Sandwiched between two U. S. tours after a return from the Far East, Welcome was recorded when the band was in peak condition. Carlos' sound was almost liquidly expressive, fully capable of transmitting the inner joy he was feeling. With Caravanserai and the challenging collaboration with John McLaughlin on Love, Devotion, & Surrender under his belt, Carlos was playing with ever more confidence, fully assured that the new direction that he and Michael Shrieve had embarked on was the path to musical fulfillment. Understandably, he felt that this band could go in almost any direction such was the versatility and composite of experience represented by this road-tested unit.

For many non- jazz musicians Welcome is the Santana album which fully opened their eyes to the potential inherent in much of their music if they dared to leave behind the safety net of the predictable and the obvious. For many jazz musicians, Welcome was a veritable revelation, an almost-shocking indication of what true fusion could be. And for the average listener willing to continue the further explorations of Santana, Welcome was a rich reward for their perseverance, food for the heart, soul and feet.

From just the opening strains of the Alice Coltrane-derived Going Home, you know that this is not just an album of songs but, rather, some kind of special experience. Each 1973 tour concert opened with a similarly dramatic rendition of this folk/traditional excerpt from Dvorak's magnificent opus, so beautifully rendered by the Coster-Kermode duo buttressed by a wall of percussion. Perhaps no song on the album or in the band's repertoire of that time better indicated how far Santana had come musically in such a relatively short period of time.

There is ample evidence of the maturation of this band throughout Welcome largely due to the new harmonic base of Coster's keyboards which gave almost every composition a distinctive sound and feel. With Leon Thomas providing a vocal flavor and element almost unheard of in any other musical circles and displayed to such advantage on the Shrieve-Coster gem When I Look Into Your Eyes and with the additional delightful vocals from Flora Purim and Wendy Haas, Welcome has an airy- almost soothing vibe- to go along with all its other moods.

The Tom Coster-Greg Adams string arrangement for the intro to the Coster-Kermode-Santana masterpiece Light of Life is further proof that this, indeed, is the new Santana band, an aggregation which, quite frankly, in its deservedly lofty stature had no peers as it seemed intent on making music fully deserving of Duke Ellington's ultimate encomium of "Beyond category".

Nestled inside the Carlos Santana-Herbie Mann rendition of Mother Africa, a showcase for Armando Peraza ("The Hands of Africa"), Michael Shrieve, and Jose "Chepito" Areas is a startlingly fresh and probing soprano saxophone solo from San Franciscan Jules Broussard. His appearance on Welcome would be a brief portent to his future involvement with the band once the 1973 tour was completed.

In some respects, the drum chair for the Santana band of any era is among the most difficult challenges of any music if only because of the wide gamut of music and musical styles. For Michael Shrieve, drummer/composer extraordinaire, Welcome is a beautiful opportunity to show just how complete a player he was even at this early stage of his career. Whether providing a Bernard Purdie-funk to the Lonnie Liston Smith-type coda for Love, Devotion, & Surrender, or blending so seamlessly with Areas and Peraza on "Chepito's" Samba De Sausalito, Shrieve is never less than outstanding, and his work on John McLaughlin's Flame Sky is still breathtaking even after all these years.

After the meeting of Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin on 1972's Love, Devotion, and Surrender guitarists and music lovers' round the world looked forward to the next meeting of these young giants on Flame Sky. I think it's safe to say that no one was disappointed. Once again the Coster-Kermode duo is truly outstanding whether in solo or supporting mode and Doug Rauch's performance is only further proof that with his premature passing music and music lovers were deprived of a monumental talent.

Supreme master musician that he is, John McLaughlin demonstrates on Flame Sky how to play inside, on top of, and against odd-metered music, doing so with all the ease, aplomb, and virtuosity that characterized the epochal renderings of the Mahavishnu Orchestra but this time doing it with the added element of Carlos Santana's forever memorable opening solos. Hearing this track today, one can only hope that the two will once again make musical magic together.

The overriding influence and significance of John Coltrane clearly permeates the entire album so the daring inclusion of Coltrane's Welcome was altogether fitting as an album title and as the signature feature for Carlos Santana. With Tom Coster's sensitive piano obbligato accompaniment in the forefront, Carlos once again demonstrates his way of "getting inside the notes" and singing out this precious melody in a way which leaves a listener speechless but filled with that same joy he is so clearly experiencing.

Like all of the musicians he's venerates-e.g. Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, B.B. King, Dionne Warwick, and, of course, John Coltrane, among others- Carlos understands that melody and tone are supreme. He believes beyond everything else that a musician must have his or her sound, that sonic identity which reveals the artist almost immediately. It is this sound and the conviction of a young master storyteller- still learning, still growing, and still relentlessly searching - that helps to make Welcome the masterpiece it was and continues to be.