Cannonball Adderley Qutet: Liederhalle, Stuttgart 1969

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Roy McCurdy (d)
Nat Adderley (c)
Cannonball Adderley (as)
Victor Gaskin (b)
Cannonball Adderley
Joe Zawinul (p, el p)

Label:

Jazzhaus

June/2019

Media Format:

CD

Catalogue Number:

JAH-402

RecordDate:

March 1969

They say never judge a book by its cover. But how about these albums? For starters, the Adderley-Evans summit is given a slight bit of false-flag marketing, using artwork (ahem!) from an EP issue of tracks from the original Know What I Mean Riverside album. Whatever one thinks of its period cheesecake shtick it's infinitely preferable to the Jazzhaus cover, a design clearly assembled by the numerically challenged.

A mere eight years separates these two sessions. The meeting with Evans is, quite simply, a classic and one which ought to be in every serious jazz fans collection already. It's an album brimming with virtues, at times touching upon the rarefied level of Kind of Blue (hear ‘Elsa’). It's also the perfect record to play anyone who thinks Cannonball was a jovial, lightweight talent. Just listen to what he does with those quintessential Evans chords at the close of ‘Who Cares?’ and for the sheer depth of feeling he brings to the heartstring-tugging ‘Nancy’. As a bonus, AJC have added the earlier Portrait of Cannonball, again with Evans, which, among its many glories, includes the début version of ‘Nardis’. Again, it's a record everyone should own.

The previously unissued Stuggart concert presents Adderley's quintet at its most varied, its playlist ranging from bop (a killer ‘Blue'n Boogie’) through Bernstein (a Hodges-like ‘Somewhere’) and onto the blues-based funk Cannon made his own (‘Why Am I Treated So Bad?’). In between, there's room for a little vocalising (brother Nat on ‘Oh Babe’) and some semi-free interplay on Joe Zawinul's ‘The Painted Desert’. However, far from being a band too eclectic for its own good, this record proves the quintet could – and did – make something magical out of whatever took its fancy It's also hugely entertaining, which may well be why some sniffy purists still insist on downgrading Adderley from the giant status he deserves Beautifully recorded, this is a truly lovely album, its only demerit being the dated sound of Zawinul's electric piano. Other than that, fresh as paint.

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