 Vince Guaraldi & Bola Sete A decidedly lightweight album even by Vince Guaraldi standards, From All Sides is still very enjoyable, and is unique in his catalog for the addition of Bola Sete's acoustic guitar to the usual VG trio format of piano-bass-drums. The sound is very mellow but it's still vital, with the two performers proving ideally matched in their similarly simple-but-extremely-good approach. The opener, "Choro," is the strongest track, brilliantly fusing Guaraldi's affinity for bluesy chords with his penchant for Latin rhythms, and the blend of his piano and Sete's guitar is never tighter than on this track. "Menino Pequeno Da Bateria" is a bossa nova take on "The Little Drummer Boy," as featured on the Charlie Brown Christmas album, though that one lacks the acoustic guitar. Actually, all of the tracks here are essentially bossa novas, the approach wearing a bit thin if you're listening very actively. As background music, it's ideal – even "The Girl From Ipanema" given a lush treatment that transcends its tiredness factor. "A Taste of Honey" is also samba-fied to good effect. The disc's "Side 2" picks things up a bit from the slower material that forms the album's first half, and features the marvellous "Ballad of Pancho Villa," which sounds like Willie Bobo making fun of Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" – it's another great highlight on the disc, featuring some very great piano work from Vince, not too far off from Rubén Gonzalez, actually. Overall, the disc is thoroughly enjoyable, and only gives one more reason to wish for a Vince Guaraldi box set of some sort to materialize – his catalog is so scattershot (no fault of the CD companies – his catalog was scattershot to begin with) that it would be nice to see the man celebrated in a definitive way that does justice to his talent and originality. His playing was never as mind-blowing as the giants (Monk, Bud Powell, Bill Evans, etc), but for simple pleasures, he was sterling. He definitely had a style all his own, and didn't stray too much from it (though I am eager to find the album he sings on, The Eclectic Vince Guaraldi), but his individuality more than compensates for his lack of virtuosity. As for Bola Sete, I don't know him outside of this album and his connection to Guaraldi in general (they made three or four albums together), but his style is as warm and breezy as Guaraldi's, full of humor and taste, and surprising technique when you least expect it. Both were masters of making music that wasn't intense at all, but was never lazy either. The album hardly hits you "from all sides," but the one side it does hit from is pretty terrific.
Review by Druid |