Cal Tjader — Cal Tjader’s Latin Kick (2024 OJC Remaster)
Qobuz reissue review (December 2024)
It’s wild that the cover of Latin Kick features a saguaro-focused desert scene, implying that this would be an album filled with mariachi or other Mexican-based music. Tjader, of course, was a mambo man, both spearheading and benefiting from the huge wave of interest in Cuban jazz that occurred in the early ’50s, and this album, unsurprisingly, has far less to do with Bing Crosby’s “Mexicali Rose” than it does “Blues From Havana” (the Tjader original that closes the set). While Tjader’s instrument of choice (vibraphone) would seem to have inspired his tropics-inspired tunes to fall more in line with the smooth exotica, he always delivered music fully anchored in the jazz tradition, and this 1956 session finds both Tjader and his band stretching out confidently. The majority of the album is given over to Latin jazz interpretations of standards, but “Blues from Havana” and the other original, “Tropicville,” are also excellent, if a little on the nose, title-wise. Still it’s fascinating to see what this group does with the songbook tunes they perform. “I Love Paris” swings incredibly hard, with a great mambo undercurrent that fits the song surprisingly well and gives the percussionists — conga player Luis Miranda and timbalist Bayardo Velarde — plenty of room to shine. Likewise, tenor player Brew Moore is able to extend considerably on a grooving version of “Bye Bye Blues” that still keeps plenty of Cuban ambience, though it largely reads as a bluesy blower. Yet it’s the group’s takes on some serious warhorses — “All the Things You Are,” “September Song,” and “Moonlight in Vermont” — that show just how seamlessly Tjader was able to fuse Afro-Cuban rhythms, jazzy improvisation, and robust melodic beauty to make something that was exotic and interesting without being overly dependent on atmospheres and stereotypes. Regardless of what the album cover may imply.
