Cal Tjader "PLAYS HAROLD ARLEN & WEST SIDE STORY" (2002)

Description: Cal Tjader: Callen Radcliffe Tjader Jr. (/ˈdʒeɪdər/ JAY-dər; July 16, 1925 – May 5, 1982) was an American Latin Jazz musician, often described as the most successful non-Latino Latin musician. He explored other jazz idioms, especially small group modern jazz, even as he continued to perform music of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. Tjader played the vibraphone primarily, and was accomplished on the drums, bongos, congas, timbales, and the piano. He worked with many musicians from several cultures. He is often linked to the development of Latin rock and acid jazz. Although fusing Jazz with Latin music is often categorized as "Latin Jazz", Tjader's works swung freely between both styles. His Grammy award in 1980 for his album La Onda Va Bien capped off a career that spanned over 40 years. Callen Radcliffe Tjader Jr. was born July 16, 1925, in St. Louis[3] to touring Swedish American vaudevillians. His father tap danced and his mother played piano, a husband-wife team going from city to city with their troupe to earn a living. When he was two, Tjader's parents settled in San Mateo, California, and opened a dance studio. His mother (who dreamed of becoming a concert pianist) instructed him in classical piano and his father taught him to tap dance. He performed around the Bay Area as "Tjader Junior", a tap-dancing wunderkind. He performed a brief non-speaking role dancing alongside Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in the film The White of the Dark Cloud of Joy. He joined a Dixieland band and played around the Bay Area. At age sixteen, he entered a Gene Krupa drum solo contest, making it to the finals and ultimately winning by playing "Drum Boogie". But the win was overshadowed by the attack on Pearl Harbor that morning. Tjader soon quit Shearing after a gig at the San Francisco jazz club the Blackhawk. In April 1954, he formed the Cal Tjader Modern Mambo Quintet. The members were brothers Manuel Duran and Carlos Duran on piano and bass respectively, Benny Velarde on timbales, bongos, and congas, and Edgard Rosales on congas (Luis Miranda replaced Rosales after the first year). Back in San Francisco and recording for Fantasy Records, the group produced several albums in rapid succession, including Mambo with Tjader. The Mambo craze reached its pitch in the late 1950s, a boon to Tjader's career. Unlike the exotica of Martin Denny and Les Baxter, music billed as "impressions of" Oceania (and other locales), Tjader's bands featured seasoned Cuban players and top-notch jazz talent conversant in both idioms. He cut several notable straight-ahead jazz albums for Fantasy using various group names, most notably the Cal Tjader Quartet (composed of bassist Gene Wright, drummer Al Torre, and pianist Vince Guaraldi). Tjader is sometimes lumped in as part of the West Coast (or "cool") jazz sound, although his rhythms and tempos (both Latin and bebop) had little in common with the work of Los Angeles jazzmen Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, or Art Pepper. Tjader and his band opened the second Monterey Jazz Festival in 1959 with an acclaimed "preview" concert. The first festival had suffered financially. Tjader is credited with bringing in big ticket sales for the second and saving the landmark festival before it had even really started. The Modern Mambo Quintet disbanded within a couple of years. Tjader formed several more small-combo bands, playing regularly at such San Francisco jazz clubs as the Blackhawk. After recording for Fantasy for nearly a decade, Tjader signed with better-known Verve Records, founded by Norman Granz but owned then by MGM. With the luxury of larger budgets and seasoned recording producer Creed Taylor in the control booth, Tjader cut a varied string of albums. During the Verve years Tjader worked with arrangers Oliver Nelson, Claus Ogerman, Eddie Palmieri, Lalo Schifrin, Don Sebesky, and performers Willie Bobo, Donald Byrd, Clare Fischer, a young Chick Corea, Jimmy Heath, Kenny Burrell, Hank Jones, Anita O'Day, Armando Peraza, Jerome Richardson and others. Tjader recorded with big band orchestras for the first time, and even made an album based on Asian scales and rhythms. His biggest success was the album Soul Sauce (1964). Its title track, a Dizzy Gillespie cover Tjader had been toying with for over a decade, was a radio hit (hitting the top 20 on New York's influential pop music station WMCA in May 1965), and landed the album on Billboard's Top 50 Albums of 1965. Titled "Guachi Guaro" (a nonsensical phrase in Spanish), Tjader transformed the Gillespie/Chano Pozo composition into something new. (The name "Soul Sauce" came from Taylor's suggestion for a catchier title and Willie Bobo's observation that Tjader's version was spicier than the original.) The song's identifiable sound is a combination of the call-outs made by Bobo ("Salsa ahi na ma ... sabor, sabor!") and Tjader's crisp vibes work. The album sold over 100,000 copies and popularized the word salsa in describing Latin dance music. The 1960s were Tjader's most prolific period. With the backing of a major record label, Verve, he could afford to stretch out and expand his repertoire. The most obvious deviation from his Latin jazz sound was Several Shades of Jade (1963) and the follow-up Breeze From the East (1963). Both albums attempted to combine jazz and Asian music, much as Tjader and others had done with Afro-Cuban. The result was dismissed by the critics, chided as little more than the dated exotica that had come and gone in the prior decade. Tjader also recorded a notable straight modern jazz live album Saturday Night/ Sunday Night at the Blackhawk, San Francisco with his regular quartet in 1962. Other experiments were not so easily dismissed. Tjader teamed up with New Yorker Eddie Palmieri in 1966 to produce El Sonido Nuevo ("The New Sound"). A companion LP was recorded for Palmieri's contract label, Tico, titled Bamboleate. While Tjader's prior work was often dismissed as "Latin lounge", here the duo created a darker, more sinister sound. Cal Tjader Plays The Contemporary Music Of Mexico And Brazil (1962), released during the bossa nova craze, actually bucked the trend, instead using more traditional arrangements from the two countries' past. In the late 1960s Tjader, along with guitarist Gábor Szabó and Gary McFarland, helped to found the short-lived Skye record label. Tjader's work of this period is characterized by Solar Heat (1968) and Tjader Plugs In (1969), precursors to acid jazz. During the 1970s Tjader returned to Fantasy Records, the label he began with in 1954. Embracing the jazz fusion sound that was becoming its own subgenre at the time, he added electronic instruments to his lineup and began to employ rock beats behind his arrangements. His most notable album during this period is Amazonas (1975) (produced by Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira). He played on the soundtrack to the 1972 animated film Fritz the Cat, most notably on the track entitled "Mamblues". In 1976, Tjader recorded several live shows performed at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. Like the Monterey Jazz Festival show, he played a mix of jazz standards and Latin arrangements. Later he toured Japan with saxophonist Art Pepper, the latter recovering from alcohol and drug dependencies. Cal Tjader – Plays Harold Arlen & West Side StoryLabel:Fantasy – FCD-24775-2Format:CD, Compilation, Reissue, RemasteredCountry:USReleased:2002Genre:Jazz, Latin, Stage & ScreenStyle:Samba, Latin Jazz, MusicalTrack list:Cal Tjader Plays Harold Arlen1Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea3:032Ill Wind (You're Blowin' Me No Good)4:223When The Sun Comes Out2:394Happiness Is A Thing Called Joe3:225I Gotta Right To Sing The Blues3:406Come Rain Or Come Shine3:497Over The Rainbow3:488Out Of This World2:509Last Night When We Were Young3:0610The Man That Got Away3:5811Blues In The Night3:25West Side Story12Prologue/The Jet Song7:4213Something's Coming2:4314Maria Interlude1:2815Maria2:4816Tonight [From West Side Story]2:0817America3:5918Cool3:5119One Hand, One Heart1:5020I Feel Pretty/Somewhere6:39CreditsArranged By [Orchestra], Conductor, Piano – Clare FischerBass – Al McKibbon (tracks: 1 to 6), Red Mitchell (tracks: 12 to 20), Red Mitchell (tracks: 7 to 11), Victor Venegas (tracks: 12 to 20)Cello – Victor Gottlieb (tracks: 12 to 20)Congas – Mongo Santamaria (tracks: 12 to 20)Drums – John Rae* (tracks: 7 to 11), Milt Holland (tracks: 12 to 20), Shelly Manne (tracks: 12 to 20)Drums, Timbales – Willie BoboFlute – Paul Horn (tracks: 12 to 20)French Horn – James Decker (tracks: 12 to 20), Richard Perissi (tracks: 12 to 20), Vincent DeRosa (tracks: 12 to 20)Harp – Catherine Gotthoffer (tracks: 12 to 20)Piano – Buddy Motsinger (tracks: 1 to 11), Lonnie Hewitt (tracks: 12 to 20)Remastered By – Joe TarantinoTrombone – George Roberts (tracks: 12 to 20)Tuba – Red Callender (tracks: 12 to 20)Vibraphone – Cal TjaderViola – Virginia Majewski (tracks: 12 to 20)Violin – Alvin Dinkin (tracks: 12 to 20), Amerigo Marino (tracks: 12 to 20), Gerald Vinci (tracks: 12 to 20), Henry Sugar (tracks: 12 to 20), Herman Clebanoff (tracks: 12 to 20), Jack L. Pepper* (tracks: 12 to 20), Leonard Malarsky (tracks: 12 to 20), Marshall Sosson (tracks: 12 to 20), Robert Barene (tracks: 12 to 20)Notes#1 to 11 Recorded June 1 and 2, 1960. Originally released as Cal Tjader - Cal Tjader Plays Harold Arlen #12 to 20 Recorded October 18, 1960. Originally released as Cal Tjader - West Side Story Original Mono Mix reprocessed for Stereo. www.fantasyjazz.comBarcode and Other IdentifiersBarcode: 025218247528

Price: 15 USD

Location: Simi Valley, California

End Time: 2025-01-03T07:58:20.000Z

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