Agua Dulce (Remastered) Cal Tjader

• 1 Agua Dulce (Cool-Ade) 03:38
• 2 Curacao 05:17
• 3 Somewhere In The Night 04:25
• 4 Gimme Shelter 02:40
• 5 Ran Kan Kan 03:02
• 6 Descarga 03:05
• 7 Invitation 03:04
• 8 Now 05:25
• 9 Morning 03:28
• Total Runtime 34:04

Info for Agua Dulce (Remastered)

This 1971 album from the Jazz great. Vibes player Cal Tjader was one of the leading figures in Latin Jazz. Based in California, he recorded for Fantasy throughout the '50s before moving on to Verve, where he achieved international success with his album Soul Sauce, with it's dance floor-friendly title track. He then set up his own label, Skye, before re-signing to Fantasy in 1971.

One of the most successful, most recorded and most influential jazz players of his time, Cal Tjader is these days a largely overlooked figure in the music’s history. Part of the cause of his lack of recognition is present in the reasons he was so successful. Tjader made no great leaps forward harmonically or rhythmically, but instead showed how jazz and Afro-Cuban music could blend together with the vibraphone as the lead instrument, its percussiveness working very well in that musical context. In doing so, he was followed by many others, his commercial success affording him the opportunity to record a great number of albums. However, Tjader died early – in 1982 – and this contributed to him becoming almost forgotten in the jazz world. Yet in the UK he is remembered with fondness by several generations of jazz clubbers for his 1950s mambos, 60s latin-soul grooves and 70s latin-funk, while his final albums for Concord provided jazz dancers with the timeless ‘Shoshana’. His early 70s albums for Fantasy are among his most overlooked, which, as you will hear on this recording, is a real shame, as his playing and the arrangements are of the very highest quality.

Jim McCabe, bass
Phil Escovedo, bass
Ron McClure, bass
Cal Tjader, bongos, guiro, percussion
Michael Smith, bongos, guiro, percussion
Pete Escovedo, bongos, guiro, percussion
Michael Smithe, congas
Pete Escovedo, congas
Richard Berk, drums
Lee Charlton, drums
Al Zulaica, Fender Rhodes piano
Gerry Gilmore, saxophone, flute
Mel Martin, saxophone, flute
Rita Dowling, Moog synthesizer
Coke Escovedo, timbales
Frank Snow, trumpet
Pat Houston, trumpet
Cal Tjader, vibraphone
Coke Escovedo, vocals
Pete Escovedo, vocals
Bill Perkins, saxophone (solo)
Luis Gasca, trumpet (solo)

Digitally remastered

Cal Tjader
Born July 16, 1925, in St. Louis, Missouri, Cal Tjader was originally a drummer and played with George Shearing. He came to prominence, however, as a vibraphonist. I remember Mongo Santamaria accompanying him on congas at the "Village Gate" in 1961. I never heard anything as exciting in my life! My career was beginning to take shape--even if I didn't realize it at the time.

Cal Tjader had studied music in San Francisco and had come up through the ranks with Dave Brubeck, Alvino Rey, Willie Bobo, Vince Guaraldi, and Mongo Santamaria. His discography is enormous and includes close to one hundred albums as leader and many as "sideman"--with the likes of Duke Ellington, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Rosemary Clooney, Tania Maria, Anita O'Day, and Carmen McRae. As a songwriter, his work appears on albums by Poncho Sanchez, Bobby Shew, Clare Fischer, Jerry Gonzales, and Stan Getz.

In 1963 Creed Taylor signed him with Verve, and Tjader worked with Klaus Ogermann and other producers to create some of the hippest albums of the 1960s. His single of "Soul Sauce" ("Guachi Guara") briefly entered the Top Forty charts.

Although Tjader was often slammed by jazz critics for pandering to popular tastes, he was well-respected among the Latin musicians with whom he worked, including Candido, Armando Peraza, Eddie Palmieri, and Tito Puente. In his later years, he came to be recognized as one of the fathers of acid jazz. His concord album "La Onda Va Bien" won a Grammy award in 1979.

This album contains no booklet.