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Cal Tjader was a Swedish-American vibraphonist who led pioneering Latin jazz bands from the 1950s until his death in 1982. He was instrumental in bringing Latin music into the mainstream of jazz, creating a fluid, cool-toned vibraphone sound that perfectly embraced both musical styles. His 1966 collaboration with Latin pianist Eddie Palmieri, El Sonido Nuevo, is one of the most intense mixtures of hot salsa and cool jazz ever recorded. For this session, Tjader and his bassist Bobby Rodriguez joined forces with Palmieri and his high-spirited band, La Perfecta, creating a new unit with a new sound. This new soul sound is showcased on the album’s opening track, "Los Jibaros." The song starts off with a slightly chunkier than usual mambo theme, which Tjader spices up with an Eastern-influenced vibes solo set against several bluesy trombones that quickly digress into a caterwauling dialogue with one another. "Ritmo Uni" begins with the audaciously grooving bass of Bobby Rodriguez, who is then joined by the feverish rhythms of Palmieri’s ever supportive percussion and brass sections, all of which combine to create a hypnotic, funky, and mildly psychedelic vibe that perfectly underpins Tjader’s superb solo. The song prematurely fades out after a scant three minutes of bliss. Thankfully, the producers allowed the tape to run on "Picadillo," a hard-driving 7-minute exploration of Tito Puente’s mambo classic. Palmieri reaches deep inside his Nuyorican soul to unleash a long, climactic piano solo filled with echoes of McCoy Tyner, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell. The band moves in heated rhythmic discussion behind him, playing with just the right amount of restraint, heightening the intensity of Palmieri’s inspired solo. Tjader is given just the push he needs to take his playing one step beyond, and trombonist Barry Rogers brings it all home with his swaggering solo. "Modesty," the theme to the now obscure film Modesty Blaise, is a kitchy throwback to the groovy days of the Mod ‘60s, when men dressed like Austin Powers and actually looked cool (if only for a minute). "Unidos" opens with a mean Palmieri solo that can only be described as Thelonious Monk played with a thick Cuban accent. George Castro glides across the uptempo beat, serving up some funky Latin flute. Tjader swings pleasantly enough on the album’s most inappropriate selection, the Broadway standard "On A Clear Day You Can See Forever." A decent enough track in its own right, it was somebody's bad call to put it on the album (don't blame the Latin soul brothers for that one). But the best is saved for last, and all the stops are pulled on the album’s title cut, "El Sonido Nuevo." Loosely structured, atmospheric and jamming, it is on this track that all of the talents of the assembled players coalesced, producing a blazing masterpiece of Latin-jazz improvisation. The power of the original vinyl release is diluted by the six enjoyable but rather lightweight bonus tracks mindlessly tacked on to the end of the Verve CD reissue. One can't help but wonder whether or not there were any outtakes from the 1966 sessions left somewhere in the vaults. The reissue could surely have added value if it at least included the full and unedited versions of the songs, without all those irritating fade-outs. Nevertheless, the incandescent musical meeting of Tjader and Palmieri produced an invigoratingly new soul sound that was a hugely influential precursor to salsa, Afro-Latin funk, and Latin-Rock. El Sonido Nuevo is strongly intoxicating.
---John Ballon (email)
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