Cal Tjader's Latin Concert (LP)

As Cal Tjader's reputation and popularity grew as one of the major forces in Afro-Cuban jazz, he was able to hire some of the music's most able artists. On this 1958 album, recorded at San Francisco's famous Black Hawk, his band included percussionists Mongo Santamaria and Willie Bobo, pianist Vince Guaraldi, and bassist Al McKibbon, a veteran of the Dizzy Gillespie band that opened American ears to the charms and urgencies of Afro-Cuban rhythms. "Having Al in the band," Tjader once said, "is an impossible dream come true." Among the pieces here are several by Tjader and one that was destined to become a classic in the literature of Latin jazz, Ray Bryant's "Cubano Chant."