Soul Sauce Revisited

My agent, Elisa Celli, and I lobbied Randall Kline's office in 2014 to do a comprehensive tribute to Tjader with a book tie-in. So far the executive director of the San Francisco Jazz Festival has shown no interest in a long overdue show of respect for Tjader's legacy. However, a baby step in the right direction occurred in 2017. The San Francisco Jazz Festival held a series of concerts in which current jazz artists played selections from an album they admired. Roger Glenn, whom jazz fans and readers of the first edition of my Tjader biography will recognize, picked the seminal LP Soul Sauce. The following is my review of  that performance:

On January 26, Roger Glenn’s combo of Murray Low on piano, James Henry on timbales and drum set, Robb Fisher on bass and Estaire Godinez on congas, performed at the San Francisco Jazz Center’s Joe Henderson Lab, a more intimate room opposite the much larger Miner Auditorium. Both the 8 and 9:30 P.M. shows were well attended. 

Glenn, who wrote his own arrangements and played vibes, started out the set with “Mamblues” and continued with “Soul Sauce (Guarachi Guaro),” “Tanya,” “Leyte,” “João” and “Afro Blue.”

His charts stayed true to his former leader’s spirit, while his solos, particularly on the opening and closing numbers, demonstrated the contrast in the two vibraphonists’ approach. Specifically, a more seasoned Glenn still relishes rapid-fire showmanship, occasionally flipping his mallets in the air. Tjader, well, one can visualize his energetic but measured maneuvers on stage. 

Glenn’s easy rapport with the audience and sense of humor remain intact, though his anecdotal digressions occasionally led him too far astray. Moreover, he mistakenly referred to the late Lonnie Hewitt, formerly a pianist with Tjader, as the sole author of "Leyte." Though Hewitt is rightly credited as co-writer, "Leyte" was the first of three tunes––the others being "Mindoro" (co-written by Hermeto Pascoal) and "Mindanao"––Tjader composed about various locations in the Philippines; he served in the U. S. Navy and was deployed in said country during World War II. 

Glenn's band members, most often Low, segued confidently through the various musical moods. Henry and Godinez, who generally kept her head turned to one side or the other, had their best moments during the finale and Fisher’s fine fingering was most prominent on “Soul Sauce.”

2nd Edition Cal Tjader Biography Finished/Publication Set for Early 2020

The second edition manuscript has been completed. My conclusion on the last phase of the research: From 1951 to 1969 Down Beat reviewed most of Tjader's LPs, and once in awhile, a live performance. During the 1970s, however, only three of the fourteen albums released under his name were reviewed. Moreover, the magazine had just one full length review of a live Tjader combo performance and no attention was paid to any of the LPs subsequently issued by Concord Records in his lifetime; the bandleader died on May 5, 1982. Overall, Tjader was profiled twice in the 1950s––the first was quite brief––and made the cover once (1966). Good to see that he received some recognition but it falls well short of the majority of his peers.

One extra benefit of the wealth of new material on Tjader from Down Beat, the San Francisco Chronicle, other newspapers and more interviews, was the opportunity to correct some errors of commission and omission in the first edition. In sum, I am very pleased with the outcome.

Publication of the 2nd edition Cal Tjader by McFarland & Co. will be early in 2020.