Cannonball Adderley

Emerging as one of the standout alto saxophonists during the hard bop period, Julian "Cannonball" Adderley brought forth an energetic, luminous sound that spoke straight to listeners on an emotional level. Onstage he won over crowds through thoughtful commentary about the music itself, laced with dry wit. He and his younger brother Nat, a cornetist, assembled a short-lived quintet that disbanded in 1957 once Cannonball entered Miles Davis’s band alongside John Coltrane. He took part in landmark sessions such as Milestones and Kind of Blue. The Adderleys scored another success with their second single, “This Here,” issued on Riverside. In 1958 he released Somethin’ Else, his sole Blue Note date as leader and the final recording to include Davis as a sideman. From 1959 through 1963 the Adderley ensemble specialized in soulful hard bop. After signing with Capitol in 1964, Adderley began a lengthy collaboration with staff producer David Axelrod. The quintet’s approach broadened to incorporate soul and gospel elements along with blues, yielding charting releases such as Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!, Why Am I Treated So Bad, Country Preacher, and the funky Brazilian fusion project The Happy People, which spotlighted Airto Moreira and Flora Purim. Later Fantasy albums by the group encompassed the orchestral score for the musical play Big Man: The Legend of John Henry. Phenix and Lovers presented Adderley on soprano saxophone as well, highlighting extended melodic lines over electric funky rhythms.

Julian Adderley entered the world in Florida in 1928 as the son of high-school guidance counselor and jazz cornetist Julian Carlyle Adderley and elementary-school teacher Jessie Johnson. He began formal musical training in grade school. Initially intent on tenor saxophone, he settled for a second-hand alto when finances proved tight before and during the Second World War.

Once their parents secured teaching posts at Florida A&M University, the family relocated to Tallahassee, where Julian and Nat attended high school and performed in the orchestra and marching band. Classmates bestowed the nickname “Cannonball” on Julian because of his hearty appetite. During their teenage years in the early 1940s, Cannonball and Nat played with Ray Charles while he resided in Tallahassee. After finishing music studies at Florida A&M, Adderley moved to Broward County and served as band director at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale until he was drafted into the Army in 1950 during the Korean War. While in service he led the 36th Army Dance Band, in which Nat and trombonist Curtis Fuller also played. Following his discharge, Adderley arrived in New York City in 1955 to attend one of the city’s renowned music schools. He spent nights at jazz clubs, observed bebop’s development firsthand, and tested his skills on numerous bandstands. One night he substituted for Jerome Richardson in bassist Oscar Pettiford’s group; his performance prompted audiences and critics to label him the “new Charlie Parker,” even though the two musicians bore little stylistic resemblance. Adderley’s chief influence on alto remained Benny Carter.

The Adderleys organized a quintet and recorded for Savoy before cutting sides for EmArcy and Mercury. Although commercial success eluded them, their performances attracted attention from leading jazz figures including Art Blakey and Miles Davis. Impressed by Cannonball’s blues-inflected alto, Davis invited the saxophonist to join his group in October 1957. Davis returned the favor by appearing on Adderley’s Blue Note debut Somethin’ Else. Recorded soon after their first meeting, the date marked the last occasion Davis recorded as a sideman. Adderley also contributed to pivotal Davis albums such as Milestones and Kind of Blue. During this period pianist Bill Evans was a member of Davis’s sextet, which directly led to Evans’s participation on Portrait of Cannonball in 1958 and Know What I Mean? in 1962. While with Davis, Adderley also played in the orchestras of Gil Evans and Bill Russo.

After departing Davis’s employ in 1959, the Adderleys formed a second quintet. They signed with Riverside even as Cannonball continued recording for EmArcy and Mercury. Cannonball Adderley & the Poll-Winners Featuring Ray Brown & Wes Montgomery appeared on Riverside in 1960, followed by A Child’s Introduction to Jazz in 1961. After Know What I Mean? with Evans, bassist Percy Heath, and drummer Connie Kay in 1962, the quintet—pianist/composer Joe Zawinul, bassist Sam Jones, and drummer Louis Hayes—accompanied vocalist Nancy Wilson on Nancy Wilson & Cannonball Adderley. Adderley had previously worked with Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington. In 1963 he released Cannonball’s Bossa Nova on Riverside, leading the Bossa Rio Sextet with an all-star ensemble that included percussionist Dom Um Romao, saxophonist Paulo Moura Hepteto, and pianist Sergio Mendes. Multi-instrumentalist Yusef Lateef joined, expanding the group to a sextet. Live recordings from 1962 and 1963 remained unreleased until the mid-1980s; among the later issues were Cannonball Adderley Sextet – Lugano 1963 on TCB and A Day with Cannonball Adderley 1963 on Baybridge.

Adderley signed the quintet to Capitol in 1964 and quickly established a close working relationship with staff producer David Axelrod, the same year Axelrod began his noted collaboration with Lou Rawls. That year they completed three albums: Cannonball Adderley Live!, Cannonball Adderley with the New Exciting Voice of Ernie Andrews! – Live Session!, and Cannonball Adderley’s Fiddler on the Roof. The following year the Adderleys joined an orchestra and arranger Oliver Nelson for Domination.

By 1966 Lateef had left to pursue his own varied solo career. The quintet toured steadily. A live album captured at Chicago’s The Club stayed unreleased until 2005, when it appeared as Money in the Pocket. The Cannonball Adderley Quintet with Strings – Great Love Themes, arranged by Ray Ellis, and Cannonball In Japan both surfaced that year, along with Cannonball Adderley: Live in Paris, April 23rd, 1966.

In 1967 the Cannonball Adderley Quintet—Nat, bassist Sam Jones, drummer Roy McCurdy, and pianist Joe Zawinul—issued Mercy Mercy, Mercy – Live at the “It” Club. Although liner notes claimed a Chicago Club DeLisa origin, the recording was actually made in a Los Angeles studio where Axelrod supplied an audience and an open bar. The soulful set contained Zawinul’s title track, which introduced the Fender Rhodes and reached number 11 on the Hot 100 while the album peaked at 13; it won the 1967 Grammy for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance – Group or Soloist with Group. Axelrod employed the same approach for 1967’s Why Am I Treated So Bad!, which remained one of the band’s strongest sellers despite lower chart placement. The live-in-studio method continued with 1967’s 74 Miles Away/Walk Tall and 1968’s Accent on Africa. Feldman departed and was succeeded by bassist Walter Booker.

The socially conscious Country Preacher was recorded live in 1969 at an Operation Breadbasket meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Chicago; the Rev. Jesse Jackson provided the introduction. The album spent two months on the R&B charts in 1970. That year the group performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival and released The Cannonball Adderley Quintet & Orchestra, arranged and conducted by William Fischer and Lalo Schifrin, as well as the ambitiously funky The Price You Gotta Pay to Be Free. The latter combined stage recordings from Monterey with studio tracks made before an invited Los Angeles audience and later influenced samplers and crate diggers. A brief excerpt from the festival performance appeared in Clint Eastwood’s 1971 film Play Misty for Me. Also issued in 1970 was Love, Sex & the Zodiac, led by Nat with Cannonball pianists Hal Galper, Jimmy Jones, and George Duke on clavinet and synthesizer, Booker, McCurdy, and L.A. DJ and writer Rick Holmes as narrator. Capitol withdrew the title soon after release.

Between August 3 and 9 of 1971 the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, featuring Duke on piano and keyboards, performed at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. The band now included Airto on percussion along with guests Mike Deasy on electric guitar, Ernie Watts on tenor saxophone, Alvin Batiste on clarinet, and percussionist Buck Clarke. These shows supplied all material for the double album The Black Messiah and the single-disc Music, You All released in 1976.

The Black Messiah appeared in 1972, as did The Happy People, a studio tribute to contemporary Brazilian jazz and fusion recorded in New York in 1970. In addition to the quintet, the Axelrod-produced set featured electric bassist Chuck Rainey, guitarist David T. Walker, percussionist Airto Moreira, and Moreira’s wife, singer Flora Purim. That year the group revived the Zodiac concept with Soul Zodiac, another Holmes-narrated project credited to the Nat Adderley Sextet; it reached number 75 on the Top 200 and number 11 on the R&B albums chart. They also recorded Soul of the Bible, a jazz-and-narrative work based on Christian scriptures, again with Holmes, Moreira, and guest vocalists Fleming Williams, Arthur Charma, Olga James, and Stephanie Spruill plus additional percussionists.

Adderley left Capitol and rejoined Orrin Keepnews at Fantasy in late 1972. He assembled the quintet—Hal Galper replacing Duke—to record Inside Straight before a lively invited audience in a Berkeley studio. Adderley delivered a spoken introduction and the band delivered a vigorous electro-acoustic jazz-funk and samba program. Released in 1973, Inside Straight is regarded by some as his final masterpiece. The quintet toured festivals worldwide and backed Joe Williams on 1973’s Joe Williams Live.

In 1974 the quintet joined Axelrod and a large studio cast that included Gene Ammons, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Duke, Oscar Brashear, and others for Axelrod’s own ambitious orchestral jazz-funk album Heavy Axe, issued later that year by Fantasy. Adderley later reassembled the quintet with Axelrod, guests Duke and guitarist Phil Upchurch, to record the intensely electric Pyramid. The album received largely favorable reviews, with the three-part “Cannon Suite” frequently cited as a highlight. Adderley also appeared on Raul De Souza’s Colors and with Nat on Double Exposure, again featuring Phil Upchurch.

Following two world tours, Adderley gathered two versions of the quintet at Fantasy Studios in March and April 1975 to re-record career highlights. The March lineup included Nat, Hayes, Jones, and Duke; in April pianist Mike Wolf replaced Duke, Booker substituted for Jones, and McCurdy replaced Hayes. Moreira supplied percussion throughout. The resulting album earned praise for sophisticated reworkings of “Work Song,” “One Note Samba,” “74 Miles Away,” and a medley of “Walk Tall” and “Mercy, Mercy Mercy.”

In June 1975 Adderley began an album with drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Alphonso Johnson, both of whom he admired but had never previously recorded with. Most of the work was completed over two days. On the first day Moreira brought composer and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal into the studio; Pascoal returned the next day with a piece written specifically for the session. The album remained partly unfinished and was completed posthumously by Nat.

The last project Adderley produced and recorded in his lifetime was Big Man: The Legend of John Henry. The score for the folk musical was later staged at Carnegie Hall. Composed by the Adderleys with a libretto by Diane Lampert and Peter Farrow, the set was recorded in late June with a full jazz orchestra, vocal chorus, strings, and singing actors including Robert Guillaume. The narrative reinterprets the American folk myth as an African-American Jesus story, treated metaphorically through the prism of the Civil Rights movement. Joe Williams played and sang the lead role, and the album introduced vocalist Randy Crawford. Cannonball’s quintet featured Duke under the pseudonym Dawilli Gonga. Produced and arranged by Axelrod, the album united Adderley’s love of jazz, soul, and funk with large-ensemble harmonic concepts, Caribbean and Brazilian rhythms, gutbucket blues, and gospel.

In July 1975 Adderley suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. He died four weeks later, on August 8, 1975, at St. Mary Methodist Hospital in Gary, Indiana, at the age of 46. In 1976 Capitol released the 1972 live album Music, You All. Zawinul composed “Cannonball” as a tribute and recorded it on Weather Report’s Black Market. Adderley’s entire catalog has been remastered and reissued repeatedly, and dozens of compilations have appeared since the 1980s.

In 2019 Reel to Real Recordings, co-founded by musician Cory Weeds and producer/archivist Zev Feldman, issued Swingin’ in Seattle: Live at the Penthouse 1966–1967, consisting of previously unreleased performances from the Northwest club. In April 2024 Elemental Music released Burnin’ in Bordeaux: Live in Paris 1969, the first complete authorized edition of the quintet’s performance there, transferred from original ORTF reels in cooperation with the Cannonball Adderley Estate and INA France. Also drawn from the ORTF collection was Poppin’ in Paris: Live at L’Olympia 1972. Both sets were issued in deluxe packages containing rare photographs, musician reminiscences, and critical essays. Another archival concert by the final version of the quintet, featuring pianist Michael Wolf, appeared the following month as Live in Montreal May 1975.