Mercy, Mercy, Mercy in the headphones. The Cannonball Adderley record from 1966. If you need something to pull you through a Monday commute, this is it.
Now the part that trips people up. It is presented as a live club date in Chicago. That is not what happened. Capitol recorded it on October 20, 1966 in their own Hollywood studio. They invited a crowd in, opened a bar, and let the tape roll. The story goes that Adderley was friendly with the venue's new manager and wanted to send some publicity his way.
Does any of that matter? Not even a little. The crowd is real and so were the drinks, and you can hear people shouting back at the band all night. It feels more live than half the actual club recordings from that era.
The band is a working quintet at full strength. Cannonball on alto, his brother Nat on cornet, Joe Zawinul on piano and a Wurlitzer electric piano. Victor Gaskin on bass, Roy McCurdy on drums. David Axelrod produced it. Five guys who had been playing these tunes on the road and knew exactly where every hit landed.
The title track is the reason most people know this record. Zawinul wrote it and plays that Wurlitzer line everybody recognizes even if they do not know the name. It is a gospel groove, simple on purpose, and it works. The single went to No. 11 on the Hot 100 and No. 2 on the soul chart. A jazz instrumental, on pop radio, in 1967. The album hit No. 13 on the Billboard LP chart and took the Grammy for best instrumental jazz performance by a group. Jazz was supposed to be dying commercially by then, and nobody told Cannonball.
But do not stop at the hit. The two Nat Adderley tunes that open the record, Fun and Games, are the best playing on the album. Fun runs eight and a half minutes and Cannonball's solo on it is pure fire. Sack O' Woe closes it out at ten and a half and the crowd is fully gone by the end.
For commute listening this record is about perfect. Six tracks, 41 minutes. That is a full drive with nothing to skip. The energy never drops. And the crowd noise does something on headphones that quiet studio records cannot do. It puts you somewhere else. You are not on the freeway anymore. You are in a fake club in Hollywood with an open bar in 1966.
One more Zawinul note. This album is the Wurlitzer. He moved to the Fender Rhodes not long after, which sounded mellower, and he took that sound into Miles Davis's band and then into Weather Report. So when you hear that electric piano on the title track, you are hearing the start of something big.
Cheap copies of this record are everywhere. Capitol pressed a lot of them because it actually sold, so grab one. Or just stream it tomorrow morning.