Arguably Santana's strongest work within his mediocre '80s studio output, Blues for Salvador is a listenable CD with some high moments. The soft jazz/rock "Bella," a love song to Carlos' daughter, deserves a place of honor on any list of pretty Santana tunes. With Chester Thompson's keyboards joining Carlos' guitar to create exquisite music with an atmospheric, relaxing texture, "Bella" has its own sound rather than the rehashed high-pitched guitar twangs of the triad of "Samba Pa Ti," "Europa," and "Moonflower." In the title cut, Carlos' guitar expresses a sort of yearning, passionate but not intense, and sometimes even smug, with a modified blues feel. It is also very atmospheric, because of the perfect overlaying of Thompson's keyboards with Carlos' guitar work. However, while the other tracks are decent, they contain nothing earth shattering. "Hannibal" has some good guitar soloing but is just a moderately improved remake of the Zebop version, and "Deeper, Dig Deeper" is an instrumental of the verseline version of Freedom. Among the other songs are a concert jam and two outtakes from the "Love Never Fails" sessions. The material from those sessions never became a solo Santana album as planned, instead appearing here as well as on Freedom and Viva Santana. Thus, Blues for Salvador largely amounts to a patchwork CD. Vocals are ephemeral; the music is the thing, and there is some good stuff, but not enough to justify a fourth star.

Admittedly there are at least three tracks on Blues For Salvador that have a really outdated 80's pop rock commercial feel for the time. But the rest of the set is purely heaven sent and timeless !
There is an experimental quality with Blues For Salvador that was not really felt or expressed with Santana's other pop sounding projects or efforts from the 80's. At times there is a slight underlying new age or ambient feel to some of the instrumentals such as Mingus. The Latin, rock, jazz fusion sound is still there and umistakeably Santana's trademark sound.
Like I said, forget about the few pop-like tracks, while a bit catchy (I'm Gone, 'Trane, Deeper Big Deeper) and concentrate on the majority of excellent material that is here !

I was going to give this recording only 4 stars but because Bella is one of the most beautiful instrumentals Santana has ever written I have to bump it to 5...

This album is a wonderful exit from the poppy radio stuff of the mid 80's. A few of the tracks are heavily drum-tracked, yet there are also some real drums in there, like on Bella. Bailando/Aquatic park is an essential listen..there is some beautiful playing on that one. Bella, i think, is the absolute best mood music on the face of the earth. I don't know how many times I have lay back on my bed with incense and cranked up Bella and waited for the climax of the song. Blues for Salvador is incredible...but if you really want to appreciate that song...get "Viva Santana" on video. The studio doesn't do it credit. All in all, this album is super listenable, and i will consistently just whisper "wow" to myself upon listening to it..

Highly recommended!

Carlos outdoes himself on this one. His guitar playing is bone chilling. Now That You Know,Bella, Blues for Salvador, and Trane really display Carlos Santana genius as a guitarist. Most of this cd is instrumental rock,featuring Santana's vintage guitar solos as only he can do them.This cd won a the grammy award for best instrumental rock album of 1987. I own numerous Santana CD's and this one is one of my favorites.

MOSTLY UNISPIRED INSTRUMENTALS.
THIS REALLY ISN'T A CARLOS SANTANA SOLO ALBUM. IT IS A SANTANA BAND GROUP EFFORT (EXCEPT FOR 2 TRACKS).

Released in 1987, this is a collection of odds and ends. There are alternate takes, live tracks and a few tracks of Santana fooling around. It is 44 minutes long and the sound quality is very good.

I don't konw why this is listed as a Carlos Santana solo CD. All but 2 tracks were performed by the "Santana" band during that time. And the remaining 2 tracks were performed by about the half the group.

The 1980's was not the best decade for Santana. His studio albums had a stripped down sound that conformed to the tastes of the time. His music was more pop oriented. There is nothing wrong with that, except that many of the songs were not very good. But, he continued to be very good in concert.

The music on this album, has the same feel as the rest of Santana's 1980's output, only it is better than most. This is partly because some of the tracks are live. Other tracks are studio reproductions of jams they did in concert.

Much of the music reflects the sound of the eighties. There is the sharp drum notes that were popularized by Dire Straits on Money For Nothing. It was the beginning of digital recording and people were playing around with sonic improvements and wider dynamic ranges. There is also the annoying synthesizer sound that populated much of the New Wave and Disco music. I like synthesizers, but they were poorly used in the eighties.

Two of the tracks on this CD are alternate takes of done during the recording sessions from Freedom and Zebop! The version of Deeper, Dig Deeper here is much better than what was on Freedom. Here it is an instrumental with some manic and funky guitar work from Santana.

The best track on this album is Mingus, which has some interesting synthesizer work from Chester Thompson. Unforntunately, it is less than 2 minutes long.

There is nothing bad on this album (unlike the rest of the Santana albums from the eighties), but most of the music is bland. On the Santana albums from the eighties, I have been pulling off the 2 to 4 good tracks and have been getting rid of the CD's. With Blues For Salvador, I will keep the whole CD. But, if I were ever to lose this CD, I probably would not bother to replace it.

I don't think Santana fully recovered from Festival (1977) until 1990, with Spirits Dancing in the Dark.