Vince Guaraldi & Bola Sete Vince & Bola

The first and third of the three albums Vince Guaraldi and Bola Sete made together - Vince Guaraldi/Bola Sete & Friends (1963) and Vince Guaraldi & Bola Sete Live at El Matador (1966) - are combined onto one disc on this CD reissue. Actually, Sete only plays on two of the seven songs ("More" and "O Morro Nao Tem Vez") on the latter album, but no matter. Their collaboration could not be pegged as a peak in either man's careers, and did not particularly inspire either to forms or feelings they didn't achieve on their own. Nevertheless, they made pleasant, lightly swinging music together, often with a jazz-samba lilt, though at an easy enough pace that the music could fit comfortably into lounges. Vince Guaraldi/Bola Sete & Friends is certainly the more samba-oriented of the pair, not only because Sete is aboard for every cut, but also because the arrangements have more of a Brazilian feel…

Despite the co-billing, Sete only appears on the second half of the album, leaving the Guaraldi trio to knock out a crisp series of standard pop tunes of the time ("I'm a Loser," "People," "More") and two memorable Guaraldi originals ("Nobody Else," "El Matador") in its patented mainstream and Latin modes in the first half. When Sete turns up, the set goes all-Brazilian as the two display their blended, intertwined teamwork for the third and last time on records in "Favela" and a brace of tunes from Black Orpheus. Though it is only a partial collaboration, this album has a bit more fire than their previous ones, possibly due to the live factor.

In a year that also saw Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck and Lalo Schifrin write jazz-based pieces for the church, Vince Guaraldi may have come up with the most effective sacred work of the four. Written for the completion of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, Guaraldi's Mass fuses his mainstream and Latin strains comfortably and movingly underneath the plain vanilla Gregorian lines and Anglican plainchant of a 68-voice chorus. Sometimes all Vince does to create a beguiling effect is improvise arpeggios or have his trio engage in a hot bossa nova workout as the chorus chants on one note. Despite the immense size of the cathedral, this music produces an intimate, unpretentious and undeniably emotional response - and there is plenty of jazz content, particularly when Guaraldi's trio goes it alone for nearly a third of the work in the ruminative "Holy Communion Blues." By all means, check this beautiful, unusual album out.

Vince Guaraldi was a well-respected jazz pianist whose greatest success came from avenues usually closed to contemporary jazz artists: he enjoyed a hit single at a time when jazz had largely been exiled from the pop charts, and he scored a series of very successful animated television specials (namely the Charlie Brown seasonal specials scores and soundtracks for which his name has become synonymous), a medium where cookie-cutter pop music was traditionally the order of the day.