By sheer coincidence, I’ve recently been obsessively listening to Miles Davis’s 1961 album Someday My Prince Will Come, in particular the title track. The story of how this lilting waltz in an uncommon key, from Disney’s 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became a jazz standard is pretty interesting. But I digress. When I sat down to listen closely to Dino Saluzzi’s El Viejo Caminante I skipped right to his interpretation of “Someday My Prince Will Come” and was immediately smitten.
My first exposure to this seemingly ageless master of the bandoneon (he turned 90 in May 2025) was his 2010 collaboration with Andrei Pushkarev and Gidon Kremer on a tribute to film composer Giya Kancheli Themes from the Songbook. I wasn’t able to review that one but it put Saluzzi on my radar and I was delighted to see this release come down the pipeline.
This is an intimate album, just Dino and two guitarists, his son José Maria Saluzzi on classical guitar and Norwegian Jacob Young on an electric Telecaster and acoustic guitars. It’s a generous program of 14 songs in which the master and his instrument explore a variety of moods. Dino is said to view the album as a collection of songs from a variety of eras and genres including tango, Argentinean folk music and jazz, and the jazz element is particularly strong this time with the aforementioned “Prince” as well as “My One And Only Love,” a standard since Sinatra recorded it in the ’50s; and the catchy, shimmery “Northern Sun” by Norwegian jazz singer Karin Krog. The two guitarists, both on acoustics, play particularly prominent roles on “Northern Sun,” which José Maria gives a bit of a Spanish flare to on his tasty solo. “My One And Only Love,” which finishes the album, is lushly romantic, Jacob giving it a sweet jazzy essence with his Tele tuned to Jim Hall mode.
But I can’t stop listening to “Someday My Prince Will Come” which seems to be a duet with José Maria. It’s playful and lilting and sad, Dino tossing out snippets of the familiar melody in a tango influenced fluid, almost rubato style. I melt every time.
Even though I said the music explores many moods, pretty much all of them are tinged with melancholy to some degree. The solo title track is prime among them, and one might expect “El Viejo Caminante, The Old Wanderer” is self-referential, but this song of Dino’s actually goes back quite a few years. It’s one of several originals here, some new and some old tunes in new settings.”Buenos Aires 1950″ is a look back to the time Saluzzi spent as a member of Argentina’s Orquesta de Radio El Mundo; the sedately joyous “Mi Hijo Y Yo, My Son and I” was cowritten with José Maria and played as a duet. Dino’s younger collaborators contribute some tunes as well: José Maria’s “La Ciudad De Los Aires Buenos” opens the album as sort of a benediction and a foretaste of what’s to come including a delicious guitar duet passage; and Jacob Young contributes two. “Dino Is Here” is a particular highlight, with the two acoustic guitars providing a mesmerizing fingerpicked foundation for some of Dino’s most playful squeezebox excursions on the album, and some excellent guitar improv from both as well.
El Viejo Caminante is a quiet joy from first note to last, soothing and engaging in equal measures.
(ECM, 2025)
