Jazz Vignette #2- Ted Gioia on Cal Tjader

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

On the three pages I maintain that are devoted to The Subject of Jazz - JazzProfiles.blogspot.com, CerraJazz.Substack.com and the Jazz West Coast column on allaboutjazz.com - I make every effort to highlight the writings of other Jazz authors and critics as a way of acknowledging how much they have enriched my appreciation of Jazz and its makers.

In an effort to continue to do so, I am instituting a series of Jazz vignettes to introduce brief samples of the narratives, anecdotes and critiques of a wide variety of these writings.

Since words can only convey so much when it comes to the music under description, I’ll attach a video that contains an audio example of the music.

I always thought that Cal Tjader [1925-1982], who began his career as a drummer, was an extremely underrated vibraphonist. For a drummer, the vibraphone can be an easy instrument to mess with, but a “dangerous” one, too.

His work on the instrument always seemed tastefully understated and very unselfish relative to the manner in which he worked with and featured the other members of his band.

This point is underscored in the second in the Jazz Vignette series with vibraphonist, drummer and band leader Cal Tjader “in the solo spotlight” as discussed by Ted Gioia in his seminal West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960.

“For the most part, Tjader’s records were of just two kinds: Latin albums and straight-ahead jazz albums. And of these the former provided most of the vibraphonist's bread and butter, outselling the jazz releases four to one early in his career and remaining a major drawing card until the very end. The jazz albums, despite their relatively lower profile, in many ways reflected Tjader's basic musical instincts. At heart he was a musical romantic, a highly melodic soloist who refused to adorn his playing with the tawdry frills that are often endemic to jazz in general and the vibes in particular.

The vibraphone invites overplaying almost by its very nature. The trumpet, by comparison, is at the opposite extreme: The visceral feeling of producing the tone is part and parcel of playing it. Each note counts. Moreover, horn playing inculcates a natural instinct for restrained phrasing, if only because of the player's physical need to catch a breath of air. Little wonder that some of jazz's most concise melodists, from Bix to Miles, have been trumpeters. The trumpet has an almost built-in barrier against merely facile playing; instead it, more than the percussion or even string instruments, invites a centered, Zen-like concentration on the melody line. The vibraphone has a much different personality. Unlike a horn player, the vibraphonist is unable to sustain notes for very long, even with help of vibrato and pedal. The vibes invite overplaying to compensate for such limitations. Added to these difficulties is the fact that finger technique is not required to play the vibes—instead a hitting motion is powered by the wrists. With the mastery of a steady drum roll, the aspiring vibraphonist is already capable of flinging out a flurry of notes and, given the repetitive motions used to build up drum technique, the vibes player is often tempted to lock into a "steady stream" approach in which one could say of the notes, following Lewis Carroll, "thick and fast they came at last/and more and more and more."

Tjader's playing, however, was nothing like this. Although he was a drummer and percussionist by background, he seemed to draw on the instincts of a horn player in shaping his improvised lines. They did breathe. One might expect, given this distinctive quality, that Milt Jackson, whose horn-line approach revolutionized vibes playing in the 19505, had been Tjader's prime influence. Indeed, in 1962 he said: "I'm so influenced by what Milt Jackson has done. He has been the Lester Young of the vibes. I find myself always thinking, 'How does this compare with something Milt did?' . . . Milt just revolutionized the instrument."8 Tjader, however, also took care to cite the more musically verbose Lionel Hampton as his first inspiration, stating that Jackson became a model only later. These disparate strains in his playing came out most clearly in his jazz work, where Tjader melded them into a melodic, often introspective style that was very much his own. Even when playing more high-energy Latin numbers Tjader kept a low-key demeanor, building off the intensity of the rhythm section rather than trying to supplant it. For the most part, he came across as an introvert on an instrument meant for extroverts.

I remember seeing Tjader, the year before he died, sitting in with the Brubeck band at a San Francisco jazz festival. The event was heralded as the first reunion of the original Brubeck Trio in some thirty years—with bassist Ron Crotty making up the third member of the reconstituted band. The newly built Davies Symphony Hall was packed with an enthusiastic crowd of jazz fans, many of whom had been following the careers of Brubeck and Tjader, the proverbial town boys who made good, for years if not decades. After playing the drums, Tjader joined Brubeck on the vibes and contributed two delightfully sly and clever solos, both of them musical gems, short on technique but long on creativity and care. Tjader all the while looked nervously around, as though he felt he had little business being on stage at such high-powered proceedings. A number of other premier jazz acts were on the bill that night, and Brubeck's performance rose to the occasion, but the most striking thing about the event for me has remained the two choice Tjader vibraphone solos. Not just their beauty stood out, but also their contrast with the image of self-effacement Tjader gave on the stand. This same self-deprecating attitude came out in one of his comments from the early 1950s: "I am not an innovator, I am not a pathfinder—I am a participator."9 Still in his twenties, at the start of his early successes as a bandleader, Tjader was even then anxious to dismiss outright any undue acclaim.”

I have selected a version of “S.S. Groove” for the closing video tribute to Cal.

On it, you can hear Cal’s unselfishness at work once again as he only takes two choruses while featuring pianist Lonnie Hewitt, throughout.

Cal’s solo begins at 2:01 and ends at 3:08 minutes when he starts the four-note vamp that acts as a tag to extend the tune over which Lonnie solos. Al McKibbon picks up this vamp very strongly at 3:22 minutes. The drummer is Willie Bobo.

If you listen carefully, you can hear Cal asking Lonnie – “All right, done?” – before he comes back in to take the tune out at 4:38 minutes.