Cal Tjader - The 1957 Downbeat Interview

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Lately, I’ve been on a vibraphonist and percussionist Cal Tjader “jag” - [for those who may not be aware, the “T” is silent in his last name and it's pronounced “Jader”].

The dictionary definition of “jag” that I am referring to is “to be completely unrestrained” in the sense of listening to all the music I can lay my hands on regarding certain artists and checking the Jazz literature to see what I can find to form a piece about him/her that I can put up on my page - these include insert notes.

Here’s one of the earliest features in the Jazz literature on Cal in which he discusses his approach to Jazz and how it developed. It took place a few years after he took on  the leadership of his own quintet following stints with Dave Brubeck and George Shearing,

The interview was published in the September 5, 1957 edition of Downbeat by John Tynan who its West Coast editor.

“So far as Cal Tjader is concerned he hopes “they never take Jazz out of the saloons.”

Not that he overindulges. But he doesn't believe the same mood and unfettered spirit for the music can prevail in a more formal environment.

"Not too long ago," explained the 32-year-old Missourian, "the quintet played a couple of weeks in the Los Angeles Jazz Concert hall. Now this was a formal, concert-type presentation of jazz. But you know something? I wouldn't care for it as a steady diet. It just wouldn't make it for me. You get a little lazy, and the groove isn't there when you play to an audience of sitters and listeners. Of course, I do want people to listen to us—but relaxed, not too deliberate. In a club, the audience and the band can let their hair down."

ONE POSSIBLE reason Tjader places so much stock in a thoroughly relaxed audience could be that his group plays a lot of dances, principally in the Los Angeles area, in Spanish-speaking communities.

"I like people to dance to the Latin stuff," he said emphatically. "At one of our dances in the Sombrero ballroom, for example, you can play a montuna, and everybody is responsive to it. Of course, in clubs you have to gear it more to the listener; but to me this is much more rewarding than playing to row-upon-row of concert listeners.

"And when you feel that you can just play to a dancing audience, there's an emotional kick - the pressure's off. It gives me a real boot when one of the dancers will come to the stand and say with real sincerity, 'Ey, I sure like your progressive mambo, man.’” Tjader's fresh face brightened in one of his frequent grins.

Leader of his own quintet for the last 3 ½  years, since he left the George Shearing group early in 1954, the vibist-drummer was born Callen Radcliffe Tjader Jr. in St. Louis, Mo., 1925.

COMING FROM A musical show business family (his father was a dancer with the Duncan Sisters, playing the Orpheum vaudeville circuit when Cal was born; his mother a student concert pianist), it was a small surprise that at 2 Cal already was a piano pupil of his mother. This was in 1927 when the family moved to San Mateo, Calif., where his parents opened a dance studio.

After an introduction to drums in high school, Cal joined the navy in 1943. Upon discharge three years later, he enrolled in San Francisco State college, majoring in music and education. Latching onto an old set of vibes, he began teaching himself to play the instrument and was shortly sitting in with local groups around the bay area.

In 1948, while still a student, Tjader met Dave Brubeck, who then was studying at Mills college. With bassist Ron Crotty, he joined Brubeck to form the original trio led by the piano man.

Three years later, in 1951, he left to form his own quartet in San Francisco.

In 1953, Cal disbanded to join Shearing on vibes.

"One of the chief compensations of being with Shearing," he said, "was that back east I got to hear a lot of Machito, Tito Puente, and Noro Morales. 

Those bands had a tremendous effect on me. Immediately I wanted to reorganize a small combo along the same lines, only with more jazz feeling incorporated in the Latin format."

THE FRUITION OF this desire was in the formation of his first so-called mambo quintet in 1954. A booking at San Francisco's Macumba got the group off to a good start.

In addition to its six-month stint at the club, the first albums on Fantasy quickly established the quintet as a new unit to be reckoned with in concerts and clubs on the west coast. Today, according to Fantasy's Sol Weiss, Tjader is the label's biggest seller. In 1955, after a nationwide tour, Cal won new star laurels in Down Beat's Jazz Critics poll for his performance on vibes.

In June,1956,he radically reorganized his "mambo quintet." In effect, this entailed his dropping the mambo tag and placing the emphasis on jazz appeal.

It took about a month before he crystallized a new concept for the group; when he began taking bookings again, it was a predominantly jazz quintet that hit the road.

THE PRIMARY REASON for this change, according to Tjader, is that "Latin has its definite limitations, especially from the standpoint of improvisation. It's like a hypnotic groove. First you set the rhythmic pattern, then the melodic formulae follow — until pretty soon you realize there's not much real music invention happening.

"See, the Latin percussionist's conception of time is very straight, rigid," he elaborated. "It's not really loose like it has to be for jazz. That's why there's nothing more of a drag than having Latin percussionists sit in with a jazz group. Generally they seem to lack that loose, free rhythmic way of blowing. But on the other hand, you can take a jazz number like Bernie's Tune, for instance, and adapt it to Latin treatment, still preserving the flavor of both styles of music."

These days, Cal is not so much concerned with preserving Jazz feeling within a Latin context as he is with blowing straight Jazz in an identifying manner. 

As collaborators to this end, he can count on Vince Guaraldi, former Woody Herman piano man; Eugene Wright, bassist who played with many varieties of groups from Count Basie to Sarah Vaughan; and his steady versatile drummer, Al Torre. Then, to widen the appeal of every set, Latin percussionist Louis Kant contributes to several numbers in the Ritmo Caliente vein.

On the subject of an identifying sound, Cal is a stickler. “If you can get a real sound of your own, it’s half the battle,” he insists. “In fact, I believe a group sound is more important to make a band go over than the individual improvising talents of its members.”

“Of course, I realize that most groups starting out today will have to sound like some other existing units. This can’t be helped, but it doesn’t mean they still can’t play worthwhile Jazz.”

“It takes time to evolve a sound of your own. Look at the Modern Jazz Quartet: they were working for perhaps three years before they caught on and really got their identifying sound. For us the Latin thing worked. But there’s no law that says we had to stick to it. I think we’ve proved by now that we can make it with straight Jazz.”

With his breakthrough into chi chi haunt [stylish setting] of Hollywoodiana, Ciro’s on the Sunset Strip, Cal sees no reason why the quintet shouldn’t play similar rooms throughout the nation. As he views it, it boils down to living up to your responsibilities to an audience.

“You don’t necessarily have to be smiling all the time,” he explains. “You’re trying to sell Jazz right? Then you have to have a responsible presentation.The MJQ appeals admirably there. They’ve got a freedom in their individual playing, but as a group they’re disciplined. This is the most important thing, I believe.”

The vibist drummer, a well-scrubbed Joe-College type in a searsucker, has much to say regarding Jazz rooms. While a lot of this is unprintable, much of it is praise for happy rooms that are conducive to playing.

He rates San Francisco’s Blackhawk as one of these. Another of these he considers as an ideal room is Zucca’s Cottage in Pasadena, CA. 

“One more thing,” he added emphatically. In every contract that a band signs when it takes a club engagement, there should be a specific clause that the piano should be tuned to A440 [440 Hz, which serves as a tuning standard for the musical note of A above middle C].”

“Well,” he said with a wistful smile, “club owners being what they are, maybe that’s a lot to expect.”