Cal Tjader: The Life & Recordings of the Man Who Revolutionized Latin Jazz - Second Edition - S. Duncan Reid

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Within one of the most complex musical categories ever, Cal Tjader quietly pioneered as a jazz vibraphonist, composer, arranger and bandleader from the 1950s through the 1980s. This life story of a humble musician also reveals his charisma. Tjader's legacy is attested to by his large audiences and his innovations that changed the course of jazz.

Expanded and revised, this second edition now includes additional interviews and anecdotes from Tjader's family, bandmates and community, print sources, and rare photographs, presenting a detailed account of Tjader as well as the progression of Latin Jazz.

With thirty five pages of additional text, plus an enhanced Glossary of Terms, Discography, Bibliography and a New Foreword by Gary Foster who played alto sax and flute in Cal’s later groups, the second Edition of Cal Tjader: The Life and Recordings of the Man Who Revolutionized Latin Jazz gives the reader a wealth of new information and insights into the man that pianist George Shearing once called - “a rhythmic genius.”

Cal, who began his professional career as a drummer in a San Francisco based octet and later trio led by Dave Brubeck in the late 1940s, joined Shearing’s quintet in the early 1950s before returning to the San Francisco Bay area to lead his own Jazz and Latin Jazz quintets in the mid-1950s.

For almost thirty years until his death in 1982 caused by a heart attack, Tjader was a universally respected Jazz artist, especially in Latin Jazz settings with his own band and jointly with pianists Charlie and Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente and a host of others. Vocal albums with Rosemary Clooney, Anita O’Day and Carmen McRae find him adding significant “Latin tinges” to the repertoires of these fine singers and the number of excellent hornmen, pianists, bassists and drummers and Latin percussionists Tjader worked with in his thirty plus year career is simply staggering.

Cal Tjader was a consummate musician and S. Duncan Reid has done a delightful job of describing, detailing and denoting the qualities that enabled him to become a premier Jazz performer.

The following excerpts from the Preface will put the benefits derived from the 2nd edition of his biography of Cal into sharper focus:

“Thanks to an in-depth interview with Tjader's best friend, Philip Smith, this second edition will document more of the future bandleader's childhood. After a stint in the Navy during World War II, Tjader stood out as a drummer, vibraphonist and bongocero for Dave Brubeck. It was with Brubeck in San Francisco that he was first exposed to Cuban music and with George Shearing in New York that he fully perceived how the rhythms could alter the course of his career. He came back to the West Coast in 1954 and the jazz universe expanded.

As Tjader's life unfolds through the extensive research of this author, which features more than 60 interviews with colleagues, family and friends, the reader will learn about the melding of European and African music via the United States, Cuba and Brazil. Moreover, a tender, troubled and complex human being will be revealed.

The second edition gives an even larger view of his saga. Along with Philip Smith, who not only contributes anecdotes about Tjader's childhood but also his career—on stage and off—there are candid interviews with drummer Carl Burnett, bassist Stanley Gilbert, record producer Frank Dorritie, deejay Alan Schultz and further conversations with Al and Terry-Ann Torre, Eddie Coleman and the late Bob Redfield. Additional research from print sources has corrected some errors of commission and omission, brought Tjader's first known interview to light, and uncovered more on why influential critic Ralph J. Gleason went from being a proponent of Tjader to ignoring him. Plus, the vibraphonist's strained relationship with Sol and Max Weiss at Fantasy Records and his experiences with reverse racism on the jazz scene are explored to a greater degree. Finally, this second edition takes another step both in raising the profile of Cal Tjader and enlightening a new generation of musicians and music lovers about one of its founding fathers. At the same time, the way in which he was perceived by the jazz media during his lifetime is further illuminated.”

Duncan’s revised and expanded bio brings home to the reader what it was like to be a working musician during the Golden Years of Modern Jazz following World War II and how valiant and dedicated a Jazz musician Cal had to become to make it in the ever-shrinking Jazz world after the general public turned to Rock ‘n Roll in the mid-1960s and beyond.

The parade of Tjader gigs in the form of club dates, concerts and recording sessions read like a time gone by; such a schedule would be impossible to create today as the venues and recording opportunities do not exist anymore for Jazz artists.

After reading the additional annotations in the second edition what comes across even more strongly is that in the process of becoming a nationally and internationally recognized Jazz star, Cal had to work very hard to maintain a band and travel incessantly to keep it working.

Maintaining the necessary pace required to earn a decent living probably led to his early death. 

Duncan’s bio provides an accurate record of personnel changes in Cal’s many groups over the years and this helps the reader gain an understanding of the efforts Cal had to make to find replacement musicians. Some musicians were consistent members of Cal’s bands for lengthy periods of time while others stayed for only a club date or a concert tour. 

Cal was almost always looking for talented players and what made this especially difficult for him was that his repertoire included both straight-ahead and Latin Jazz and these are different skills not often found in the same musician. Often, Cal had to settle for one while teaching the other and with the advent of Rock ‘n Roll in the mid-to-late 1960s, the pool of young musicians interested in playing Cal’s style of music was dwindling.

When you add the fact that myriad personnel changes were done over a career lasting over thirty years his accomplishment of keeping a working band together becomes almost mind boggling.

Duncan’s book reads in such a way as to help bring home not only the professional considerations that Cal had to deal with as a top flight band leader but also the personal ones including many of the trials and tribulations in his own life.

The Jazz Life is anything but an 8-5 job. It takes a special discipline to develop the high level of skills needed to play the music, but these disciplines do not always carry over to the requirements of functioning on a regular basis in a working band.

The quirky individuality that blossoms into a distinctive Jazz “personality” sometimes fail to include the habits for becoming a responsible member of a band.

And the Jazz Life itself with the late hours, an environment filled with many unhealthy elements and the constant travel associated with it causes all sorts of friction and wreaks havoc on “normality.”

Duncan’s biography of Cal reflects on his life and those of his family and closest musical associates to reveal the stress and strains which everyone involved had to deal with and the toll they extracted on all concerned.

Thankfully, over the years Cal’s marquee value expanded such that he was able to sign with booking and management agencies that helped him find work which then allowed him to concentrate more on his music. This dynamic is fully covered in Duncan’s biography which offers the reader a look at the business dynamics of a working Jazz group.

Another facet of Cal’s career that’s brought home to the reader is the veritable constellation of Jazz luminaries that Cal performed with over the course of his career including Dave Brubeck, George Shearing, Woody Herman, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Shelly Manne, Vince Guaraldi, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Illinois Jacquet, Harold Land, Scott Hamilton, Gary Foster, Hank Jones, Cedar Walton, Eddie Gomez, John Lewis, Roy Burns, Art Pepper, Hermeto Pascoal, George Duke, Airto Moreira, Jerome Richardson, Frank Strazzeri, Paul Horn, Charlie and Eddie Palmieri, George Duvivier, Ralph MacDonald, Frank Wess, John Faddis, Clark Terry - the list seems endless.

And Duncan’s work documents Cal’s role in nurturing a whole host of excellent younger musicians including Lonnie Hewitt, Freddie Schreiber, Johnny Rae, Al Torre, Al Zulaica, Stanley Gilbert, Carl Burnet, Dick Berk, John Heard, Ratzo Harris, Harvey Newmark, Michael Smithe, Robb Fisher, Pete Riso, Vince Lateano, Poncho Sanchez, Roger Glenn, Mark Levine, and Ramon Banda, among many others. 

The world that was the working life of Cal Tjader will never come again which makes Duncan’s masterful recapturing of it even more important as a lasting record of this unique era when just about every major city had a Jazz scene and musicians could earn a living playing a circuit of them.

The overriding importance of Duncan’s revised biography of Cal can best be summed up in this paragraph:

“In the midst of the quintet's run at Howard Rumsey's Concerts by the Sea (November 29 to December 4, 1977), Ted Gioia, then a student at Stanford, wrote a positive capsule review of Guarabe [Fantasy ‎– F-9533, 1977] Gioia initially pointed to Tjader, Vince Guaraldi and Denny Zeitlin as examples of "excellent [Bay Area] musicians who never received the national attention they merited." Then he stated that Tjader, with his latest LP, "is possibly on the verge of becoming widely known." One significant thread that runs throughout this biography is that Tjader has not been, at least nationwide, accorded his proper status as a top tier jazz musician by the majority of critics and historians. However, this biography has documented that Tjader's popularity with the public both nationally and internationally was well established many years before Gioia's review was published.”

S. Duncan Reid’s second edition of Cal Tjader: The Life and Recordings of the Man Who Revolutionized Latin Jazz will go a long way toward enhancing our understanding and appreciation of Cal Tjader whom the late Jazz critic Richard Cook has called “an important and catalytic figure” in Jazz history.

Here's a link the order information at McFarland.