sesiones Desde La Loma Ep.

After singer Ismael Rivera faced legal drug possession problems when arriving from Panama, some of the group's musicians departed, with Ithier relocating temporarily to the eastern United States.

Ithier opposed the idea mainly because he was so frustrated with the situation that happened with Cortijo, that he wasn’t thinking of staying around much longer than a few months.

After their live debut at Hotel La Concha in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Chiquitín García left the orchestra.

Vocalist Sammy Ayala, who had also played with Ithier in the Cortijo orchestra, recommended the hiring of Andy Montañez.

On November 20, 1963, El Gran Combo released their first group album, Menéame los mangos, with Joseito Mateo as lead singer.

Also, in 1969, Rafael Ithier hired dancer/choreographer Mike Ramos to implement dance routines, which became a signature of El Gran Combo's live performances.

Prior to joining El Gran Combo, Mike danced with the Tito Puente Orchestra and Perez Prado Band among others.

They were at Venezuela, and scheduled to fly the following day to Las Américas International Airport in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Therefore, the tale about a group member having a bad feeling regarding that flight while stranded at the Santo Domingo airport is not entirely true, since they did not arrive there until the day after the crash.

Rodríguez was replaced by Charlie Aponte at the recommendation of Jerry Concepción and the well known sportscaster Rafael Bracero, both friends of Ithier.

In 1973, El Gran Combo sang in front of 50,000 fans at the famous Yankee Stadium in New York City as the opening act for the Fania All-Stars' sold-out concert.

Montañez left the band in early 1977 and went to live in Venezuela where he replaced Oscar D'León in another orchestra, Dimension Latina.

The success of this new duo was proved with their 1977 album International and 1978's En Las Vegas which reached gold record status.

In 2007, El Gran Combo performed two massive concerts at the José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum to celebrate their 45th anniversary.

In 2010, two tribute albums were released, one by former member Andy Montañez and another by the bank Banco Popular, as part of their annual music series.

They also released a video with a positive introductory message which showed clips of working people in similarities with them playing instruments.

On December 12, 2014, Charlie Aponte, one of the vocalists of El Gran Combo for 41 years, retired for personal reasons and launched his own orchestra.

El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico have had 22 entries in the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart:[21]