Cal Tjader Soul Sauce

Soul Sauce is one of the highlights from Tjader's catalog with its appealing mixture of mambo, samba, bolero, and boogaloo styles. Tjader's core band - long-time piano player Lonnie Hewitt, drummer Johnny Rae and percussionist's Willie Bobo and Armando Peraza - starts things off with a cooled down version of Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo's latin jazz classic "Guachi Guaro (Soul Sauce)". With the help of guitarist Kenny Burrell, trumpeter Donald Byrd, and tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath they offer up a lively version of Mongo Santamaria's "Afro Blue." Sticking to his music's "Mambo Without a Migraine" reputation, though, Tjader's musicians keep things fairly calm, especially on Latinized ballads such as Billy May's "Somewhere In the Night" and on midtempo swingers like "Tanya"…

Tjader, after signing for the Verve label, soon achieved great success with the theme 'Guachi guaro' (Dizzie Gillespie and Chano Pozo), prompting Verve to release the LP 'Soul sauce' in 1964 including that track at the beginning, with containing only the first 9 cuts. Later, in 1994, this album was reissued on CD by adding 4 additional tracks as bonus. Like the typical interpretations grunts by Perez Prado, 'Guachi guaro' also became for a time in a signature of Tjader band. The disc is an attractive mix of Latin rhythms such as mambo, samba, bolero or boogaloo and ballads or swing among others, always faithful to the laid back style of Tjader.

Cal Tjader - Soul Bird-Whiffenpoof
EAC+LOG+CUE | WV: 204 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Verve # 549 111-2 | Country/Year: Europe 2005, 1966
Genre: Jazz | Style: Post-Bop, Afro-Cuban, Latin Jazz

"…But overall, these performances are more cool jazz than soul-jazz. Soul Bird: Whiffenpoof (which Verve reissued on CD in 2002) isn't among Tjader's essential albums, but it's an enjoyable demonstration of the vibist's ability to be a bit more commercial than usual and still maintain his bop-based integrity." ~allmusicguide

In the '60s, R&B was a much larger market than jazz. While John Coltrane or Art Blakey could fill a small club like The Village Vanguard, James Brown and the Temptations were selling out large auditoriums - gone were the days when jazz was very much a part of popular culture and Benny Goodman's name was all over the pop charts. Soul's popularity wasn't lost on Verve, which is why some of Cal Tjader's '60s LPs had titles like Soul Sauce and El Sonido Nuevo: The New Soul Sound - Verve wanted the baby boomers who were buying Stax and Motown releases to notice Tjader as well. However, Soul Bird: Whiffenpoof isn't the R&B-drenched project that some might expect it to be. Tjader's vibes solos are soulful in that he plays with a lot of feeling, but he isn't trying to be Marvin Gaye. Produced by Creed Taylor in 1965, Soul Bird: Whiffenpoof is primarily an album of laid-back cool jazz that has strong Latin leanings - Latin as in Afro-Cuban…

Cal Tjader, having started as a drummer (he debuted with the octet of jazz of Dave Brubeck), soon created his own group to direct his musical career from the standard jazz to fusion with Latin American music, delving into Caribbean rhythms and salsa that were all the rage in North America in the 50's. While this change of direction earned him criticism from the purists of the genre, soon increased its popularity and, after incorporating your group excellent Cuban drummers, became an indisputable reference in the field of Latin jazz.

Cal Tjader - Descarga (1995) {Fantasy ‎FCD-24737-2 rec 1971-1972}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 412 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 188 Mb | Artwork | 5% repair rar
© 1971-72, 1995 Fantasy ‎Records | FCD-24737-2
Jazz / Latin Jazz / Afro-Cuban Jazz / Cool / Vibes

Descarga is a merger of two albums recorded near the beginning of the '70s – the fascinating studio session Aqua Dulce and the self-explanatory Live at the Funky Quarters. Having not yet lost his yen for adventure from the Verve days, Tjader neatly integrates Al Zulaica's Rhodes electric piano, electronic effects, and occasionally horns and voices into a bedrock Latin format, and the combination works even at its most outlandish. Two of the reasons why Aqua Dulce stays on track are the solid Latin percussion team of Pete and Coke Escovedo and Michael Smithe, and that Tjader's rippling, to-the-point, easily adaptable vibraphone manner hadn't changed a whit over the years.

In apparent response to the sampling of old Latin jazz records by hip-hop artists, Verve raided its Cal Tjader archive to come up with this fiercely grooving collection drawn from nine of his Verve albums. For all of producer Creed Taylor's '60s penchant for fashioning two- to four-minute cuts aimed at airplay, he allowed Tjader's groups considerable room to stretch out on several of the tracks included here, particularly on the live "Los Bandidos" and the hypnotic collaboration with pianist Eddie Palmieri, "Picadillo." More importantly, Tjader's records with Taylor were more varied in texture than his earlier discs, venturing now and then from his solid Afro-Cuban base into Brazilian rhythms, soul, big-band backings, and '60s pop touches…