Cannonball Adderley

The story of this record is one of jazz's great entrance myths. Cannonball Adderley sat in at the Cafe Bohemia in New York in 1955, a schoolteacher from Florida, and played so ferociously that the word spread through the city overnight. Oscar Pettiford was on the bandstand. Within weeks, Savoy had him in a studio; the EmArcy contract followed. This is what happened next.

The personnel alone tells you how seriously the label took him: Hank Jones on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Kenny Clarke on drums. These were not names you assigned to a newcomer unless you believed. And the playing justifies the belief completely. Cannonball's alto is enormous, warm, full of blues, technically dazzling but never clinical. He phrases like a man who grew up in the church and studied Bird in equal measure.

Nat Adderley on cornet is already the perfect foil: leaner, harder, with a bite that complements his brother's fullness. "Spontaneous Combustion" is the track that started careers, a burner that justifies the hype that preceded this record. But "Still Talkin' to Ya" shows the other side, the ballad player who could make a whole room lean forward and hold its breath.

This is one of the great debut records in jazz. Not a tentative first step but a fully formed artist arriving at full volume.

One week after the debut session, Cannonball was back in a studio and in much bigger company. This is an octet rather than a quintet, cut across three dates in July and August 1955 with Quincy Jones writing the charts. John Williams takes the piano chair, Jerome Richardson and Cecil Payne fill out the reed section, and J.J. Johnson replaces Jimmy Cleveland on trombone after the first date. The extra weight changes what Cannonball has to do, because he is soloing over arrangements now rather than over a rhythm section.

The material is stronger too, or at least more varied. "Cannonball" is a chase tune that lets both Adderleys show their competitive best, Cannonball's alto fat and swinging, Nat's cornet sharp and incisive. The contrast between them is what would power the quintet for the next two decades, and it's already fully formed here.

Not as revelatory as the debut, because the shock of discovery is gone, but the playing is if anything more confident. Cannonball sounds like a man who knows exactly what he's doing and is having the time of his life doing it.

The inevitable with-strings album, arriving as only his third record as a leader. EmArcy was not going to let a talent this commercially promising go without testing every format. Bill Russo's arrangements are competent, sometimes lovely, but they muffle what makes Cannonball interesting. The alto sounds beautiful but tamed, a wild animal in a very nice cage.

There are moments where his personality breaks through: "(I’m Afraid) The Masquerade Is Over" has a solo that builds enough heat to make you forget the violins for a minute, and the phrasing on the ballads is genuinely affecting. But the overall effect is pleasant rather than thrilling, which is exactly the wrong adjective for Cannonball Adderley.

Essential only for completists. The real Cannonball was already on the first two records, and the real real Cannonball was about to arrive with his own quintet.

Not the working quintet, but the first sign of one. Junior Mance arrives on piano and stays, with Keter Betts on bass and Charles “Specs” Wright on drums, inside an octet that carries a full brass and reed section. The writing is denser than the 1955 pickup dates and the band sounds rehearsed rather than assembled. You can hear Cannonball starting to work out what a band of his own should sound like.

Mance brings a gospel-inflected touch that suits Cannonball's bluesy phrasing perfectly. "Blues for Bohemia" is the first appearance of that signature Cannonball sound, the one that marries the church to the club, the preacher's cadence to Bird's harmonic sophistication. Keter Betts on bass is already a steady anchor, warm-toned and swinging, holding the heavier arrangements together without crowding the horns.

Not yet the great quintet, but you can hear it forming. Mance stayed with the brothers into 1958, but Sam Jones and Jimmy Cobb had replaced Betts and Wright by early 1957.

Same quintet, growing tighter. The title promises sophistication and the album delivers it, but not at the expense of the blues feeling that makes Cannonball Cannonball. Junior Mance's piano is chunkier here, more rhythmically aggressive, and it pushes the whole group forward. There's a swagger to these performances that the earlier records only hinted at.

The original compositions are getting better, too. Cannonball was learning to write for his own band rather than for an abstract idea of what a hard bop quintet should sound like. The arrangements breathe in a way that the earlier EmArcy sessions hadn't always managed. You can hear the road in this music, the sound of a band that has been playing these tunes every night and knows exactly where the peaks and valleys are.

Still not the breakthrough, that was coming, but this is the sound of a working band finding its identity.

The last of the EmArcy quintet records, and the tightest. By 1958 Cannonball had been leading this group on and off since 1956, and the ensemble playing reflects it. The horns blend and separate with a naturalness that only comes from extended time together, and the rhythm section operates as a single organism rather than three separate musicians.

This is the record that closes the EmArcy quintet chapter. Cannonball had already been a member of Miles Davis’s band since October 1957, an experience that was transforming his conception of what small-group jazz could do. But his own band, reassembled here, had reached a considerable level of sophistication before that education began. The blues were always there, the swing was always there, and the sheer exuberance of the playing was never in doubt.

A solid rather than spectacular record, which is the right note to end on before the upheaval that was coming.

The most famous Cannonball Adderley record, and one of the most celebrated jazz albums ever made. It is technically Cannonball's date, his name on the cover, a one-off date for a label he never signed to, but everyone knows that Miles Davis is the creative center of this session. Miles was under exclusive contract to Columbia and could not record for Blue Note under his own name, so he appears here as a sideman, but his presence transforms everything.

The nearly eleven-minute "Autumn Leaves" that opens this record is the centerpiece. Miles's muted trumpet states the melody with that devastating economy he had mastered, every note placed exactly where it needs to be and nowhere else. Cannonball's solo is magnificent, full and singing, riding Art Blakey's drums like a surfer on a perfect wave. Blakey plays this session like a man possessed, and Hank Jones quietly holds it all together with the calm authority of a master.

"Love for Sale" and "Somethin' Else" are almost as good. The whole session has a quality of relaxed intensity that is rare in jazz recording, everyone playing at the very top of their ability without any sense of strain. Sam Jones on bass ties the rhythm section together with that big, round, walking sound that would anchor so many great sessions over the next decade.

This is one of those records that people who don't listen to jazz have heard of. It deserves its reputation completely.

The first Riverside album, and the beginning of the most productive chapter in Cannonball's recording career. The surprise here is Bill Evans on piano, three months after he joined Miles Davis’s band. Evans brings a completely different sensibility to Cannonball's music: where Junior Mance and Horace Silver pushed the blues, Evans pulls toward something more introspective, more harmonically subtle, more impressionistic. The result is a Cannonball you haven't heard before, one who responds to the quieter context by playing with more space and more lyricism than the EmArcy records suggested he possessed.

Blue Mitchell's trumpet is the other key voice on this date, providing a warm, lyrical counterpart to Cannonball's alto. Philly Joe Jones drives the rhythm section with the interactive intensity he had been bringing to the Miles Davis Quintet, while Sam Jones anchors the bass with the big, walking sound that would underpin nearly every Cannonball date over the next several years.

The chemistry between Evans, Mitchell, and Cannonball is something special. The pianist's harmonic sophistication frames the two horns in a way that opens up unfamiliar territory for both of them, and the rhythm section as a whole creates a space that is quieter and more open than anything Cannonball had played over before. He fills it beautifully.

This is the beginning of the Riverside years, which would produce the finest music of his career. Start here and keep going.