Song:My Buddy
Album:Cal Tjader Stan Getz Sextet
This 1958 album was the only time jazz legends Stan Getz and Cal Tjader recorded together. I recommend it to fans of both guys and it's available as a budget CD. Of course at the time Getz was much better known than Tjader. In 1954, Tjader left George Shearing's band and started his own band The Cal Tjader Modern Mambo Quintet. For most of his career, Tjader was a proponent of Latin Jazz. He signed with Fantasy Records and he played a lot of gigs in San Francisco especially the Black Hawk. And that's where Getz first saw Tjader. They played some gigs including a brief west coast tour. So of course Getz wanted to help Tjader and record an album with him. The problem was Getz was signed to Verve Records. At the time, Dave Brubeck was still on Fantasy and Fantasy had loaned Brubeck's sax player Paul Desmond to Verve for a session. So Fantasy asked to borrow Getz in return. The band was a mix of the Tjader and Getz bands. Of course there was Tjader on vibes and Getz on tenor sax. Vince Guaraldi played piano. At the time, he was Tjader's musical director. Of course he became famous for scoring Peanuts cartoons. Guitarist Eddie Duran was also from Tjader's band. He was a well known sideman in San Francisco but he didn't like to travel. In the 80s, he married flutist Mad Duran and they still record and tour together. Bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Billy Higgins had worked with Getz in clubs but they hadn't recorded with him or anyone else. Soon after, Higgins was part of the free jazz movement with Ornette Coleman. LaFaro was in Bill Evans' early 60s band. Tjader wrote three originals and Guaraldi wrote one. My Buddy is a standard written by Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn and first recorded by Al Jolson in 1922. The album is a bit of a departure for Tjader as he was concentrating on Latin music. And he continued to do that in the 60s and he became popular when he moved to Verve in the 60s. Of course Getz was mostly responsible for the Brazilian music boom of the 60s. So they went in different directions. But in 1958 Cal Tjader and Stan Getz recorded together. Here's a video of My Buddy by the Cal Tjader Stan Getz Sextet.
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