Featured Essay: Collecting Cal Tjader Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Jazz

by Eric Gaines

I have been a collector for most of my life. When I was first developing my taste in music, I inherited my mom’s cassette collection of classic rock and new wave, mostly things like Boston or Oingo Boingo. As I entered my teens, I started to collect CDs and DVDs. I even had a fledgling vinyl collection with a handful of Bowie and Beatles records when I entered college, which I eventually sold in bulk to a friend to help fund the purchase of a laptop.

I picked up buying vinyl again around 2017, but started extremely picky, only getting records from bands I went to see in person, or grabbing a record here or there that meant a lot to me (like a copy of the 40th anniversary repress of Pet Sounds). Despite my small collections in my youth, the record collecting bug didn’t really bite until I started going to a local auction. At one of these auctions, there was a lot of ~200 vinyl records, most of which were old country, classical, or jazz records, with a few folk and folk rock classics thrown in there. As I sorted through the pile, siphoning out the Linda Ronstadt, Willie Nelson, Jackson Browne, and Bee Gees records that drew my attention to the lot initially, I found myself with a heap of records that I historically had no interest in listening to.

At that point something clicked in my brain. “It’s there. I already have it. The worst outcome of listening to it (other than potentially triggering some secret sleeper agent code embedded in my brain since birth) is that I won’t really enjoy it and I will never listen to it again.” So I followed my own advice, threw my hands up and said why not. I wasn’t immediately impressed by the crackly reverberant recordings of The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra playing selections from Mozart’s Symphonies; nor was I impressed by the crooning of Perry Como and the slew of Christmas records I found myself buried under.

Then I came across a record that completely changed the way I would consume music and especially the way I collect vinyl. An unusual mix of Asian inspired chord progressions, Latin percussion, bossa nova rhythm and bass lines, and the haunting metallic chime of a vibraphone combined in one song: Sake and Greens, the opening track on Breeze From The East, Cal Tjader’s 1964 (recorded Nov-Dec 1963) exotica inspired jazz album. It immediately evoked that slinky 60s jet set lounge vibe. The rest of the album sparkled with similar 60s accents, including surf guitar, organ stings, sappy sentimental violins, and even some jazz flute thrown in. It’s just the right amount of corny while still being a fun and exciting listen. I was thrilled with the find. Even if there were only another album or two like it in the auction lot, it would have been worth the $50 I spent on it. Well I was in luck, the lot also contained other Cal Tjader records: Several Shades of Jade (1963, co-arranged by Lalo Schifrin, writer of the Mission: Impossible theme), Warm Wave (1964), a sealed copy of Along Comes Cal (1967), and Last Bolero in Berkeley (1973). As soon as the needle lifted from side B of Breeze, I hurriedly put another Tjader record on the turntable. I was fully hooked.

A quick note on Cal Tjader as a person: his mother taught him piano as a child and his father taught him to tapdance. He would frequently perform both around clubs, opening for his parents as a young kid. He then learned drums and won a drum contest at age 16 that was broadcast on the radio on the morning of December 7, 1941, the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. He enlisted as a medic in World War II and upon returning from duty in 1946, enrolled in college, where he met Dave Brubeck. Cal played drums for Dave and taught himself vibraphone on the side before gigs, even appearing on vibes on a few early Brubeck records. In 1951, Brubeck was injured and had to go on hiatus for a year or so, so Tjader began working as a sideman for other jazz artists, most notably Vince Guaraldi and George Shearing. In 1954, Cal began acting as bandleader, incorporating more and more Latin jazz influence, especially mambo, samba, and bossa nova.

Since that fateful auction purchase, my collection of Cal Tjader has expanded to 22 records, with another 8 that feature Cal as a sideman (either as a drummer, which was his primary focus before becoming bandleader, or as a vibraphone accompaniment). Part of the draw for me is Cal’s ability to mix Latin jazz influences with other forms, like bebop and “Cool jazz”. Some of his later records in the 1980s even start to lean into jazz-fusion and funk (seriously, you should check out this insane jazz funk live performance featuring Dizzy Gillespie and Cal Tjader, it goes INCREDIBLY hard). His versatility as a player and his expressive playing of the vibraphone made me appreciate a wider range of jazz, a genre I had largely written off in my teens as “too chaotic to enjoy.” Yes, I know it was an incredibly ignorant take, but I was a teen that thought the only good music ever made was classic rock and 90s alternative.

Cal Tjader opened my eyes to jazz as a genre and as I started collecting more and more records, an increasing percentage of my purchases were jazz. As of the time of writing this, my record collection stands at 1344 records, 350 of which are jazz. From Tjader, I expanded to Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz; from them Paul Desmond, João Gilberto, Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims, Walter Wanderley, Lionel Hampton, and Milt Jackson; from them Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Errol Garner, Johnny Hodges, Bobby Hutcherson, Wes Montgomery, and countless others. I have learned to appreciate the intricacies of a jazz piece, whether it’s a more composed song with minimal solos and a clear progression or something more chaotic, stuffed with solos and seemingly lacking any cohesive structure. I can even pick up on the subtle differences in vibraphone players, with someone like Lionel Hampton having a more percussive thudding strike compared to Bobby Hutcherson’s ability to seemingly lift the notes gently from the bars.

My appreciation for jazz is now being spread to others in my circle. I host a few “jazz vinyl nights” per year at my friend’s coffee shop/art studio. I’ll bring a number of records centered around a theme (for example an Exotica night featuring Arthur Lyman, Martin Denny, Les Baxter, and Yma Sumac) and pair them with a matching cocktail. While the guests sit and sip, I give a short intro on the artist and the record being showcased, before playing one side of the record. What started as a one time event to celebrate the opening of the space has turned into a quarterly draw for the shop. Since the start of the jazz nights, our local record shop has noted an increase in jazz record sales (whether correlation or causation, who can say). I am just happy to see more people enjoy music that they previously might have thought was not worth their time.

These days, I don’t have much of a discriminatory eye when it comes to vinyl purchases. I may keep a lookout for certain records to flesh out my full discography sets (Herb Alpert, Bee Gees, Jackson Browne, Dave Brubeck, etc.), but if I am sorting through the bargain bins, my main concern is whether or not I already have a copy. If I don’t already own them, I will usually pick up one or two records that have an interesting cover or something else that catches my eye and they are always the first ones I throw on once I get home. Maybe there is another Cal Tjader hiding amongst the bargain bins waiting to hook me with one track and send me down another path.

Eric Gaines makes music as Nova Robotics Initiative and runs the “record label” Rusted Gear Records. Eric writes, records, and self-produces all of his music, which is always “pay what you want” on bandcamp or available on the regular streaming services. Eric’s record collection stands at 1344 records. His favorite record in the collection is a first pressing of Neil Young’s On The Beach. His golden ticket record is an original pressing of They Might Be Giants’ self-titled first record (while not rare or expensive, he’s never seen one in person). Eric can be found on BlueSky @rustedgearrecs.bsky.social.

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