Cannonball Adderley
Cannonball Plays Zawinul
Capitol Jazz
7243 5-97069 2 4
1. 74 Miles Away 13:50
(Joe Zawinul)
Cannonball Adderley, alto sax
Nat Adderley, cornet
Joe Zawinul, piano
Victor Gaskin, bass
Roy McCurdy, drums
Recorded at Capitol Studios, Los Angeles on July 24, 1967 from: 74 Miles Away (ST – 2822)
2. One For Newk 5:13
(Joe Zawinul)
Cannonball Adderley, alto sax
Nat Adderley, cornet
Joe Zawinul, piano
Victor Gaskin, bass
Roy McCurdy, drums
Recorded at Capitol Studios, Los Angeles on March 23, 1967 from: Why Am I Treated So Bad (ST-2617)
3. Mystified (aka Angel Face) 3:41
(J. Zawinul – B. Raleigh)
Cannonball Adderley, alto sax
Nat Adderley, cornet
Joe Zawinul, piano
Richard Davis, bass
Grady Tate, drums
Orchestra arranged and conducted by Oliver Nelson
Recorded at Capitol Studios, New York on April 26, 1965 from: Domination (ST-2203)
4. Money In The Pocket 9:45
(Joe Zawinul)
Cannonball Adderley, alto sax
Nat Adderley, cornet
Joe Zawinul, piano
Victor Gaskin, bass
Roy McCurdy, drums
Recorded at Sankei Hall, Tokyo on August 26, 1966 from: Cannonball In Japan (CP 8096)
5. One Man’s Dream 5:09
(J. Zawinul – C. Wright)
Cannonball Adderley, alto sax
Nat Adderley, cornet
Joe Zawinul, piano
Sam Jones, bass
Louis Hayes, drums
Recorded at Capitol Studios, New York City on August 23, 1961 from: Nancy Wilson – Cannonball Adderley (ST 1657)
6. Hippodelphia 5:41
(Joe Zawinul)
Cannonball Adderley, alto sax
Nat Adderley, cornet
Joe Zawinul, piano
Victor Gaskin, bass
Roy McCurdy, drums
Recorded at Capitol Studios, Los Angeles on October 20, 1966 before an invited audience, from: Mercy, Mercy, Mercy – Live at ‘The Club’ (St 2663)
7. Yvette 2:20
(Joe Zawinul)
Cannonball Adderley, alto sax
Nat Adderley, cornet
Joe Zawinul, piano
Victor Gaskin, bass
Roy McCurdy, drums
Recorded at Capitol Studios, Los Angeles on March 23, 1967 from: Why Am I Treated So Bad (ST-2617)
8. Mercy, Mercy, Mercy 5:04
(Joe Zawinul)
Cannonball Adderley, alto sax
Nat Adderley, cornet
Joe Zawinul, piano
Victor Gaskin, bass
Roy McCurdy, drums
Recorded at Capitol Studios, Los Angeles on October 20, 1966 before an invited audience, from: Mercy, Mercy, Mercy – Live at ‘The Club’ (St 2663)
9. Ndo Lima 3:48
(Joe Zawinul)
Cannonball Adderley, alto sax
Nat Adderley, cornet
Joe Zawinul, piano
Victor Gaskin, bass
Roy McCurdy, drums
Orchestra arranged and conducted by H.B. Barnum
Recorded at Capitol Studios, Los Angeles on June 14, 1968 from: Accent On Africa (ST-2987)
10. Dr. Honorus Causa 14:09
(Joe Zawinul)
Cannonball Adderley, soprano sax
Nat Adderley, cornet
George Duke, electric piano
Walter Booker, bass
Roy McCurdy, drums
Airto Moreria, percussion
Recorded live at The Troubadour, Los Angeles on August 3-9, 1971 from: The Black Messiah (SWBO-846)
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Compilation By Joe Zawinul
Reissue Produced by Bob Belden
Original Sessions Produced by David Axelrod
Mastered in 24-bit By Ron McMaster
Cover Photography By Chuck Stewart
Liner Photography Courtesy Joe Zawinul
Art Direction and Design By Patrick Roques
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Great jazz musicians use the conception of musical sound as a means of communication. For instance, take Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, born into the remnants of a once sophisticated culture in the Deep South of the United States, and Josef Zawinul, born into the remnants of a once sophisticated European culture. In the early Fifties, before his arrival in New York City, Cannonball was a band director in the Florida School system. Joe was a gigging pianist in post-war Vienna. And yet they both shared common musical languages at the time, classical music and jazz music. But it was the sound of jazz that brought the two men together, and their mutual love of the condition of the human soul.
The partnership of Cannonball and Zawinul began in 1961, when Joe joined the Adderley family as the pianist with the quintet (after a stint with Maynard Ferguson, where Joe and a recently discharged from the army, Wayne Shorter performed with the band, and Dinah Washington). Joe had recently emigrated to the US from Austria in 1959, where he had established himself as one of Europe’s leading jazz musicians. But in joining Cannonball’s group, he found himself in one of the premier jazz groups of the country. There was the constant traveling and exposure that enabled Joe to expand his musical and personal horizons. Soon, at Cannonballs’ encouragement, Joe started composing and arranging for the band, pushing the Adderley sound further into soul and progressive jazz.
Joe picked “74 Miles Away” to begin this CD. This was a special song, and the performance marked Cannonball’s movement into a more modernistic direction. It also pushed the “idea” of a “piece-within-a-piece” framework that Joe began to fine tune (this concept would be crystallized with “Pharoah’s Dance” on Miles Davis’s legendary “Bitches Brew” album). “74 Miles Away”, pitched in the key of A-flat and metered in 7/4, inspires Roy McCurdy to create waves of sound and surges of energy that give the rhythm section both a feeling of flotation and propulsion at the same time. This piece could be considered a precursor to the classic Zawinul composition “Boogie Woogie Waltz” (that Weather Report recorded in 1973), in that the hypnotic bass pattern gives the listener the same feeling of excitement and momentum that became a trademark of Weather Report. Check out how Cannon and Joe “get into it” over the A-flat pedal as the solo develops. Nat’s solo mirrors the timbre and cry of Miles Davis during his Spanish period; Joe’s solo is remarkable. He strums the piano, not gently as most pianists do, attacking the string in such a way as to evoke the exotic timbre of an ancient instrument, perhaps a kora, with the ‘noises’ creating a primitive effect. And, as befitting a Cannonball Adderley band, Joe eventually heads back to the fundamental groove of the piece and the band takes it out. “74 Miles Away” pushed Cannonball Adderley into a more extreme groove direction.
Sonny Rollins was given the nickname “Newk” for his resemblance to the well known baseball player Don Newcombe, and the tag stuck. “One For Newk” is Joe’s paean to Sonny. The track is a blues with a more complex turnaround, the kind Cannonball loved to play (“Cannon’s Theme” is a comparison blues) and it is hot from the start. Joe gave Cannonball and Nat just the right amount of heat, with accents filled in just the appropriate spot without sounding overbearing (as Scott Kinsey pointed out, “One For Newk” shares a similarity with Weather Report’s “Madagascar” in rhythmic accents). The interaction between Cannonball and Joe is amazing (as you will hear throughout this compilation). The word “simpatico” was created for just such as melding of minds.
Cannonball Adderley enjoyed artistic success with Capitol in the sense that he could, on occasion, record is quintet surrounded with ‘extras.’ The first of these projects was “Domination,” recorded in 1965, with big band arrangements by Oliver Nelson as the “extras.” Joe’s beautiful bossa nova “Angel Eyes” showcases Joe’s sense of melodic beauty as Cannonball soars above the song, finding those little sub melodies that the harmonies inspires. A very rare performance and composition getting some due exposure. Joe eventually got arranging chores for these concept albums (“Fiddler On The Roof” and “Experience In E”) and his sound broadened as Cannonball’s did. A mutual benefit.
“Money In The Pocket” might seem to be a little self assured in these conformist times, but there is a degree of certainty about having “money in your pocket” if you compose a song that becomes a “hit” and brings in money. Generally a jazz composer stands little chance of being able to generate any significant income from a song because of limited exposure of the artist who records it or the lack of clout of an independent label. In Joe’s case, he had an internationally known artist who was receptive to new material, and not just the state of the art stuff, but material that could reach out to the audience that the quintet was just starting to harbor. “Money In The Pocket” was composed and recorded by Joe on his solo album of the same name (on Atlantic), just after the release of “Mercy” and didn’t get the exposure to become a hit, but it became a staple of the Adderley book for a few years.
When Cannonball emerged onto the scene in Manhattan in the mid-Fifties (his debut with Oscar Pettiford at the Café Bohemia is now legendary), he was treated as a sensation, the new Bird, and soon signed to a recording contract with Mercury. By the time he had recorded the album Sharpshooters (in 1958), a clear style both as a soloist and as a bandleader began to emerge. The album was full of arrangements of original music that brought together pulse that became known as “hard-bob.” Cannonball seemed to insist that the music’s groove push forward with an unrelenting passion, but at the same time with a certain grace. This contradiction gave the music its edge and vibrancy. Inside this pulse were rhythms shared by the drummer and the pianist and the effect is arresting. “One Man’s Dream” is a song composed by Joe that captures the sound of the vintage Cannonball group with the excitement of a well-honed rhythm section, one tried on gigs. This track features the bass and drum tandem of Sam Jones and Louis Hayes, the original team Cannonball employed when Joe joined the band in 1961.
“Hippodelphia” could be the swinging town you think it is, but “Hippodelphia” could also represent any hip town or village, city or country. It’s just a matter of making wherever you are hip. To this day, Joe travels throughout the world with his band (recently touring found him in Russia and Algeria). The tenor of “Hippodelphia” is minor and the stage of the song is again another step forward in the style of the Quintet as discussed above with “One Man’s Desire.” The song’s apparent displacement of the melody is achieved by having the accents fall in different places, non-symmetrical, but together, creating a sound of surprise and taking advantage of the airtight rhythm section of Victor Gaskin and Roy McCurdy.
“Yvette” explores the strong common influence on Cannon and Joe: Duke Ellington. The melody in the beginning hints a little at Duke and Cannon clearly hints to the end you can readily hear the personal touch Joe graces the song with, flashes of harmonic twists and song-like phrases that hint of things to come. “Yvette” could be considered a tone poem reminiscent of “In A Silent Way” and “His Last Journey,” written around the same time but recorded two years later. “A good friend of mine, Jimmy Cheatham, the arranger, bring his wife to the recording session. Her name was Jeanie and she wrote good lyrics and named the song “Yvette” – the lyrics were about an Yvette she knew - the lyrics were never recorded.”
It would be hard to describe the feeling one would get going from pianist on a traveling jazz band to a world-renowned composer of a popular song. That is what happened to Joe Zawinul, whose composition “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” became a jazz hit for Cannonball (selling over a half a million singles in 1967) and a pop hit for the Buckinghams (with lyrics that we a bit scandalous in 1960’s America). The song itself is a gospel-tinged blues with a shout chorus that is its signature trademark (“Have Mercy On Me!”). what is striking about this piece is that neither Cannonball and Nat solo, there is only a solo in the middle by Joe on hat he describes as “an old wurlitzer that was sitting in the corner of the studio. I played it, it sounded nice, and we recorded “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” right then and there with the instrument.”
There is something magical when hearing a piece of music that is the prime seed in a composer’s career. One would think that with the success of “Mercy” that Joe would confine himself to composing soul jazz hit after soul jazz hit. But Cannonball’s band offered him much more than just success. He had a laboratory where he could work out and find himself as a musician. When Cannonball recorded “Accent On Africa” (possibly to “Capitolize” on the recent success of Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba), the album did not excite the jazz community as his earlier work had done. But included on that 1966 album was a song composed by Joe Zawinul titled” Ndo Lima”. From this seed of a song came “Badia,” written for Weather Report (recorded in 1974) that defined the multi-cultural jazz sound of the Seventies. And here was the genesis. After the bass clarinet and voices expose the melody, Cannon starts to blow over a 12/8 groove. After the soprano solo, the melody repeats itself simply. The way the voices were doubled with Nat Adderley’s cornet is stunning, and probably Joe’s original orchestration.
Joe and Herbie Hancock shared many sessions with Miles Davis. Cannonball and Miles shared the bandstand many times on the road. There was an interaction between Joe and Herbie that exists even to this day. When Herbie was awarded an honorary doctorage from his alma mater Grinell College in Iowa, Joe was inspired to compose a piece to honor this accomplishment. The composition “Dr. Honorus Causa” was never recorded by Cannonball while Joe was in the band, and the only version has George Duke on the Fender Rhodes. George replaced Joe in Cannonball’s band when Joe went on to form Weather Report (with Wayne Shorter, who had recently left Miles Davis). “Dr. Honorus Causa” fit right in Weather Report as they recorded a version in 1972 in Japan. Joe also made the definitive version in 1970 on his album “Zawinul”, but here it seems quite at home in Cannonball’s band. The composition had developed from a string of pieces that Joe had written for the band that pushed the direction of “74 Miles Away” a little further. Songs like “Rumplestiltskin” and “The Scavenger” were all propelling the band and Cannonball into modern jazz directions. But “Dr. Honorus Causa” was the next break into the future.
It seems amazing that within a few years of Cannonball’s recording of “Dr. Honorus Causa”, Miles’s and Cannonball’s former sidemen became jazz stars on their own, and this music suddenly became last years news. Not in a bad way as it was common for musicians at the time eschewed the old for the new, so as a result, bands like Cannonball’s never got credit for helping to shape the more musical side of jazz fusion. Cannonball was in a sense a victim of the success of Miles Davis. In fact, the contributions of the band are almost never discussed and the music from the mid-Sixties is lost in the mixture of popular styles and attempts at explaining commerciality. But here it is, proof that Cannonball and Joe were on the cutting edge of jazz expression all the time, and only by the shear coincidence of popularity and the curse it reveals has the music of these two giants been given its just due.
– Bob Beldon, Earth 2003
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