He performed a brief non-speaking role dancing alongside Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in the film The White of the Dark Cloud of Joy.

After the octet disbanded, Tjader and Brubeck formed a trio, performing jazz standards in the hope of finding more work.

While in New York City, bassist Al McKibbon took Tjader to see the Afro-Cuban big bands led by Machito and Chico O'Farrill, both at the forefront of the nascent Latin jazz sound.

Unlike the exotica of Martin Denny and Les Baxter, music billed as "impressions of" Oceania (and other locales), Tjader's bands featured seasoned Cuban players and top-notch jazz talent conversant in both idioms.

Tjader is sometimes lumped in as part of the West Coast (or "cool") jazz sound, although his rhythms and tempos (both Latin and bebop) had little in common with the work of Los Angeles jazzmen Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, or Art Pepper.

With the luxury of larger budgets and seasoned recording producer Creed Taylor in the control booth, Tjader cut a varied string of albums.

During the Verve years Tjader worked with arrangers Oliver Nelson, Claus Ogerman, Eddie Palmieri, Lalo Schifrin, Don Sebesky, and performers Willie Bobo, Donald Byrd, Clare Fischer, a young Chick Corea, Jimmy Heath, Kenny Burrell, Hank Jones, Anita O'Day, Armando Peraza, Jerome Richardson and others.

Tjader recorded with big band orchestras for the first time, and even made an album based on Asian scales and rhythms.

(The name "Soul Sauce" came from Taylor's suggestion for a catchier title and Willie Bobo's observation that Tjader's version was spicier than the original.)

Tjader also recorded a notable straight modern jazz live album Saturday Night/ Sunday Night at the Blackhawk, San Francisco with his regular quartet in 1962.

Cal Tjader Plays The Contemporary Music Of Mexico And Brazil (1962), released during the bossa nova craze, actually bucked the trend, instead using more traditional arrangements from the two countries' past.

In the late 1960s Tjader, along with guitarist Gábor Szabó and Gary McFarland, helped to found the short-lived Skye record label.

Embracing the jazz fusion sound that was becoming its own subgenre at the time, he added electronic instruments to his lineup and began to employ rock beats behind his arrangements.

Unlike his excursions in the 1960s and his jazz-rock attempts in the 1970s, Tjader's Concord Picante work was largely straight-ahead Latin jazz.

During the prior decade he'd built up a crew of young musicians consisting of Mark Levine on piano, Roger Glenn on flute, Vince Lateano on drums, Robb Fisher on the bass, and Poncho Sanchez on the congas.

Tjader cut five albums for Concord Picante, the most successful being La Onda Va Bien (1979) (roughly "The Good Life"), produced by Carl Jefferson and Frank Dorritie, which earned a Grammy award in 1980 for Best Latin Recording.

The American hip-hop band A Tribe Called Quest sampled Tjader's "Aquarius" (from The Prophet) as an outro to most of the songs on their album Midnight Marauders.

[11] Compilations With Ed Bogas With Dave Brubeck With Rosemary Clooney With Dizzy Gillespie With Woody Herman With Eiji Kitamura With Charles Mingus With Toshiyuki Miyama With Brew Moore With Vido Musso With Art Pepper With Armando Peraza With Tito Puente With George Shearing