Callen Radcliffe Tjader Jr. was born in St. Louis on July 16, 1925, to Swedish-American vaudevillians: his father was a tap dancer and his mother a pianist, and the two toured as a husband-and-wife act. When he was two the family settled in San Mateo, California, and opened a dance studio. His mother taught him classical piano and his father taught him to tap dance, and as a child he performed around the Bay Area as "Tjader Junior." He played in a Dixieland band as a teenager and in 1941, at sixteen, won a drum-solo contest run by Gene Krupa. In 1943 he joined the U.S. Navy and served as a medical corpsman in the Pacific until March 1946, an experience that took him through five invasions.

After the war Tjader used the G.I. Bill to enroll at San Jose State College, intending to become a teacher, and then moved to San Francisco State College, where he took timpani lessons, the only formal music training he is known to have had. At San Francisco State he met the pianist Dave Brubeck, who introduced him to the alto saxophonist Paul Desmond. With other players they formed the Dave Brubeck Octet, in which Tjader played drums, and when the octet could not find work Brubeck and Tjader formed a trio that became a fixture of the San Francisco scene. AllMusic dates his time as the trio's drummer from 1949 to 1951, and he taught himself the vibraphone during those years, alternating between vibes and drums. After Brubeck's diving accident in Hawaii in 1951 the trio dissolved, and Tjader led his own trio with the bassist Jack Weeks and the pianists John Marabuto or Vince Guaraldi, recording a first 10-inch LP for Fantasy. He then worked with the bandleader Alvino Rey while finishing his degree.

In 1953 George Shearing hired him for his quintet when Joe Roland left, and Tjader played vibraphone and percussion, including a bongo feature called "Drum Trouble." The bassist Al McKibbon was in the group, and he and Tjader encouraged Shearing to add Cuban percussionists. McKibbon also took Tjader to hear the Afro-Cuban big bands of Machito and Chico O'Farrill in New York, where Tjader met Mongo Santamaría and Willie Bobo, then in Tito Puente's orchestra. DownBeat's 1953 Critics' Poll nominated him as best new star on vibes. After a gig at the Black Hawk in San Francisco he left Shearing, and in April 1954 he formed the Cal Tjader Modern Mambo Quintet with the brothers Manuel and Carlos Duran on piano and bass, Benny Velarde on timbales, bongos and congas, and Edgard Rosales (soon replaced by Luis Miranda) on congas. Recording for Fantasy in San Francisco, the group made a quick run of albums, among them Mambo with Tjader and Tjader Plays Mambo. Unlike the exotica of Martin Denny and Les Baxter, his bands used seasoned Cuban players alongside jazz musicians who could work in both idioms. Alongside the Latin records he made straight-ahead dates for Fantasy under other billings, most often with a quartet of Guaraldi, the bassist Gene Wright and the drummer Al Torre. His sextet played the first Monterey Jazz Festival in 1958, and his quintet returned in 1959 and in many later years.

Around 1957 Santamaría moved to San Francisco and joined Tjader's group, and Willie Bobo and the conga player Armando Peraza also worked with the band; Guaraldi was the pianist on the 1958 sextet date with Stan Getz. In 1961 Tjader moved to Verve, where the producer Creed Taylor gave him larger budgets and a wider palette. Over the next few years he worked with the arrangers Oliver Nelson, Claus Ogerman, Eddie Palmieri, Lalo Schifrin and Don Sebesky, and with players including Kenny Burrell, Donald Byrd, Clare Fischer, Chick Corea, Jimmy Heath, Hank Jones, Anita O'Day and Jerome Richardson. His biggest success came with Soul Sauce, recorded in November 1964 and released in 1965, built on a new treatment of the Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo piece "Guachi Guaro." The title track reached the top 20 on New York's pop station WMCA in May 1965, and the album sold more than 100,000 copies. His Asian-flavored albums Several Shades of Jade and Breeze from the East (1963 and 1964) were received more coolly, and in 1966 he made El Sonido Nuevo with Palmieri, followed by Palmieri's own Bamboléate for Tico. In 1968 Tjader co-founded the short-lived Skye Records with Gábor Szabó, Gary McFarland and the executive Norman Schwartz, and made Solar Heat (1968) and Plugs In (1969) there.

He returned to Fantasy in the 1970s and added electric instruments and rock beats on albums such as Tjader (1971) and Amazonas (1976), the latter produced by Airto Moreira. He played on the soundtrack to the animated film Fritz the Cat (1972), recorded a live set at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral in 1976, and toured Japan with Art Pepper, a tour documented on Tokyo Debut, recorded in 1977. In 1979 he moved to Concord Records' new Concord Picante label, run by Carl Jefferson, and went back to straight-ahead Latin jazz with a band of Mark Levine on piano, Roger Glenn on flute, Vince Lateano on drums, Robb Fisher on bass and Poncho Sanchez on congas. La Onda Va Bien (1980) won the Grammy Award for Best Latin Recording, presented at the ceremony of February 25, 1981. He also appeared on Concord dates with Rosemary Clooney and Eiji Kitamura and made Heat Wave (1982) with Carmen McRae. Tjader collapsed during a tour and passed away in Manila on May 5, 1982, at the age of 56, after a series of heart attacks.

AllMusic's biography calls Tjader the point man between Latin jazz and mainstream bop from the 1950s until his death, and describes a light, rhythmic, joyous vibraphone manner that could sit in either idiom. He also played drums, bongos and timbales and occasionally piano, and his groups paired Cuban percussionists with bop rhythm sections rather than treating Latin rhythm as a novelty. Although he is sometimes grouped with West Coast jazz because of where he worked, his tempos and rhythms had little in common with the Los Angeles players of the era. His Latin direction grew out of contact with McKibbon, Santamaría, Bobo and Peraza, and AllMusic credits his Bay Area recordings with a deep influence on Carlos Santana and, through him, Latin rock. His late 1960s and 1970s records point toward acid jazz and fusion, and his work has been sampled on at least 214 tracks, including the use of "Aquarius" from The Prophet on A Tribe Called Quest's Midnight Marauders. He has been honored on record by Louie Ramírez, Clare Fischer (Tjaderama, 1987), Poncho Sanchez (Soul Sauce: Memories of Cal Tjader, 1995), Dave Samuels (Tjader-ized, 1998), Gary Burton (For Hamp, Red, Bags, and Cal, 2001) and Paquito D'Rivera (2003).