Night at the Black Hawk [live]

by Richard S. Ginell Recording during a long holiday season gig at San Francisco's Black Hawk club, Tjader patched together a superb program split between straight-ahead jazz and Afro-Cuban workouts. At the time, Tjader had both Willie Bobo and Mongo Santamaria in his rhythm section; Bobo handles the trap drums during the bop numbers, while the Latin tunes find Willie and Mongo creating even more heat on the timbales and congas. Pianist Vince Guaraldi swings like a madman on "A Night in Tunisia" (though the piano is out of tune), comping and soloing elsewhere with his usual light-hearted assurance, if not the individuality that he would later bring to his own music. For this gig, Tjader adds the Cuban tenor saxophonist Jose "Chombo" Silva, who strikes the right husky Ike Quebec tone in "Blue and Sentimental" and elsewhere had been clearly listening to lots of Stan Getz. The Black Hawk was breaking in some excellent new stereo recording equipment at the time of this gig; hence the clear, sharp sound. This album was combined with all but one song from another album Tjader recorded at the Black Hawk in the late '50s, Live and Direct, on the single-disc Fantasy CD reissue Black Hawk Nights in 2000.