"John Cassavetes" by Tim Hagans and the NDR Big Band

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“John Cassavetes was a jazz director, a visionary who knew that all humans desire love and acceptance. He understood that our life actions are improvisations based on the influence of our environment, the impulses received from those close to us, and the constant flux of our emotions. He also knew that our imperfect human state often hinders us from achieving what we most desire; the attempt, however, with its immense failures and magnificent successes must be observed, documented, and honored.”

-Tim Hagans, New York City, 2017

"Fetchingly situated between Brownian blasts and Milesian murmurs, the trumpeter's lines cover lots of emotional breadth. It makes for a straight-ahead quintet approach that is quite willing to bend the rules to suit a tune's forgotten corners. His poetry with standard ballads might hush this room. Evidently he does know what love is."

- Jim Macnie, The Village Voice

“Tim Hagans was nominated for Grammy awards for Best Instrumental Composition for "Box of Cannoli" from The Avatar Sessions (2010 Fuzzy Music); Best Contemporary Jazz CD for Re: Animation (2000 Blue Note); and Animation*Imagination (1999 Blue Note). In addition to his own bands, he has performed and recorded with Thad Jones, Ernie Wilkins and Dexter Gordon. For fifteen years Tim Hagans was artistic director and composer-in-residence for the Norrbotten Big Band, traveling to Sweden to perform, conduct and arrange projects with guest artists such as Rufus Reid, Randy Brecker, Peter Erskine, Dave Liebman and Joe Lovano. The Avatar Sessions CD features music he created during that tenure. Tim Hagans is the featured soloist on the soundtrack by Howard Shore for the movie The Score, starring Robert DeNiro and Marlon Brando.”

- Michele Brangwen, Media Release, Waiting Moon records

John Cassavetes [1929-1989] was an actor, writer and director and a pioneering independent filmmaker. His work paralleled that of the trailblazing group of French New Wave cinema directors [Nouvelle Vague] who exploded on the film scene in the late 1950s.

French directors such as Louis Malle, Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Jacques Rivette and Jacques Demy revolutionized cinematic conventions by marrying the rapid cuts of Hollywood with philosophical trends [auteur theory].

The French New Wave and the New Hollywood directors of which Cassavetes was a member saw film as a product of the director’s absolute imaginative and inspired aesthetic vision.

These directors brought about the cult of the director as an artistic icon on a par with writers, painters and other intellectual artists. To them, the director was the artistic creator who implements his or her own aesthetic and narrative vision to the screen.

Trumpeter, composer, arranger Tim Hagans has a new CD out on his Waiting Moon Records entitled Faces Under The Influence: A Jazz Tribute to John Cassavetes on which he is joined by the Hamburg, Germany-based NDR Big Band.

Background information about how this recording came about as well as the structure for the music on this recording is explained by Tim in the following insert notes to the CD:

“When I first viewed - actually the more accurate word is witnessed - John Cassavetes’ cinema realite film Faces in 1977, I was disturbed, confused, inspired and excited. I remember walking from the theater without any immediate destination, wandering the night streets chilled by an early autumn mist. I examined why I was experiencing consternation and intense joy. As a young adult, many of the film's emotions were foreign to me, and the motivations propelling the events seemed unnecessary and destructive. After forty more years of life and countless viewings of Cassavetes' films, I realize that his characters brilliantly portray the complete emotional pallet of humanity, with its fears, desires, failings and most importantly, its victories. With each film, I feel I have been given access to a story that began long before the first frame and is presently continuing. I am an undetected visitor viewing actual events being lived by actual people, and from my voyeuristic involvement in the drama, I hear music.

Charles Mingus and Shafi Hadi wrote incidental music to Shadows, Cassavetes' first film from 1959. Bo Harwood also wrote sparse music for some of the films. I entertained the notion of how would the unwritten soundtracks sound, and with that rumination, Faces Under The Influence, A Jazz Tribute To John Cassavetes was conceived. I decided to write music that describes the emotional development that each character experiences rather than compose episodic descriptions. Many of the compositions are through-composed with melodic and harmonic developments that reference the characters earlier emotional states, states that are present before the film begins. Many of the final passages hint at what may happen to the characters after their film's conclusion.

I have chosen characters from Cassavetes' first six films: Lelia from Shadows (Lelia Goldini); Richard Forst from Faces (John Marley); Harry, Archie and Gus from Husbands (Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk and John Cassavetes); Seymour Moskowitz from Minnie and Moskowitz (Seymour Cassel); Mabel Longhetti from A Woman Under The Influence (Gena Rowlands); and Cosmo Vitelli from The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (Ben Gazzara). The final composition, John Cassavetes, is a tribute to the vision and genius of his oeuvre, and is influenced by the passion of his directing and acting style. The themes and harmonies in this work are derived from the first six compositions.

John Cassavetes is heralded as the progenitor of independent film. To finance his films, he used his own money from mainstream acting jobs, and over the years mortgaged his home multiple times. His initial experience making films within the Hollywood system left him disappointed and outraged, so he vowed he would never have his artistic vision compromised in that way again. In 1957, one could say he initiated crowd source funding by going on Jean Shepherd's radio show Night People and asking for small donations to finance Shadows. He surrounded himself with a gang of artistic fellow travelers that included Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, Seymour Cassel, Val Avery, Tim Carey and Al Ruban. From the very beginning, Cassavetes was creative in getting what he needed with the limited resources available to someone not a part of the studio system. New York street shots for Shadows were made through windows or guerilla style on the streets of New York with a taxi driven by a friend waiting to whisk the camera to safety if they were caught. Although Shadows was based on improvised scenes performed at the acting school that Cassavetes founded with Bert Lane (there is a credit describing this at the end of the movie), Shadows and his other films, were actually fully scripted and included his acute observations of human life, relationships and the consequences of choice. His propensity to always allow actors to riff on his dialogue and go with their instincts, gave his films an improvised feeling that is both immediate and engrossing.

Faces Under The Influence, A Jazz Tribute To John Cassavetes was commissioned by the NDR Bigband. It is an exceptional orchestra. The band swings, roars and tips, and is technically impressive and supremely nuanced. Every musician is a soloist and the combination of their innovative and distinct voices make this ensemble a true jazz band. I have collaborated with the band many times and knowing the band so well, composed this suite with each musicians' sound and vibe in mind. I implemented John Cassavetes' methods into the compositions and recording process, and the musicians became the characters from the films. The soloists integrated their character's emotional base and developments into their improvisations. There are composed sections that sound improvised because they are "scripted" but there is interpretation granted to the soloist/actors. The NDR Bigband gloriously embraced this concept. I am elated with the results and eternally grateful for the opportunity.

John Cassavetes was a jazz director, a visionary who knew that all humans desire love and acceptance. He understood that our life actions are improvisations based on the influence of our environment, the impulses received from those close to us, and the constant flux of our emotions. He also knew that our imperfect human state often hinders us from achieving what we most desire; the attempt, however, with its immense failures and magnificent successes must be observed, documented, and honored.”

-Tim Hagans, New York City, 2017

Order information for Faces Under The Influence: A Jazz Tribute to John Cassavetes can be located by going here.

Click on the red dot to listen to a sample of the music on display in this recording.

OSIE JOHNSON: An Undistinguished Distinctive Drummer

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“In studio work, you’re always under the gun. You’re expected to play the parts right no matter how difficult they are …. It’s a matter of being precise and right, all the time. It’s brain surgery, that’s what it is. And every operation has to be a success. There are no failures – a failure and you’re gone.”

- Alvin Stoller, drummer

Burt Korall, a writer who, among his other significant writings about Jazz, authored two books on Drummin’ Men: The Heartbeat of Jazz, only makes one reference to him when he cites him as “… the gifted drummer, Osie Johnson,” on page 200 of the second volume, The Bebop Years.

There is also a reference to Osie in Gary Giddins’ Vision of Jazz: The First Century where in the context of talking about Bud Powell and the drummers he performed with he notes: “He worked only with the best: Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, Roy Haynes, Art Blakey, Art Taylor, Osie Johnson – percussionists who complemented his dynamics, speed, and shifting rhythms.” [p. 321]

Outside of incidental references such as these, you’d be hard-pressed to find any information about Osie other than in the ever-reliable Encyclopedia of Jazz.

The lack of mention of Osie is made even more striking by the fact that this was a drummer who was everywhere, and I mean everywhere apparent, on the New York studio and Jazz scene especially in the 1950s and mid-1960s.

Osie worked with all of the top arrangers –Manny Albam [with whom, he was close friends], Quincy Jones, Oliver Nelson, Bob Brookmeyer, Hal McKusick, Al Cohn, Gerry Mulligan, George Russell – the list is endless. The Lord Discography cites Osie’s name as having appeared on 670 recording sessions!

He toured with pianists Earl “Fatha” Hines, Erroll Garner and Dorothy Donegan as well as tenor saxophone legend Coleman Hawkins and clarinetist Tony Scott. Osie, who made his own album as a singer – A Bit of the Blues [RCA CD 74321609832] -  was a favorite of vocalists Carmen McRae and Dinah Washington, both of whom he wrote arrangements for in the 1950s.

Osie had studied theory and harmony in high school in Washington, D.C. and privately, so he knew music and was an excellent reader, both of which may help explain why he was so heavily in demand at recording sessions.

He was the staff drummer for extended periods of time on both the NBC and CBS studio orchestras in New York City and he appeared as a freelance percussionist on a slew of independent TV commercials and radio jingles.

Perhaps, part of the reason for his obscurity was due to the fact that he died in 1966 at the relatively young age of 43 from renal system infections that led to kidney failure.

Fortunately, Georges Paczynski in the second volume of his prize-winning Une Histoire de la Batterie de Jazz has three entire pages devoted to Osie and his style of drumming. Fortunately, that is, for those who read French as the work has not [to my knowledge] been translated into English.

Paczynski includes Osie along with Harold “Doc” West, Rossiere “Shadow” Wilson, Gus Johnson, Gordon “Specs” Powell and Alvin Stoller in his chapter entitled – La fin de l’ère swing - les batteurs charnières.  With charnières translated to mean “hinge” or “pivotal,” the author is grouping Osie among those drummers whom he considers to be among those who made the successful transition from the Swing Era to Bebop.

Many better known Swing Era drummers never did make this transition, among them Davy Tough and Gene Krupa.

To be able to do so was a considerable accomplishment as it required getting out of playing down into the drum kit [think hands on snare and an incessant bass drum beat] and playing up, onto the cymbals using the snare and the bass drum for accents.

Keeping time in this manner involved a total reorientation in the way in which a drummer thought about time.

Drummers like Osie and the other transition drummers in Paczynski’s grouping who accommodated the change in style did so by keeping things simple.

They became, first-and-foremost, timekeepers with a steady ride cymbal beat and an accent here and there.  Nothing complicated requiring the independence and heightened coordination of a Max Roach or a Philly Joe Jones or a Joe Morello.

More drumming to establish a pulse and to keep things moving along. Clean, simple, and staying out of the way; Osie just blended in with the musical environment instead of trying to dominate it – it was a style of drumming that was more felt than heard.

In fact, Osie’s drumming bordered on the indistinct and yet, everyone loved playing with him precisely because as Paczynski explains:

« En fait, il est absolument impossible d'identifier Osie Johnson. A l'inverse d'un musicien qui ne peut investir son jeu trop personnel et « engage » dans tous les contextes musicaux, il est capable de s'adapter avec plus ou moins de bonheur a toute proposition musicale, et est constamment sollicite en tant que tel. »

A very loose translation of which would read:

“In fact, it is absolutely impossible to identify [in the sense of classifying] Osie Johnson. He was the opposite of those who try and interject their personality into the music. Instead, he tried to contentedly fit himself into all musical contexts, and he was sought out by other musicians precisely because of his willingness to do so.”

A number of times in his essay, Paczynski stresses the fact that Osie emphasized drumming “fundamentals” in his playing: a rock solid beat, precision in the placement of accents, a perfect placement of kicks and fills and a clear and uncomplicated sound from both the drums and the cymbals.

Oh, and he was an excellent reader for as Alvin Stoller, Osie’s counterpart as an in demand studio drummer on the West Coast stated: “In studio work, you’re always under the gun. You’re expected to play the parts right no matter how difficult they are …. It’s a matter of being precise and right, all the time. It’s brain surgery, that’s what it is. And every operation has to be a success. There are no failures – a failure and you’re gone.”

More indications of what makes Osie’s style so distinctive can be found in the following question that was put to the online drummer chat group:

“What do you all recommend for tuning a 5x14 brass snare to capture a tight, crisp sound with minimal after ring? The snare sound I'm after is similar to the following:

1. Osie Johnson's playing on "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" from Sonny Stitt's Now! (mp3 attached). The first 20 seconds of the track provide a good snapshot of Johnson's crisp snare sound.

In order to achieve that kind of sound, do I need to have

a) both top and bottom heads tuned the same
b) the top head tuned higher/tighter than the bottom head
c) the bottom head tuned higher/tighter than the top head
d) ??

At the moment, I have my Tama 5x14 brass snare tuned with top head close to 90 and bottom head a little over 80, I believe (according to my Drum Dial). I have a standard Remo Coated Ambassador on the batter side.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer!”

An answer to this question might also serve to explain the title of our piece on Osie – “An Undistinguished Distinctive Drummer.”

The title is not a Zen koan [an insoluble intellectual problem: think – “What was your true nature before you mother and father conceived you?”]

Osie Johnson was unfortunately undistinguished as a drumming stylist, and yet, his drumming was immediately discernible. He was distinctive without trying to be so.

Most of Osie’s distinctiveness did begin with the sound of his snare drum, which he tightened to within an inch of its "life." How he kept it from tearing in two is beyond me.

So the choice from the chat group options would be – “a) both top and bottom heads tuned the same”  - although a much more complete answer might address everything from the quality and composition of the maple shell that formed Osie’s snare drum to the type of drum heads he used, ad infinitum.

The most instructive portion of the chat group question is the example that was sent along with the annotation - The first 20 seconds of the track provide a good snapshot of Johnson's crisp snare sound.

We have used the very same track - "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" from Sonny Stitt's Now! - in the video below, but we would rephrase the chat group statement to read: The first 20 seconds of the track provide a good snapshot of Osie Johnson's approach to drumming.

For in addition to his distinctively crisp snare sound, this short segment reveals Osie playing time on the hi-hat before switching to the ride cymbal, his gentle but insistent sense of swing and the lightness of his touch which allowed him to fit into the music almost seamlessly.

This is a perfect illustration of the drummer as an accompanist and also the reason why melody and harmony guys loved working with Osie: his drums are not resonating and booming, his accents are not distracting and he isn’t calling attention to himself with complicated drumming figures.

On this track, Osie is a musician among a group of musicians intent on making music and therein lies the key to his success and to his distinctiveness.

Whatever the musical context – piano trio Jazz, small group Jazz or big band Jazz – Osie always sounds just right; he fits in.

And he always nails it, characteristically.

For all of his blending in, I would venture to say that anyone – musician or not – that is familiar with Osie Johnson’s playing would recognize it … “after [listening to] the first 20 seconds” of a recorded track.

Very few drummers have ever been as distinctively undistinguished as Osie Johnson.

Communicating With JazzProfiles

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

I use Blogger as the platform to format and publish JazzProfiles. It’s free of charge and very compatible with other applications that Google hosts.

But if you have ever tried to leave a comment about any of the features that post to the blog, you know that Blogger isn’t very accommodating in this regard. I’m not sure why this is the case as other blogging platforms such as Wordpress make it very easy for readers to interact with the blog author.

For the most part, I have been satisfied with this arrangement as it allows me to dwell in relative anonymity and to focus on preparing pieces for the blog.

It takes a great deal of time and effort to research and write the features that I bring up on JazzProfiles on an almost daily basis, and populate them with images, graphics and audio-visual examples of the music and the musicians under discussion.

Besides, since I am not an authority on Jazz, I’ve always assumed that the readers of the blog would rather spend their time perusing its contents than corresponding with me.

However, should you like to leave a comment, ask a question or make a request, please feel free to contact me at scerra@roadrunner.com/ and I’ll do my best to provide you with a timely response. I will also negotiate the abstruse Blogger platform and nest your comment under the appropriate feature.

I plan to place a listing of “Readers Comments” in a permanent section of the blog’s sidebar and update it regularly.

All of this by way of saying that the editorial staff at JazzProfiles welcomes your communications.

Dutch Jazz Guitarist Jesse van Ruller: From Amsterdam, Bilthoven and Utrecht

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Jesse van ruler is an old soul whose musical personality is firmly embedded in the here-and-now, he plays the lingua franca material with fresh perspective and idiomatic nuance.”

-Ted Panken, Jazz DJ and author

“While American audiences like to think they have a corner on the jazz market, there's no denying the fact that this art form native to the Unites States has also become a universal language being practiced throughout the world. One might even further suggest that there have been several key contributors to the jazz legacy who have come from foreign lands, thus leaving their own personal stamp on a music that now is multi-faceted and multicultural in scope.  From a guitarist's perspective, few would deny that European artists such as Django Reinhardt and Rene Thomas hold their own in the pantheon of jazz plectrists alongside American heavyweights such as Kenny Burrell or Wes Montgomery.

Add to the list of distinguished European guitarists the name of Jesse Van Ruller, the first non-American to win the illustrious Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition and an Amsterdam native who is beginning to perk the interest of American audiences with his original style and talents as a composer.”

- C. Andrew Hovan, Jazz author

One wonders, where does the Jazz path begin for a young guitarist born in Amsterdam in 1972, who grew up in Bilthoven, a small village near Utrecht in The Netherlands?

Next to drums, guitar is perhaps the most popular instrument in the world.

But one would think that contemporary youngsters who are interested in popular music, grow up dreaming of becoming a rock guitarist and not a Jazz instrumentalist.

With Jazz radio and television broadcasts vanishing at hyper speed, where does a youngster even hear Jazz today?

Put another way: Holland has a population of 16,696,00; Utrecht has a population of 316,448; Bilthoven has a population of 31,592: how does someone “find” Jazz from such a limited population base [cf: the population of Beijing alone exceeds 20 million]?

For Jesse van Ruller, his journey into Jazz began serendipitously as suggested in the title to his first Criss Cross CD Here and There [1217] and recounted by Ted Panken in these insert notes  to the recording:

"As a kid, I liked the Pop music that was on the radio, like Queen and Van Halen, and the music my parents listened to, like Fleetwood Mac, the Stones, the Beatles and Bob Dylan," Van Ruller relates. "When I started playing guitar, it was Classical first. I started electric guitar at 11, and started improvising a little bit, without the harmony, but on one chord most of the time. When I was 14 and heard George Benson, who plays jazz harmony, but in a Pop way that I understood and was used to, I loved it immediately.

The jazz aspect was completely new and mysterious to me, the notes he played were so different than the notes you heard from Rock players, and I wanted to figure out how it worked.

Then I found out about John Scofield, and went to the library and borrowed Still Warm.  It was a new world. From that moment, it took me and it's never let me go."

The aspirant gobbled up guitar vocabulary, paying close attention to iconic recordings and occasionally traveling from Bilthoven to nearby Utrecht to hear local guitarists. "I never got into transcribing much," Van Ruller says. "I listened, and then figured things out by ear, not in a systematic way, but more playful, trying this and that.

"I don't think I play like John Scofield, but he was my bridge from Pop music to Jazz. Probably what I liked so much about him was the dissonance of his lines, and the way he phrases; he sounds like a saxophone player to me, which is something I've always wanted to get.

Then I read an interview where Scofield mentioned other guys, older guitarists like Jimmy Raney and Wes Montgomery, and also Pat Martino and Pat Metheny, whom I didn't know at that time. So I went to the library and found some of their records.

"Wes Montgomery is like our godfather for his unparalleled groove. Jimmy Raney was probably the first guitarist I heard who was not a Fusion or Jazz-Rock player; I love the way he outlined the harmony so tastefully within his very melodic lines. And Pat Martino was a huge influence in terms of emphasizing notes or accents in lines and playing dynamically.

"When I got to the Hilversum Conservatory, I discovered Peter Bernstein, who is now a friend. I got a lot from hearing how he treated the tradition, taking the whole background of Wes Montgomery and George Benson and Pat Martino, and making his very own voice. He confirmed that it was possible for someone closer to my age to play in the tradition, but still make your own music, have your own sound. Where I was learning, everybody had to play at least Fusion, everything new was cool, but you were considered old-fashioned and boring for liking music that had been played before, and it was hard to dare to play it.  Peter gave me hope."

During conservatory years, Van Ruller developed his talent with a vengeance. Not long after his 1995 graduation, a friend (the singer Fleurine, who brought him to New York that year as a sideman on a record with Christian McBride, Ralph Moore and Tom Harrell) urged him to attend that year's Thelonious Monk Competition, which he entered and won, the first European to earn the prestigious prize.

"It had a big impact on my career," Van Ruller acknowledges. "I had a lot of press attention in Holland; it was quite special for a Dutch guy to win a competition like that. From that moment on, I made records, and I played a lot."

As you can see, for someone of his generation, it was more a matter more of good fortune and lucky associations that helped Jesse discover the secrets of Jazz.

Jazz fans of all ages are certainly a major beneficiary of Jesse’s voyage of self-discovery.

Jesse appears with trumpeter John Swana performing John’s Philly Jazz with bassist John Patitucci and drummer Eric Harland.

Joe’s Bar Mitzvah, an original by fellow Dutchman, alto saxophonist Benjamin Herman, finds Jesse performing with Hammond B-3 organist, Larry Goldings and drummer, Idris Muhammud.

Jesse is the resident guitarist with the Amsterdam-based, Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw, and he and this excellent big band perform his original composition The Secret Champ on this closing video.

The Cal Tjader - Stan Getz Sextet

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Getz’s session with Cal Tjader looks forward with some prescience to the bossa nova records that were to come. Certainly the coolly pleasant backings of Tjader's rhythm section make up a cordial meeting-ground for tenor and vibes to play lightly appealing solos,....”

- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.

Although the title of this feature is very formal, in reality, the Cal Tjader - Stan Getz quartet was never a working group.

It was a “one off” that came together to produce a February 1958 Fantasy LP with the same title as this piece [Fantasy F-3266/OJCCD-275-2].

In today’s terms, the sextet on The Cal Tjader-Stan Getz Sextet was a hybrid made up of two players from vibraphonist Cal Tjader’s regular working group at the time - pianist Vince Guaraldi and guitarist Eddie Duran - and two musicians from the quartet then on tour with tenor saxophonist Stan Getz - bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Billy Higgins.

Ralph J. Gleason offers this background as to how the LP came about in his insert notes to the recording:

“WHEN STAN GETZ played the Black Hawk in San Francisco ..., the time was ripe for the recording of an album that had been under discussion for a long, long time.

Cal Tjader had been an admirer of Stan Getz ever since the latter first shot to national jazz fame as the tenor saxophone star of the Woody Herman band and Stan had heard Cal and played with him at various sessions since Cal first went out as a member of the Dave Brubeck Trio. However, recording Stan with the Tjader group wasn't easy. They never seemed to be in the same part of the country at the same time. It wasn't until Stan came to the Black Hawk to fulfill a short engagement, during a period when Cal was laying off prior to reforming his group, that it was possible to work it out.

Getz' group at the Black Hawk featured two young jazz players who were totally unknown then: bassist Scotty LaFaro and drummer Billy Higgins. But they gassed Tjader as they had gassed everyone who heard them in the club. And it was decided to use them on the date along with Vince Guaraldi, Tjader's regular pianist, and Eddie Duran, the wonderful young guitarist who has been growing in stature in recent years for his in-person appearances and his work on his Fantasy albums.

Most jazz record dates, as anyone who has ever attended one knows, begin late and are one long tortured attempt to get enough material done right to fit on one LP. Once in a long while a date will jell from note one. This was one of those dates.

A critic journeying across the Bay to San Francisco to catch what he thought would be the last two hours of the date almost missed the whole thing. The album was recorded in record time (no pun intended) with less than three hours work. No tune, except two, had more than one take and even then it was a tossup as to which to use. …

As Vince Guaraldi, the swarthy Borgia of the piano, put it when the date was over, ‘When you got it, you got it.’ And they have.”

This album has long remained one of my favorites for the reasons mentioned in this excerpt from Ted Gioia’s West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960: [paragraphing modified]

“Tjader suffered to some extent from the general lack of imagination that characterized much of Fantasy's jazz product in the late 1950s. While other jazz producers of the day, such as Norman Granz or Orrin Keepnews, constantly strived for different formats, personnel, and concepts for their artists, Fantasy tended to churn out a steady stream of similar-sounding albums, usually featuring Tjader's working band.

One of the few exceptions to this rule, Tjader's collaboration with Stan Getz showed the benefits of mixing Cal with new blood from beyond the occasionally anemic Fantasy roster. In addition to Getz, the session featured Scott LaFaro, Billy Higgins, Vince Guaraldi, and Eddie Duran. The band drew on some of the permanent fixtures in the Tjader repertoire—Cal's waltz Lizanne, the blues Crow's Nest, and Guaraldi's Ginza Samba—with Getz leading the way with a charged tenor performance.”

This video is set to Vince Guaraldi’s Ginza Samba to give you a taste of what’s on offer in this wonderful recording.