A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions
and categories of what constitutes the generic and stylistic definitions of ‘Jazz’, ‘classical music’, ‘Blues.’
'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what
music is and could be.
So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.
Saturday, May 11, 2024
WELCOME TO THE NEW SOUND PROJECTIONS MUSICAL ARTISTS SCHOLARLY RESEARCH AND REFERENCE ARCHIVE
AS
OF JANUARY 13, 2023 FIVE HUNDRED MUSICAL ARTISTS HAVE BEEN FEATURED IN
THE SOUND PROJECTIONS MAGAZINE THAT BEGAN ITS ONLINE PUBLICATION ON
NOVEMBER 1, 2014.
THE
500th AND FINAL MUSICAL ARTIST ENTRY IN THIS NOW COMPLETED EIGHT YEAR
SERIES WAS POSTED ON THIS SITE ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 2023.
BEGINNING
JANUARY 14, 2023 THIS SITE WILL CONTINUE TO FUNCTION AS AN ONGOING
PUBLIC ARCHIVE AND SCHOLARLY RESEARCH AND REFERENCE RESOURCE FOR THOSE
WHO ARE INTERESTED IN PURSUING THEIR LOVE OF AND INTEREST IN WHAT THE
VARIOUS MUSICAL ARTISTS ON THIS SITE PROVIDES IN TERMS OF BACKGROUND
INFORMATION AND VARIOUS CRITICAL ANALYSES AND COMMENTARY OFFERED ON
BEHALF OF EACH ARTIST ENTRY SINCE NOVEMBER 1, 2014.
ACCESS TO EACH ARTIST CAN BE FOUND IN THE 'BLOG ARCHIVE' (ARTISTS LISTED IN WEEKLY CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER) AND IN THE ‘LABELS’ SECTION
(ARTIST NAMES, TOPICS, ETC.) ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOME PAGE. CLICK
ON THESE RESPECTIVE LINKS TO ACCESS THEIR CONTENT:
One of the great alto saxophonists, Cannonball Adderley
had an exuberant and happy sound that communicated immediately to
listeners. His intelligent presentation of his music (often explaining
what he and his musicians were going to play) helped make him one of the
most popular of all jazzmen.
Adderley
already had an established career as a high school band director in
Florida when, during a 1955 visit to New York, he was persuaded to sit
in with Oscar Pettiford's
group at the Cafe Bohemia. His playing created such a sensation that he
was soon signed to Savoy and persuaded to play jazz full-time in New
York. With his younger brother, cornetist Nat, Cannonball formed a quintet that struggled until its breakup in 1957. Adderley then joined Miles Davis, forming part of his super sextet with John Coltrane and participating on such classic recordings as Milestones and Kind of Blue. Adderley's second attempt to form a quintet with his brother was much more successful for, in 1959, with pianist Bobby Timmons, he had a hit recording of "This Here." From then on, Cannonball always was able to work steadily with his band.
During its Riverside years (1959-1963), the Adderley Quintet primarily played soulful renditions of hard bop and Cannonball really excelled in the straight-ahead settings. During 1962-1963, Yusef Lateef made the group a sextet and pianist Joe Zawinul was an important new member. The collapse of Riverside resulted in Adderley signing with Capitol and his recordings became gradually more commercial. Charles Lloyd was in Lateef's place for a year (with less success) and then with his departure the group went back to being a quintet. Zawinul's 1966 composition "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" was a huge hit for the group, Adderley
started doubling on soprano, and the quintet's later recordings
emphasized long melody statements, funky rhythms, and electronics.
However, during his last year, Cannonball Adderley was revisiting the past a bit and on Phenix he recorded new versions of many of his earlier numbers. But before he could evolve his music any further, Cannonball Adderley died suddenly from a stroke.
Both as the leader of his own bands as well as an alto and soprano
saxophone stylist, Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley was one of the
progenitors of the swinging, rhythmically robust style of music that
became known as hard-bop.
Born September 15, 1928, into a musical
family in Florida, Adderley was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1950. He
became leader of the 36th Army Dance Band, led his own band while
studying music at the U.S. Naval Academy and then led an army band while
stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Originally nicknamed "Cannibal" in
high school for his voracious appetite, the nickname mutated into
"Cannonball" and stuck.
In 1955, Adderley traveled to New York
City with his younger brother and lifelong musical partner, Nat Jr.
(cornet). The elder Adderley sat in on a club date with bassist Oscar
Pettiford and created such a furvor that he was signed almost
immediately to a recording contract and was often (if not entirely
accurately) called "the new Bird."
Adderley's direct style on alto
was indebted to the biting clarity of Charlie Parker, but it also
significantly drew from the warm, rounded tones of Benny Carter; hard
swingers such as Louis Jordan and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson were
important influences as well. Adderly became a seminal influence on the
hard-driving style known as hard-bop, and could swing ferociously at
faster tempos, yet he was also an effective and soulful ballad stylist.
From
1956-57, Adderley led his own band featuring Nat, pianist Junior Mance
and bassist Sam Jones. The group broke up when he was invited to join
the Miles Davis Quintet in 1957. Davis expanded his group to a Sextet
soon thereafter by hiring saxophonist John Coltrane. "I felt that
Cannonball's blues-rooted alto sax up against Trane's harmonic, chordal
way of playing, his more free-form approach, would create a new kind of
feeling," Davis explained in his autobiography.
From 1957-59, Adderley recorded some of his best work on the landmark Davis albums Milestones and Kind of Blue within this sextet. Davis reciprocated with a guest appearance on Adderly's 1958 solo album Somethin' Else, which also included bassist Jones, pianist Hank Jones, and drummer Art Blakey.
Adderley
left the Davis band to reform his quintet in 1959, this time with his
brother, Sam Jones, pianist Bobby Timmons and drummer Louis Hayes. Yusef
Lateef made it a sextet around 1962; pianist Joe Zawinul replaced
Timmons around 1963. Other band alumni include Charles Lloyd, and
pianists Barry Harris, Victor Feldman and George Duke.
Adderley recorded for Riverside from 1959-63, for Capitol
thereafter until 1973, and then for Fantasy. He suffered a stroke while
on tour and died on August 8, 1975. He can also be found on recordings
led by Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, Art Blakey and Oscar
Peterson, and collaborated with singers Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington,
Joe Williams, Lou Rawls, Sergio Mendes and Nancy Wilson.
During
the period when the burgeoning development of polyrhythms and
polytonality threatened to make jazz harder for non-musicians to
appreciate, the Cannonball Adderley bands (much like bands led by Art
Blakey and Horace Silver) helped preserve the music's roots in the more
readily understood (and more funky) vocabulary of gospel and blues.
Julian "Cannonball" Adderley (1928-1975): Legendary Alto Saxophonist,
Composer, and Bandleader--A Celebration of His Music, Life, and Legacy
On the 85th Anniversary of His Birth
JULIAN "CANNONBALL" ADDERLEY (b. September 15, 1928--d. August 8, 1975)
Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley(September 15, 1928 – August 8, 1975) was an American jazzalto saxophonist of the hard bop era of the 1950s and 1960s.[1][2][3][4]
Adderley is perhaps best remembered for the 1966 soul jazz single "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy",[5] which was written for him by his keyboardist Joe Zawinul and became a major crossover hit on the pop and R&B charts. A cover version by the Buckinghams, who added lyrics, also reached No. 5 on the charts. Adderley worked with Miles Davis, first as a member of the Davis sextet, appearing on the seminal records Milestones (1958) and Kind of Blue (1959), and then on his own 1958 album Somethin' Else. He was the elder brother of jazz trumpeter Nat Adderley, who was a longtime member of his band.[6]
Early life and career
Julian Edwin Adderley was born on September 15, 1928, in Tampa, Florida to high school guidance counselor and cornet player Julian Carlyle Adderley and elementary school teacher Jessie Johnson.[7][8] Elementary school classmates called him "cannonball" (i.e., "cannibal") after his voracious appetite.[7]
Adderley was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1950 during the Korean War, serving as leader of the 36th Army Dance Band.[12] Cannonball left Southeast Florida and moved to New York City in 1955.[6][11] One of his known addresses in New York was in the neighborhood of Corona, Queens.[6][13]
He left Florida originally to seek graduate studies at New York
conservatories, but one night in 1955 he brought his saxophone with him
to the Café Bohemia. Cannonball was asked to sit in with Oscar Pettiford in place of his band's regular saxophonist, Jerome Richardson,
who was late for the gig. The "buzz" on the New York jazz scene after
Adderley's performance announced him as the heir to the mantle of Charlie Parker.[11]
Adderley formed his own group with his brother Nat after signing onto the Savoy jazz label in 1955. He was noticed by Miles Davis, and it was because of his blues-rooted alto saxophone that Davis asked him to play with his group.[6] He joined the Davis band in October 1957, three months prior to the return of John Coltrane to the group. Davis notably appears on Adderley's solo album Somethin' Else (also featuring Art Blakey and Hank Jones), which was recorded shortly after the two met. Adderley then played on the seminal Davis records Milestones and Kind of Blue. This period also overlapped with pianist Bill Evans' time with the sextet, an association that led to Evans appearing on Portrait of Cannonball and Know What I Mean?.[6]
His interest as an educator carried over to his recordings. In 1961, Cannonball narrated The Child's Introduction to Jazz, released on Riverside Records.[6] In 1962, Cannonball married actress Olga James.[2]
By the end of the 1960s, Adderley's playing began to reflect the
influence of electric jazz. In this period, he released albums such as Accent on Africa (1968) and The Price You Got to Pay to Be Free (1970). In that same year, his quintet appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival in California, and a brief scene of that performance was featured in the 1971 psychological thriller Play Misty for Me, starring Clint Eastwood. In 1975 he also appeared in an acting role alongside José Feliciano and David Carradine in the episode "Battle Hymn" in the third season of the TV series Kung Fu.[15]
Songs made famous by Adderley and his bands include "This Here"
(written by Bobby Timmons), "The Jive Samba", "Work Song" (written by
Nat Adderley), "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" (written by Joe Zawinul) and "Walk Tall" (written by Zawinul, Marrow, and Rein). A cover version of Pops Staples' "Why (Am I Treated So Bad)?" also entered the charts. His instrumental "Sack o' Woe" was covered by Manfred Mann on their debut album, The Five Faces of Manfred Mann.[16]
Death and legacy
In July 1975, Adderley suffered a stroke from a cerebral hemorrhage and died four weeks later, on August 8, 1975, at St. Mary Methodist Hospital in Gary, Indiana.[2] He was 46 years old.[2] He was survived by his wife Olga James Adderley, parents Julian Carlyle and Jessie Lee Adderley, and brother Nat Adderley.[17] He was buried in the Southside Cemetery, Tallahassee.[18]
Later in 1975, he was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame.[6][19] Joe Zawinul's composition "Cannon Ball" on Weather Report's Black Market album is a tribute to his former leader.[6]Pepper Adams and George Mraz dedicated the composition "Julian" on the 1975 Pepper Adams album of the same name days after Cannonball's death.[20]
'Let me tell you something,' said Cannonball Adderley.'I don't
believe in segregated jazz. That is to say, I don't think you just have
to have a jazz radio programme, or a special jazz show on television. I
don't believe that that any kind of music has to be set aside unto
itself.
'The reason there is a small market for jazz, a small market for
chamber music, is because everybody categorises everything - that's a
Western passion, pigeonholing and putting things into niches. I think
everything belongs together. All the music that is from the people is
what people are about'
The great alto and soprano saxophonist was relaxing in his dressing
room after giving a stupendous performance with his quintet at the
Opposite Lock, a small club in a side street not far from the city
centre in Birmingham. 'We did a TV programme in London, and there was a
bit of drama, a bit of comedy, some classical music by Ralph Vaughan
Williams, there was poetry, and there was us. I don't see why it
shouldn't always be like that.
Broadway
'We're also going to be involved in a Broadway show, called Big Man,
in which mixed media will be employed. There will be a great emphasis on
dance, classic ballet as well as modern, and what we might call social
dance, you know, the dances that the kids do in the discotheques. There
are sound effects that go right along with the dialogue, there are
songs, there is jazz, there is also rock, there is R&B, there is the
classic traditional of strings. It's really a monumental work.
'It's about the legendary figure known as John Henry, who is
colourless, he is just a Superman, and he was among a bunch of people
building a railroad, and John Henry was called a steel driving man. He
drove more steel than a steam drill. In this case, the producers have
made John Henry black. I imagine that black people have looked on John
Henry as black, white people as white, Irish as Irish and so on.' It is
likely to be an impressive show, for Whatever Adderley tackles in the
music business usually turns out to be hugely successful.
Electrifying
The quintet's performance at the Opposite Lock had been awe-inspiring,
absolutely electrifying. With Cannonball on tour were, as usual, his
cornet-playing brother Nat, plus George Duke on grand piano and, on some
numbers, Fender Rhodes electric piano, bassist Walter Booker and
drummer Roy McCurdy. This was a supercharged unit, exciting yet utterly
musical. Many of the tunes played were from Cannon's new double album on
Capitol, The Black Messiah. His recorded output has been considerable,
but there are few weak releases in the Adderley catalogue. He is simply a
heck of musician, and he has always had a heck of a band.
Cannonball Adderley was born in 1928 in Tampa, Florida. He
was christened Julian Edward, but acquired the nickname Cannibal because
of his extraordinary appetite. This changed to Cannonball, and the
label stuck. Bebop pioneer Charlie Parker was a major inspiration for
the young saxophonist, and it took him quite a while to find his own
style, expanding Parker's musical language with a strong emphasis on the
blues. After a spell in the Army, in which he became director of the
36th Army Band (with Nat on trumpet), Adderley was persuaded to try the
New York scene by blues singer and saxophonist Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson.
He was an immediate success, and signed to Riverside Records, later
joining the group of the great trumpeter Miles Davis. He made some
magnificent recordings with Davis, including the classic Kind Of Blue
for Columbia, but eventually left to reform his own quintet with Nat.
Adderley built up a huge following, with soulful hits including This
Here, Work Song, and Mercy, Mercy, Mercy. The role of pianists in the
band has been critical: before George Duke took over, his keyboard men
included Bobby Timmons, Victor Feldman and Joe Zawinul.
I began our interview by asking Adderley about his approach to the
business side of jazz music. 'We have consciously tried to survive,' he
said. 'In this business, in order to play any music at all you have to
be able to survive, and weather the storm - to be able to survive the
vacillation of jazz fans and you must be able to exist as an entity to
play any music.
Commercial
'I often tell kids, who say "I want to be a jazz player, and I'm playing
with James Brown", or maybe Otis Redding or Wilson Pickett or someone
like that, and they say "I want to play jazz - now, what do I
do?" 'Well, first of all: play. Don't worry about with whom you are
playing, because playing some music is better than playing no music at
all. Under the circumstances, as far as the sound we make is concerned,
we seek to make music that people enjoy. It's true that all our
commercial successes, our originals . . . you know, somebody said in a
review that we played some tunes from the Hit Parade.Like Mercy, Mercy,
Mercy and Work Song. A great compliment! Those tunes originated with us
[Joe Zawinul wrote Mercy, Mercy Mercy, and Nat Adderley wrote Work Song]
and they were not necessarily great successes to begin with. But our
biggest record to date has been Mercy, Mercy, Mercy. It did not start
out as a smashing success - we had been playing it for about six months
before we decided to record it. And before we recorded it, it didn't get
a big response when we played it - it was just that, people seemed to
like it, like they do most of our things.
'We have never started out but one time to make a record to be a
commercial success. We did a record, something that John Dankworth did
here in England too, and that was African Waltz. We recorded African
Waltz because the record company asked us to do it, as a favour to them.
And it was our first record with a big band, so it was not our image at
all. They just did African Waltz; it was arranged for us and I didn't
have anything at all to do with it. However, it was moderate success as
these things go; there were a few records sold. But we have never played
that tune - we only recorded it, and we've never played it on tour.
It's not our music. We use music that we write. And we write things that
run the gamut - all compositions by guys in our band. We're very happy
when something happens for one of the tunes, and it's a success, but we
play all kinds of things.'
Two driving new tunes - The Chocolate Nuisance, written by Roy
McCurdy, and The Steam Drill, written by George Duke - had proved
particularly popular with the audience at the Opposite Lock.'Those tunes
are on an album we did, The Black Messiah, recorded live at the
Troubadour Club. But we make all our records live, frankly. Even in the
studio, we work live. Even if we say "We're not going to record in a
night club, we're going to record in a studio", we still have a live
audience, because we would rather play to a live audience rather than
just play to microphones.'
Technical
Adderley is a powerful advocate of the importance of musicianship among
young players, and while there are avant garde players he admires he is
wary of many "free" players who concentrate on expressing themselves and
dismiss the importance of technical accomplishment. He seems that
approach as simply unprofessional, and he is very proud of his
profession. 'I talk about people who have musicianship, and I never
talk about the people who don't! There is a standard of playing that we
like to have in our group, and that's true for most groups. I expect
John Lewis likes to have certain standard of playing, as does Thad Jones
- and so on.
'I have been concerned about the inability of large numbers of young
musicians to play with anybody else, because they were of the "do your
own thing" philosophy. They would listen to players like Ornette Coleman
and they would just play without understanding the musicianship
involved. They would simply say: "Well, I can just play like [sings
series of random notes] without regard to the fundamentals of music:
Playing in tune with other people, playing in time, and reading music
and so forth.
'They felt all they had to do was play "creatively" rather than
professionally. But I don't put down all young musicians, that's why I
don't talk about specific people. I could put my finger on individuals
who I think have never improved. I'm talking about people who don't know
what is going on with music and they hear certain superficial things,
surface things, and they think that's all that is necessary. They hear
Don Cherry or Gato Barbieri, and they think that is all that is
necessary - just the surface things that they hear. But these are
wonderful musicians, who have been playing all kinds of music all their
lives - they have paid their dues as such by playing a full spectrum of
jazz music, and other kinds of music too. Like our pianist, George Duke -
he's been a teacher at a conservatory, he can play anything.
Colleges
'And there are many young musicians who can play anything well, you see.
I played a festival in Berkley, California, where Tony Williams was
playing with Earl Hines, and he could play Earl Hines' kind of music. I
know how much time and study Tony Williams has put in learning to play
drums and become a good musician.'
College jazz courses have an important role to play in the future of
the music, he believes. 'Let's put it this way. Seasoned professionals
who play jazz, who play it and have done the road thing, will talk about
the truth, the truth about the music profession, in school. There is no
perfect substitute for doing it, but now there are at least places
where one can study the real thing, and be told what's happening. You
know, all things are not perfect.
'You might get, say, a Ben Webster style of player teaching someone
who wants to play more freely. He might tell them that that ain't it.
But it's nice to have a Ben Webster [style teacher] to talk to, even if
his ideas are not the end of the world. At the same time, you may get a
young person, or even an older person like George Russell, who believes
in a free exploration of sound, who will tell young people it is not
necessary to do the old fashioned study of harmony taught by the old
masters, and that it's almost like a waste of time. I disagree with that
too.
'I think it's necessary to do it all, to be exposed to it all, and
make internal decisions about what your music is going to be. But you've
got to study what to do, under any circumstances, because there's no
substitute for musicianship.'
Originality, and finding your own voice as player, is also hugely
important. As a young saxophonist, Adderley was dismissed by many
critics as a Charlie Parker imitator. How did he cope such a negative
response to his music? 'It did not hurt me, but, frankly, being an
inexperienced person . . . I had done a lot of study and I knew I was a
good musician. I could deal with music under most circumstances. At that
time I was still also a clarinet player and a flute player. I played
those instruments because it was fundamental to me. I no longer play
them, because playing the alto saxophone and the soprano saxophone takes
up a lot of time. Being called a Charlie Parker imitator I thought was
unfair. I did not resent it on any kind of emotional level. They took
their time to put me down, and maybe it was deserved because there was a
great Charlie Parker influence in my playing. However, there were many
other Charlie Parker-influenced players about. The critics resented my
kind of immediate success - I imagine that that was justified, you see,
because there were players around like Jackie McLean and Gigi Gryce ,
Lou Donaldson, all those guys - all influenced to some extent by Charlie
Parker, some of them influenced to a much greater extent. With some of
them, a much greater influence had landed upon them, because I came from
the South and away from the New York scene, so I did not have that same
exposure to Charlie Parker, I could only listen to some records.
Frightened
'I think I understand the criticism more now. I was frightened by it,
though, because I didn't want to have my first opportunity spoiled. I
was a later show-er, you see, because I was almost 30 before I turned up
in New York. So compared to the way kids show up now, in their teens, I
was frightened that I would have just this one opportunity and that I
would be dismissed as inconsequential. 'So I do think it was unfair for
people to say "Well, he just plays Bird licks" and so forth, and then
completely accept all the work that had been done by the guys who were
there before me. That's the dues-paying syndrome, I guess.'
He is optimistic about the future of the jazz scene, and point to
developments which are beginning to transform the business for young
musicians. 'Things have improved, because now there's a "council" to go
to - not a council of elders per se, but any young musician can come up
to me and talk to me, and talk to Quincy Jones, or to John Lewis, or to
people who've had to deal with the realities of this business, and
facing up to them directly. I can tell people: "No, that's not a fair
contract, that's not a right thing to do". I have spent time introducing
young people, by way of recordings, to this business. It's fun!"
'I think that, in the United States, there are more clubs now than
when I first got into the business, but people have tendency to look at
the more obvious things, like there is no more Birdland [there is now,
in a different location to the historic New York club], there's no more
Basin Street, you know, or Cafe Bohemia. But, listen, in Los Angeles now
there must be 10 jazz clubs, featuring musicians from New York and
everywhere else. Jean Luc Ponty and Phil Woods [based in France at the
time of the interview] have worked in LA and come from Europe to do so -
to work clubs only, not do a grand concert tour the way American
musicians do on the Continent.'
Community
Adderley is actively involved in striving for improvements in the life
of the black community in the States. This has included a project for
racial advancement called Operation Breadbasket. 'I became involved in
Operation Breadbasket because the leader, the Rev Jesse Jackson, who is a
very charismatic man, influences me and my band very much, in terms of
morality, the causes of black status and freedom. Now he is involved in a
new organisation called Operation PUSH - People United to Save
Humanity. So we have gone along with him, to other horizons. The new
organisation is not so religion oriented as the other, even though there
are ministers and so forth involved. It has a more secular focus,
rather than dealing with people's religious beliefs. It's a pressure
group. It's a political, socio-economic group, that's about what it is.
'It's more than just about music, it's a very broad spectrum
organisation. For example, Operation PUSH has signed contracts with
major employers in American to provide employment, and the distribution
of funds throughout the black community on a more equitable basis. It
has signed a $65million contract with General Foods, to see to it that
more jobs go to black truck drivers, to jobs for black people in
packaging plants, to black suppliers, to black advertising agencies. So
it's much more interested in the broad economic spectrum of society in
the United States.
'Here in England, I notice the small ways in which racial prejudice
rears its head, in a way that didn't happen 15 years ago. People have
always had their own personal prejudices about, you know, friends and
community, etc. For example, I stayed in a hotel where there were large
numbers of people working who came from Eastern Europe. Nobody is
complaining about the migration of white people from Eastern Europe,
coming to England to do jobs, but they complain about the Indians, about
blacks from the islands and from Africa. So this immigration quota
thing is designed to halt the flow of dark skinned people.'
'That's what Operation PUSH is all about. We're saying, "We're no
longer talking about integration and desegregation. Let's just divide
the pie".'
[Cannonball Adderley was at the peak of his creative powers at the
time of this interview. He died just four years later, in August, 1975,
in Gary, Indiana.]
This interview was originally recorded and broadcast on KCFR in Denver, Colorado, January 31 and February 4,1972.
Published in Coda Magazine, issue number 186 (1982)
JACKWINTER:I understand that your nickname, Cannonball, is a corruption of "Cannibal..."
CANNONBALL ADDERLEY:Igot
a reputation for my trenchermanship early in life, and when I was going
to school down in Tallahassee one of the guys in our group wanted to
call me a cannibal; but he mispronounced it as "can-i-bol." So the other
guys' in the band would call me Canibol more to tease him than to tease
me. But of course other folks, not being in on the joke, distorted it
and it became "Cannonball."
I
got into jazz when I was a high school teacher in Fort Lauderdale. I
had matriculated to New York University. I was in graduate school there
in 1955 but I never did go to class. It happened through Oscar
Pettiford: he's been gone for some time and a lot of people don't know
anything about him, don't know what his contribution has been, but Oscar
had a group playing in the Cafe Bohemia in the Village, not far from
New York University. I went there to hear the group, because he had a
classic group: Kenny Clarke playing drums, Horace Silver playing piano,
and he was playing bass, that was enough. Plus Jerome Richardson and
Jimmy Cleveland were in his band, but Jerome was on a record date.
There's this courtesy factor among professional musicians, if a guy's
got a record date or a studio date or a pit gig, he's permitted to do
that gig and somebody else can sub for him. But Jerome's sub hadn't come
in. My brother Nat, and the Cooper brothers: Buster Cooper who formerly
worked with Duke Ellington, and Steve Cooper, were there; we'd had a
rehearsal and we were there to see Cleve and hear the band. Charlie
Rouse walked in and the band hadn't started playing, because Pettiford
was one of those guys who was a stickler at getting the sound he wrote
for, and he asked Rouse to sit in. Rouse said, "Man I don't have a horn"
and Pettiford said, "Man, there's some guy in the back with an alto,
you can transpose these tenor parts." All of us had our instruments with
us, because you don't leave your instruments in cars in New York City.
So instead of Rouse asking me if he could borrow my horn, he asked me if
I wanted to play. I immediately was scared to death: to be able to play
with those cats, heroes of mine. I'm a Floridian, a schoolteacher, a
player of rock music, lounge music and that kind of stuff. I said,
"Certainly,"
So I went up to the stand, and I guess O.P. wanted me to prove myself, because we kicked off withI Remember Aprilat
what I thought was a fast tempo, because I'd never played it that fast,
But I played it fairly well,and they were satisfied that I could play,
so they invited me to play the evening with them, even when Jerome came
in.
My
brother Nat and I had heard all these stories about the New York Musicians'
Union; how they would fine you for sitting in, so when the clubowner came over
to them and said "Who's that guy playing saxophone?" rather than give
him my name, Nat said, "Well, that's Cannonball," So I became known
as Cannonball once again, after so many years of being just plain Mr. Adderley,
schoolteacher
You were very influenced by Charlie Parker.
Years
ago when I started to play the saxophone I wanted to play tenor. This was
during World War Two, and there were no saxophones available, period. So I
bought this beat-up alto from a guy when I was still in high school, because it
was the only saxophone available. So I tried to play like a tenor player on the
alto; I used to play Lester Young solos, Coleman Hawkins solos, and
lesser-known tenor players who were important to me: Budd Johnson, who was with
Earl Hines; Julian Dash and Paul Bascomb, who were with Erskine Hawkins, Buddy
Tate, I'd play their solos, if I could, I developed a sort of hard, explosive
style on the alto because there was nobody doing it. And when I heard Charlie
Parker I was immediately disappointed in myself, because here was a guy who was
playing explosively, and excellently, with complete control, and I was still a
student player. So immediately I went out and bought all the things I could by
Jay McShann, because it really clicked me into another- thing. I started on
alto in about 1942,I was about 14.
When you made your first records, I imagine most of the musicians
around New York wanted to hear this new guy, and probably you were in a certain
amount of demand for recording sessions...
Not
really, there was not too much going on in the way of recording in New York
then. All the action was on the West Coast, Everybody was starving to death, as
a matter of fact. That's why I got the chance to play with everybody early.
There were a few organized bands that were making it: The Modern Jazz Ouartet,
Max Roach and Clifford Brown,... Horace Silver and Art Blakey had formed The
Jazz Messengers, but they weren't working either. They had a date every Sunday
at a place called The Open Door. That's why Horace was working with Oscar
Pettiford, he didn't have a job, he was just a sideman then. Dizzy Gillespie
had a band that played in a lot of places that were, well, strange for a jazz
group. And he had some strange, well, different musicians let's put it that
way. He had some guys out of Buffalo, New York playing with him, and Sahib
Shihab, and Joe Carroll singing with him. So he had an organized group, but
Miles Davis for instance was just kind of messing around, it was the doldrums
for him, and in fact for nearly everyone in New York, 1955. I'd go to Birdland
and the bill would read John Greas, the French-horn player, or Bud Shank,
Shorty Rogers, Claude Williamson, the West Coast Jazz syndrome. That kind of
band would be there, or maybe Kenton - who had a great band then as a matter of
fact, with Mel Lewis and Lee Konitz, Conte Candoli and guys like that.
Nat
and I first recorded together on Savoy, with Kenny Clarke. Kenny set up a date
with Herman Lubinsky, and Ozzie Cadena, who was Herman's representative, on
Savoy. "Bohemia After Dark" (Savoy 4514): my first recording, Nat's
first, Paul Chambers' first, Donald Byrd's first, Jerome Richardson was on it,
Horace Silver....we did Hear Me Talkin' To Ya, Bohemia After
Dark, lots of beautiful things. That led to my first date as
leader, "Presenting Cannonball" on Savoy (45151 with Hank Jones,
Kenny, Paul Chambers, Nat and me. Then Nat did his first date as leader,
"That's Nat," on Savoy (MG 1.2021). Then we signed a contract with
Mercury, and started to take care of business there.
Nat
and I played together for many years ,and we developed lots of things, based on
other peoples' materials, and some ideas of our own, We were basically just
simple players. We had never been exposed to the blood and guts, dog-eat-dog
syndrome, we were just Florida guys. So we played a lot of blues, a lot of
funk, a lot of gospel-sounding stuff, and cute things based on Bird and Dizzy,
Bird and Miles, based on that feeling.
But
with Horace, and the New York guys on there, there was another feeling going
on. Paul Chambers was an instant genius. He fit right
into things, he was probably the most important bass player of that era. I
don't mean that he was more important than Ray Brown, in terms of his playing
and so forth, but Ray Brown was playing with Oscar Peterson, he was not a date
player, when he played dates it was for that Jazz At The Philharmonic group
thing - and Paul was there in New York and just doing it.
In
fact, speaking of Paul, I played on a date with him for VeeJay (LP1O14), in
Chicago, and we needed a brass player. So I sent to New York for this kid I'd
heard playing in Brooklyn - and it was the first recording fo Freddie Hubbard.
Late in 1956 you joined Miles Davis's classic group with Philly
Joe Jones, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and John Coltrane, making it a sextet...
Actually,
there was a series of funny events Coltrane left the band because he had some
personal problems with his health and so on and he decided he was going to
reform, so he went to Philadelphia and stayed about four or five months. He
used to drink and so other things that were unsavory, and by the time he came
back to New York he had completely changed his image, he no longer did
anything, he was an instant Christian.
When
Trane left, Miles hired me essentially because he didn't dig any of the tenor
players around. Plus he was always having problems with Red and Joe and so on -
not because they were bad guys, they were all beautiful cats, but everybody had
his own style and attitude about what he was due, and so forth. It
was verv interesting, because Red used teach Miles boxing; Red was an
ex-boxer....
Anyhow
I broke up my band, because we weren't doing anything anyhow, we were mostly
unemployed, and Nat had been offered a job by Gerry Mulligan; and Miles had
been' pestering me to come with him, because Miles wasn't doing anything. So I
went with him and we went out on tour, as just a quintet, with Tommy Flanagan
playing piano, Arthur Taylor playing drums, Paul Chambers and me. That was
strange, and Miles couldn't really use that we just made that one tour. By the
time we got back to New York he sent for everybody. At this time, Trane had
come back to New York, it was '57 and he'd begun to work with Thelonious Monk
at the old Five Spot: they had a sensational group with Shadow Wilson and
Wilbur Ware, who was replaced by Aimed Abdul-Malik.
Anyhow,
Miles called his original quintet back, and kept me on, so after I'd been with
him two months we became a sextet.
I
think I really began to grow there, because the band was such a classically
good band: in fact the band was like a workshop; Miles really talked to
everybody and told everybody what to not do, rather
than what to do. He never told anybody what to play, he would just say, Man,
you don't need to do that. And I heard him and dug it. I think up to that point
I'd never played so well.
After
I left the group, there was a lot still going on; but of course forming my own
group with good musicians, in fact great musicians, who didn't sound like
Philly Joe or Wynton Kelly. it made a difference, because a band is a marriage;
a family, a team and so forth.
It
was interesting being in Miles's band with Coltrane, because Trane at that time
had an extremely light, fluid sound ; and my alto sound has always been
influenced by the tenor, so it was heavy, and sometimes it was difficult to
tell where one instrument stopped and the other instrument started, it would
sound like one continual phrase.
It
was interesting having Bill Evans in the band too. He replaced Red Garland. We
used to go to Philadelphia to play, maybe three timet a year. Red had some very
valid, personal reasons for not wanting to play in Philly. Miles would tell
him, "Look man, you're playing in the band, you're supposed to go where
the band goes" . But Red wouldn't go.
Miles
had a little Mercedes 190SL. and one night he said to me, "Cannon, I'd
like you to take a ride with me." Which is dangerous. I said okay. We were
driving up the West Side Highway, and he said man have you ever heard Bill
Evans. I said yes, I had because Nat had finished working with Woody herman and
was freelancing in New York. He worked someplace in the Village with a drummer,
and the drummer had hired Bill Evans. I went down to see him and I heard this
cat and I said Wow, this is beautiful piano playing, and I met him and heard him
and enjoyed him, Miles asked me what I thought of him and I said, "I think
he's beautiful." He said, "Good, I'm going to take him to
Philly." So Bill Evans joined the band to play Philadelphia, and we had so
much fun with what we could do with him - other dimensions, other sounds - that
Miles just told Red, "I'm going to keep Bill, because he can play
everywhere we play." Somewhere at this point I began to take care of the
band's business - collect the money, pay off the cats, keep the records, and so
on. It was a good way to insure my own wages as well. Philly Joe had drawn up
all his pay while we worked at Cafe Bohemia, so at the end of the gig he didn't
have any money coming, and he insisted that he hadn't drawn everything that he
had drawn, and I said, man, all you get is what you're supposed to get, and
that's it. Philly for a long time had some problems, so he said, well, you play
in Boston without me. So we went to Boston and Miles said, Joe ain't coming,
right? Call Jimmy Cobb.
So
I called Jimmy and he joined the band in Boston, 50 it was him, Paul Chambers,
Bill Evans, Coltrane, me and Miles, That band stayed pretty much intact for six
months', and Bill told Miles that he was making him feel uncomfortable, because
Miles used to mess with him; not about his music or anything, but he used to
call him "whitey" and stuff like that, So Bill put in his notice, and
Miles hired Red back, We went into Birdland, and Red was the kind of cat who
was notoriously late, We always started playing without
a piano; in fact it became no problem at all, because we knew we
were going to start playing without a piano. So one night before we went into
Birdland, we went down to Brooklyn to see Oizzy's band, He had a fantastic
band, with Sam Jones, Wynton Kelly, Candido, Sonny Stitt and a drummer whom I
don't remember, Miles spent all evening listening to Wynton Kelly, So we'd been
at Birdland about a week, Red was always late, and one night Wynton was there
when we started, so Miles asked Wynton to Sit in, When Red came in, Wynton was
playing, and Miles told Red, "Hey man, Wynton's got the gig," Just
like that, I could never quite understand Red, Incidentally, last year I played
a show at the Apollo Theater, and someone told me that Red Garland was
downstairs, I went downstairs and Red was surrounded by musicians, everybody
was hugging and talking. But he said, "Listen, I've got to go, I'm
supposed to start work at nine o'clock," And it was ten
then. He had a gig with Philly Joe and Wilbur Ware somewhere.
With
this present group (Cannonball Adderley, alto saxophone; Nat Adderley, trumpet;
George Duke, piano; Walter Booker, bass; Roy McCurdy, drums) we work all the
time. Nat and I decided that we would get musicians who had that complete
capability, and that we would play all the music we
enjoy playing. Consequently we don't look down on any music, and we don't play
anything simply for effect, Everything we play we choose to play, I announce to
the audience that we don't take requests; we play things that we've recorded,
so nobody has to tell me to play Mercy Mercy Mercy or
anything like that, because we're going to play it anyhow. And we have a ball -
that's the only way music can be for real, We do what we want to do and try to
keep the audience with us. Because those are the only things that are
important; whether we enjoy what we're doing and whether people enjoy what
we're doing. But we can't gear anything to anybody because that's rank
commercialism: "Here's an audience that likes this, so
we're going to play this." That way you're not
being a complete person, or a complete creative musician, and you're not really
saying what you want to say.
What isyour feeling about
helping to continue jazz, by getting it to the kids - which I'm convinced is
the only way it's going to continue?
We're
just organizing something in Los Angeles that we call the L.A. Bandwagon. We've
got a committee of folks together who agree that music - not just jazz, but all
kinds of artistic music should be made available to people who are not able to
or old enough to go to night clubs or to colleges and universities - because of
course they won't hear it anywhere else, the radio scene is a total disaster
Yes, the government is so sticky about who and what is on the
radio, but they never screen people for good taste when it comes to music, or
whatever they present.
Well,
the government doesn't have any taste. Who is going to screen it : President
Nixon? Martha Mitchell? Because that's exactly who it would be if there were a
screening committee. That would be the worst kind of censorship, I would never
want to see a government agency designed to screen what was going out.
I
wanted to set up some kind of amalgamation with the LA Bandwagon and Jazzmobile
in New York, but Jazzmobile's employees seemed to think I was trying to take
over, which was far from my intent, I don't want to be any kind of businessman,
I don't want to be responsible for any community's music tastes; but I do feel
that since I have some influence in the community where I live, so we formed a
committee of which I am not a member, to organize, the LA Bandwagon, to take
music all over the city.
As
for jazz education, I do think it could be more comprehensive, to say the
least, I've seen things such as: "Jazz Artist In Residence: Pete
Fountain" which is criminal under the circumstances, I don't mean to cast
aspersions on the musicianship of people like that: their technique, their
knowledgeability or "the wonderfulness of their minds," to steal
something from Bill Cosby. But to masquerade a program as "jazz" and
then not have jazz people doing it there appears to me something sinful about
that, It's like saying "we're going to have string quartet," and then
putting in four guitar.
On the other hand, people like Cecil Taylor become jazz artists in
residence at a university and it's a constant hassle: the kids are all for it,
but the faculty gets uptight: especially the establishment music department.
Well,
I don't care about those people anymore who have that kind of chauvinism, For
anybody to question the musicianship, or the authenticity, or the preparation.
of a man such as a Cecil Taylor is ridiculous, because Ceci plays piano as well
as anybody playing anything He could have very easily been a concert pianisit
had he chosen to be that, That kind of stupidity on the part of music
faculty is one of the thing that makes kids incomplete, I've
told kids for years that in order to play a musical instrument you should
understand what music is all about And there's only one music; music speaks for
itself; you can't departmentalize things or compartmentalize them, in order to
sell it or "establish a commercial basis" or whatever you want to do;
it does not change the fact that music is either going to be music or non-music
(because there's no good or bad music to me ; there's only music and the rest
of it is nonmusic. If we continue to propagate things like having kids
sing Frere Jacques as public school music for children,
it will be an unfortunate Situation. And music faculties are constantly keeping
this kind of crap going on in our lives; and that is
criminal. To complain about the presence of a genius, who is a creator, and who
can create some atmosphere for music, and create some music there; in
order to continue the same old pap is sinful.
I'm pretty well convinced that music educators, taken generally,
still consider jazz to be whorehouse music.I don't
mind that. Because, see, they're the ones who patronize the whorehouses.
I was talking to Merian McPartland about this, and she feels
strongly that kids can be taught to improvise, I question this, How do you feel
about that?
They
can be taught the basis of improvisation, taught what improvisation is, and
they can be taught what they're allegedly to improvise upon. You can improvise
on three things: harmony things, melodic things, and rhythmic things. You can
play the same melodic element but change the rhythm so that it's spaced
differently; or you can play the same harmonic elements and change the melody;
or you can play the same melody and put in completely different changes
underneath. In improvisation you can deal with any of these elements, or all of
them, if you want to.
But
our principle is recomposition; which means that the player composes a solo as
he goes along; he doesn't necessarily really improvise, which is why we came up
with tunes like Charlie Parker's Ornithology, which is
a copyrightable tune even though it was based on How High The
Moon. So people can be taught to improvise, they can be taught
what it's all about; but you don't teach them what to say or how to say it,
just let them know what basis you' re dealing with.
I
have a lot to learn about human nature, I guess because having been a teacher,
I may or may not have been a good teacher, but I knew what I wanted to teach; I
knew how I wanted my people to be able to play, and I never discriminated
within music. Because music is only one thing, There is music out there, and
it's up to us to grab it. Playing a musical instrument is only a means to an
end. Because you can play well doesn't mean you're going to play any music on
that instrument. We have some great technologists performing about, doing lots
of things, who never say anything musical. Now I think people should have that
kind of command of their instrument, and better, because that liberates them
from having to think about how to play.
That approaches the question of today's free players; their music
may be an extension of Ornette Coleman, and their music may be something new
and important; but a lot of people wonder if they can really play, or are
simply shocking.
I
don't know; I enjoy a lot of things that are being said by people who are
so-called "free" players or "avantgarde" or whatever you
want to call it, and I approach them like I approach any other art. You see a
painting and it can be by Michelangelo; but if you don't dig it, it doesn't
make any difference who did it. My point is, cults of personality have long
been one of the problems of playing music. That is, once you become as
important to the creative world as a Duke Ellington, the cult of personality
says that because you are Ellington, whatever you have
to say is credible. And it is not necessarily so. Duke is my all-time favorite
musician, he's the person for whom I have probably the most respect in the
history of our art form - but I don't like everything he does, and I don't
think that I'm supposed to. Because if I did, I wouldn't have any discretion
myself. The same thing goes for, for example, Joseph Jarman or Archie Shepp;
Archie's done some things that I like very much, and some things I thought were
horrendous. But that's just me. I'm sure there are people who like some of the
things I do and cannot understand why I do some other things. I don't want everybody
to like me because it wouldn't give me any dimension. I like to be able to have
my beginnings and my endings and I'd like my listeners to have the same
privilege, and if they don't like something, don't give up to it!
Do you think what Miles is doing now is important in breaking new
ground in music?
I
don't know - but at the same time: I don't care. Miles is a lifestyle unto
himself. There are people who emulate everything he does, so "breaking new
ground" will mean that there are people who will emulate what he does, and
maybe they'll get into other things. I don't care if a person is a
revolutionary force, or whether he's perceived as so important that everything
he's got to say automatically will be acceptable. I don't like everything he's
doing now, but I think there are some great things in "Bitches Brew,"
and there are some other things that don't move me - but there again,
that's me. There are people who love everything in it,
and people who hate everything in it. My attitude to Miles is this: I like to
hear him play his horn. I don't think he's particularly a great composer, but I
like to hear him play anything, because he has a vitality and another dimension
of communication in his instrument. And I'm going to like him even If I hate
his band! What about the period when you had Yusef Lateef in your group?
Having two reedmen was sort of a departure. How did you happen to add him? Yusef
is one of the sweetest human beings I've ever encountered. A professional
musician who has an architectural approach to playing music; he really builds
from a foundation. He's sort of like Miles in that whatever he plays through
his horn is worth listening to. We wanted to have Yusef in the band, but we
didn't know how to cope with it at first; in fact we did some "small
band/big band" kind of things, based on the old John Kirby principle,
completely written. We did albums with arrangements of Dizzy Gillespie big band
pieces, arranged for the sextet. When Charles Lloyd replaced Yusef we couldn't
do that, because his sound and his feel for playing with other people wasn't
quite the same, so we became six soloists rather than an ensemble. But it
wasn't particularly unusual; Miles had a sextet with two saxophone players. I'm
not thinking of changing my present quintet format, because my brother and I
play well together. I think if we were to split up I would just not have a band
again. Having a band is a luxury; it gives you the chance to play your music
and to luxuriate in an atmosphere of excellence. I care a lot more about having
a good band than I do about the money. I always try to get good guys and keep
them a long time.
Duke always said that he looked upon his band as a way of hearing
his new compositions; as a workshop more than a commercial proposition.
Yes,
If he couldn't have subsidized his band he could never have operated. A band
can't make enough money to function just on what it earns (in performance
fees). We have to take money from publishing, from records, everywhere we can
get it in order to keep going.
What would you say your band you and Nat had in Florida, before
you came to New York, sounded like?
We
were strongly influenced by blues bands: Louis Jordan, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson,
bands like that. It was a small group like we have now. Except for the quality
of the musicianship it sounded quite a bit like the records we first made when
we got to New York, except that we played more real, fundamental blues. We
could and did play rhythm and blues; we had to cover the hit records just to
survive. There was no market for a jazz group in Fort - Lauderdale, Florida, or
Tallahassee !You can forget it ! But we played jazz anyway, and also the
current favorites because it was necessary; we had singers. That was just the
way that it was. But we used to play things by Dizzy, and Miles, and Bird - but
they would come right behind Caledonia, or Cherry
Red Blues.
To
provide a sketch of this colorful, articulate jazzman, here are a
number of excerpts from interviews with Julian reassembled in
chronological order. Also included are essential comments from Nat
Adderley pertaining to Julian's youth and New York City debut. These
interviews are extracted from a number periodicals referenced in the
Bibliography.
Cannonball & Nat 1935
circa 1960
circa 1970
Youth
Full Legal Name: Julian Edwin Adderley
Date of Birth: September 15, 1928
Born: Tampa, Florida
It
may sound ridiculous, but when I was about three years old – my dad was
a jazz musician at the time – I had no idea what that meant or what it
was about – I’d never heard him play, and the horn didn't mean anything
to me other than the normal curiosity that a kid would have about an
instrument, but we got a radio, and it was the first one in the
neighborhood. During that time the bands used to broadcast directly from
the Cotton Club in New York in 1931, you see, and I used to hear Cab
Calloway, Duke Ellington…
Three
years old. Once Cab Calloway was broadcasting, and I was very fond
of staying up late at night too, listening to these broadcasts. I didn’t
know what I was listening to, but it was something interesting, and a
tube blew out, and I cried and cried, and my parents couldn’t understand
why I was crying so much about it, so they got a tube the next day, and
I would never listen to anything but the music, really. They’d have
other programs at the time – a lot of comedy on radio, but nothing but
music got to me, and so I became fond of listening to music as
a three-year-old, and by the time I was in school and so forth, I
started taking piano lessons in second grade or something like that.
(12)
Well I didn't stick with piano at all. I couldn’t stand the piano lessons, because the piano teacher was a pervert. (12)
When
we hardly knew how to read, we knew how to sing. We would sing
for company and all like that. Pop would go get us just as proudly,
“Come on, boys! Sing WPA!” So you know how long that’s been.
That’s
right. I had a scrapbook with the Mills Brothers in it. I had their
autographs, because they visited our town when I was… You don’t
remember, do you Nat? (8)
And
like the church thing - We were Episcopalians, but we’d go down on
the corner on Sunday night and listen to them get into it. Tabernacle
Baptist Church. Sunday night after church they’d have a fish fry. We’d
go down there to get some of that fish. They’d be inside poppin’ – Hey!
Jumb! Hey! Jumb! Be swinging. And we’d dig it. We’d be outside dancing
and carrying on. We didn’t consider it sacrilegious. (5)
I
was collecting records when I was eight years old. I spent some of my
allowance to buy a 37-cent record, and my dad thought that really meant
something. That’s when he decided to buy my horn for me. (12)
I
used to collect records by all the great bands. I had records by Chick
Webb, by [Andy] Kirk, by Lucky Millinder… and when Basie put out early
records, I had these because I thought Basie had something else to say…
And I noticed, even then, that Basie was less the show commercial type
band than some of the others that I really dug, including bands like
Earl Hines, ‘cause Earl Hines had a vocal group in his band. I dug what
he was doing, I dug the band an awful lot singing and so forth. I love
Ella [Fitzgerald], but when Chick Webb’s band played the things that
Ella did, “A Tisket-A Tasket,” I couldn’t stand it. The instrumental
things I dug. So, even then, I knew what I wanted to hear from the
bands. (12)
John
Kirby was the first small band I remember. There were no small bands
when I was a kid – during the ‘30s. The Benny Goodman small band. I
would have loved to play with such a thing, but it didn’t mean the same
thing as the Kirby band, because that was a total picture, that was
really a little band.
By
the time Louis Jordan became nationally prominent, I was playing. You
see, I was talking about a kid’s dreams when I talked about John Kirby. I
wasn’t a musician at the time, I was trying to learn to play trumpet.
Louis Jordan was something else entirely. It was – what would you call
it? – commercial, in a way. It didn’t mean the same thing to me that the
jazz thing did. And I never really dug Louis as a sax player. I dig him
more now than I did then. (7)
They got me a trumpet when I was in fifth grade, and I started out immediately trying to play jazz.
You know when all kids wanted to be sheriffs, and cops and robbers? Well, I wanted to be a jazz musician. (8)
I
played the trumpet for about a year and developed into a pretty good
little player – playing simple things – but I never had much range. And
then I got big enough to play football with the boys, and I put the
trumpet under the bed, and it stayed there for about three or four
years. (8)
Nat was 9 and I was 12 when we began to play together. (11)
Nat
Adderley: Lonnie Hayes, the drummer of the first group in which we
played, gave him the nickname Cannibal, because he ate so much. But
without education, most of the people in our hometown, Tampa, didn’t
know what a cannibal was and transformed the nickname to Cannonball.
(11)
Julian: What happened was, we started a school band, and I was the leader. (12)
Nat:
When we began, we were part of a group in which I was the singer. I was
8 or 9 years old and had a soprano voice. I sang for tips, and I made
more money than the group! That provoked some fuss with the musicians,
and I left the group. My brother left with me, because he is my brother,
and also because he was responsible for me, being older. But, after a
while, we returned to the group because, without us, it wasn’t worth
anything, and I became the leader Julian worked for me. He looked after
the music, and I sang, but I shared my money with him! That lasted 4
years! And then my voice changed, and I began to play trumpet. (11)
Julian:
Yeah, I was the trumpet player. I was the leader of a cult, because I
was the only guy in my set who ever had any instrumental musical
experience, and I used to show off, more or less. Then another guy who
started playing trumpet could play higher notes than I could, and I sued
to try and get to where he was going, and it didn’t work out. So, a
friend of mine had a saxophone that I sued to fool around with
sometimes, and I found out that I could play scales and so forth on it,
and I decided to make a switch. But trumpet was, even then, still my
first love. (12)
I
ought to confess that I suffered with my trumpet: My lips! No matter
what, after each lesson, I was bleeding! Finally, I couldn’t stand to
even look at that instrument of torture any longer, and as I secretly
adored the saxophone, on which I knew that problem would not be
encountered, my father let me go. In 1941, I left the pleasures of the
trumpet to my little brother Nat, who has not managed badly since then!
(16)
I started playing alto about 1942. (12)
Nat: As
soon as he learned to play it, he joined a band in Florida, but before
he let on about it at home, he taught me how to play trumpet, so that
the old man wouldn’t be disappointed.
Of
course, at that time, it was right after the start of the Second World
War, musicians were making a lot of money. And the both of us were
working, even though we were just kids. That took a big financial load
off him. That probably made the disappointment less too.
Meanwhile,
Julian was trying hard to make me into a musician. I thought
that reading music was a drag. We had a band where there really wasn’t
any music, because nobody but Julian could read. I thought that the way
to do it was to hear what was happening and then just sit down and play
it by ear. So Julian decided that I had to learn and, when I fought it,
he went to the old man and said, “Pop, I taught Nat to play the trumpet,
but he refuses to read music.” That was that. I learned. (5)
Julian: My
first influences were Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter, the little I’d
heard of him, and Jimmy Dorsey, but the tenor players used to be more
effective to me, and those men were all giants.
Here’s
what’s wrong to me. The alto would seem to have to be played a
certain way, and I didn’t understand why it had to be played that way.
Why do you have to confine yourself to playing pretty on the alto? Why
can’t you play gutty and swing like the tenor players were doing, ‘cause
I was very fond of Ben Webster, Chu Berry, Coleman Hawkins, Lester
Young, Don Byas - everybody I knew practically. There was a tenor player
with Andy Kirk who was rally a bitch, a guy named…
Dick
Wilson, yeah. I never really dug Herschel (Evans) too much. He never
got to me. I used to love Illinois Jacquet. The first thing I heard him
play on was the Lionell Hampton band things…
And
to give you an idea of how square I was about some things, I was very
fond of Tex Beneke - and the young fellow who was playing with Harry
James.
Corky Corcoran.
But
I thought the most exciting of the tenor players was the guy who played
with Luncefore - Joe Thomas. A lot of things he did were not really of
lasting musical value, but he was an exciting son of a bitch.
I
listened to Pete Brown, but he didn’t say much. He swung like hell, but
the didn’t say much - sort of like the Roy Eldridge of the alto. You
know what I mean? He knew how to get over, he was exciting, and he
played well, but he rarely did anything that was complex. I’ll tell you
who was the first alto player to do anything to me, playing alto
differently from the way I was accustomed, was Earl Bostic, and I didn’t
dig what he played so much as the way he played it. (12)
They
(Jimmy Cole, from Indianapolis, and Jimmy Hensley, from Oklahoma)
were the first alto players I heard in person who sounded - who had that
explosive quality, that real hard swing. The ones I knew well - Johnny
Hodges, Jimmy Dorsey - had that pretty quality. They could play fast,
but it always seemed to be almost an exhibitionistic kind of thing, they
had so much technique. (7)
The
first alto players to impress me in swing tings were Eddie “Clean
head” Vinson, and Pete Brown, and Rudy Williams with the Savoy Sultans.
And then when I heard Charlie Parker on the Jay McShann records, I
realized this was the sort of thing I’d fully expected from alto players
all along. (3)
But
I heard Eddie Vinson first. He was playing with Milton Lockin’s band
and singing the blues. They used to tour the South. It was an east Texas
band, out of Houston. I didn’t even know Eddies’s name; everybody
called him “Mr. Clean head” He was fantastic. He was a very young man
then. Milt’s band was Lunceford style, but raw, you understand?
Lunceford had this impeccability in his band. But this was raw Lunceford
- miss a lot of notes, loud, very little slurring. But they were an
impressive band. (7)
As
I became more musically aware, the Ellington thing became more
important, because I realized that was something really exceptional
musically. But as a kid I couldn’t realize that. All I knew was he was a
big man with a big band. (7)
Arranging
Frankly,
my first efforts were nothing to be pound of. 1942, “Mr. Five-by-Five.”
It was tired. It was a sad arrangement, but I started trying to write
then. The first one that kind of really jumped was an old Savoy Sultans
tune called “Ready, Set, Jump!” (14)
Florida Professional
My
parents made me stay in school. Otherwise I would have gone on the
road with bands earlier in life. But as it was, I Ended up going on the
road during the summers, and then going back to college in the fall. By
the time I had gotten out of school though, those old touring dance
bands like Any Kirk’s had disappeared. I did play in Buddy Johnson’s
band and Lucky Millinder’s, as well as some regional and Florida bands.
Also, my school bands had a chance of going out i8n the summer and doing
it. We had a taste of honey, but I never went anywhere like New York or
Chicago with a band –I never go heard like that. (19)
I
was a school teacher and played in Florida and that was that. I never
looked at myself as a leader or any such thing. I taught high school for
two-and-a-half years, was in the Army for three, then returned to
teaching for two-and-a-half more years, a span of eight years. (19)
I
was thoroughly disgusted at that time. I had my heart set on being a
musician all my life, and there was nothing. These were really the dark
ages, 1947 - 8 - 9 - 50. There was just nothing happening. No big bands.
The giants of jazz were in poor shape financially. There was nothing
going on. I saw Miles Davis in 1950 for the first time, and I don’t
think I ever saw a guy who presented so much to me look so bad.
There
was really nothing much going on, and here I was in Florida. With
nothing going on in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, you figure out what
was going on in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
I
got disgusted and concentrated on teaching. That went on for two years.
I started teaching in September, 1948, and didn’t play my horn in
public till New Year’s Eve. I got a job aboard Ripley’s Chinese junk.
And from then to prom time (May and June) I didn’t touch my horn at all,
aside from playing a demonstration or something like that for the kids.
I had no reason to practice. I was depressed. Not so much depressed,
but as far as jazz was concerned, it was just out.
(Army)
I didn’t even consider going into the band. I was all set to go to OCS
and all that foolishness. Do my intellectual bit. But I met a couple of
musicians in my outfit from Detroit who played very well. One of the
guys was an alto player named Hafis, and everybody was saying he was so
good. One day he said to me, “They tell me you’re and alto player.” I
said, “Yeah, I play a little.” He asked me to play for him. I didn’t and
I got the bug again.
I
decided to go into the band. And that’s the only reason I got back into
music from a performer’s point of view, because I was through. It meant
nothing to me any more. I’d been practicing all my life, and there was
no outlet for it. (7)
Not
since I was a kid did I have that all-consuming passion that said, “I’m
going to make it, I’m going to take charge and be the greatest.” I had
become attuned to being a good school teacher and a good musician. I
used to on occasion practice my clarinet and flute and just stay in
shape.
Ironically,
I used to admire and hope to be like Charlie Mariano and other
guys with Stan Kenton and Woody Herman. I thought, “If I could get into
that kind of scene I’d be very happy.” I never thought of assaulting New
York. I knew there were some guys who cold play very well; I always
felt I could kind of play as well as the average second-rate alto
player. But I didn’t have the time to devote to it. I was a school
teacher playing commercial clubs at night backing singers. We
really didn’t get a chance to stretch out or anything after I got out of
school. I hadn’t played any serious jazz since I had left the Army. I
met a lot of guys in the service who were really well-known jazz
musicians, and who played very well. The thought of being in that kind
of life never fazed me, because I could tell by playing with guys who
worked professionally, that I could play okay-well enough to survive in
the mainstream. (19)
To New York
Nat: Julian
kept getting better jobs all the time, so that he didn’t want to
leave home. But I went out on the road with Lionel Hampton in 1954. I
made my first visit to New York on that trip. (5)
Julian: I
went up to New York to see him play with the band around Christmas
of ’54. I sat in with the band, and Hamp offered me a job. I was all
ready to go, but Hamp’s wife, Gladys, put an end to that. She said to
have two brothers in the band would organize a clique. Nat was disgusted
about the whole thing, and by next summer, he and Hamp had fallen out
altogether, and Hamp fired Nat. (7)
Nat:
It’s strange, but I never heard Charlie Parker during that time. He
just wasn’t around. Then I went to Europe in 1955 and, by the time that
we came back, he had died.
But
I heard a lot of other players, mostly saxophonists. So, when I got
back home, I told Julian that maybe he’d better come on back to New York
with me. The opportunity seemed to be all right, and I didn’t see where
he would be a drag under any circumstances, considering how well he
played.
I
think he was a little worried about how he’d be accepted here, but
another thing that stopped him was the fact that he had a very good job
at the time. (5)
Julian: I
had enrolled in summer school at New York University for some
graduate study, although I hadn’t gone to classes yet. My brother Nat
was living there free lancing after he’d left Lionel’s band. He told me
to bring my horn, because there were some gigs to be played. (19)
I
had always wanted to be a professional musician. But during the mid
–‘50s things were pretty lean for jazz. I’m sure I wouldn’t have gone to
the city if Nat hadn’t kept insisting. (18)
We
were going to work with Ruth Brown or somebody. My first night in New
York, Nat was out playing with Paul Williams, making some money, so we
couldn’t have rehearsal. The Cooper brothers and I went down to the Café
Bohemia to see Jimmy Cleveland. We got there, and this Café Bohemia
incident took place.
My
brother and I, Buster Cooper and his brother, Steve, we wanted to
organize a group. One evening we went to the Café Bohemia to see Jimmy
Cleveland, who was playing there with Oscar Pettiford, Kenny Clarke,
Horace Silver - Jerome Richardson was the tenor in the group, but that
evening, he was late. We were in the middle of the room with out
instruments. Charlie Rouse arrived, and Oscar asked him to replace
Richardson. But since Charlie didn’t have his sax, O.P. told him:
“There’s a young fellow in the middle of the room who has an alto.
Borrow it from him and play with us.” Rouse, instead of borrowing my
instrument, asked me if I wanted to play. I accepted. Oscar kept me with
him. (11)
Nat: The
evening when Julian played, for the first time, at the Café
Bohemia, everybody wanted to know Julian’s name. I was sitting in the
room, waiting my turn to play. A man came to ask me Julian’s name. At
the time, you couldn’t make a living freely, and I thought that the man
was a union inspector. I replied, “I didn’t know, I think he comes from
Florida and he’s called Cannonball.” For six or seven years, Julian
hadn’t been called that, but it’s the first name that came into my mind.
The man who I took for a union inspector was the proprietor of
the Bohemia. He told his customers, “he’s called ‘Cannonball’.” In town,
it was an explosion. You heard nothing but the phrase, “There is a
young fellow at the Bohemia who calls himself ‘Cannonball’ and who plays
like Charlie Parker!” Since then, Julian rid himself of the comparison
with Parker, but never of his nickname, Cannonball. (11)
Julian:
And from that point on, I was a confirmed jazz musician. Nothing
else could interfere. Before I sat in I had envisioned going to school
again. I had enrolled in New York University. I never went to class. I
sat in at the Bohemia in a Sunday evening, and I was due to go to class
on Monday. But I said, “I got a job at the Bohemia? Playing with Oscar
Pettiford and those cats? Ummmph!” That was a dream come true. I
wouldn’t have made it in class; it was preparation to make more money
teaching. (7)
Playing
opposite was a trio with Walter Bishop playing piano and Paul
Chambers bass. I’d sit in with the trio and have a lot more fun there,
since all of Oscar’s music was written. (19)
Nat: But he had signed a contract to teach in Florida, and he had to go back. (5)
Julian: I
could have worked with somebody else, gone back to New York and taken
my chances freelancing, but by this time I was making 10 grand a year
in Florida. I had this teaching at 5 grand, and I was making $150 a week
playing at night, plus I had a couple of side hustles. I sold
automobiles, and I did quite well too. I had that gift of gab. Old
ladies, I could sell them any kind of car. It was hard to turn my back
on all that and come to New York with nothing. So we decided to organize
this band. (7)
Nat: It
was a scene getting him back again. Somebody would offer him a job
here, but it wouldn’t come up to what he was getting in Florida. But I
sneaked around and worked all kinds of deals to get him to come back.
And he did. (5)
First Quintet
Julian:
Miles had helped me when I first came to New York. He told me whom
to avoid among the record companies, but unfortunately I didn’t take his
advice. Al Lion of Blue Note was one man he recommended, and Miles also
told me about John Levy. (4)
I
formed my first band toward the end of 1955. Having worked in New York,
I was –naively-sure that the best Florida musicians would meet the
challenge of the major club circuit. I also had Junior Mance, and old
army buddy, with the group. We had a few warm-ups in Florida, and then
my manager, John Levy, booked us in Philadelphia. We had rehearsed
two-and-a-half weeks. We spent a couple of days in New York before
hitting Philadelphia, and during that time my Florida men heard the New
York musicians. Then, in Philadelphia, they also had to cope with the
fact that Philadelphians like John Coltrane and Red Garland, home for
the weekend, were standing around listening.
It
was soon clear that being competent in Florida had nothing to do with
New York competition. (In my own case, for example, guys who seemed to
me to swing when I was in Florida no longer do.) By the second day in
Philadelphia, John Levy decided to fire everyone. (This was January,
1956) Jack Fields, an ex-musician and then owner of the Blue Note, was
also somewhat upset. I had gotten great response in that room on the way
to Florida with Kenny Clarke, bassist Jimmy Mobley, and pianist Hen
Gates, but on the way back, I found out that you can’t fool anybody in
Philadelphia. Jack lent me some money, and I hired Specs Wright as
drummer, but I had to keep the bass player for a while or give him two
weeks’ pay. He couldn’t keep an even tempo on fast numbers, so we had to
stop playing fast things for a while.
We went on to Detroit and Cleveland for two weeks each, and when we got to New York, I eventually hired Sam Jones [bass]. (4)
I
got a little more [money], and I hired Jimmy Cobb [drums]. Specs Wright
was a good drummer, but Specs is real machine-like. (13)
We
kept going for the rest of the year with a book based in large part on
what my brother Nat and I wrote and some of the usual jazz standards. We
began to record, but there were problems at Mercury. The man then in
charge of jazz there pretty largely decided what we recorded, who the
arrangers would be, and who would publish any originals we brought in. I
tell you frankly that I didn't know at the time that I could protest,
and I didn't at first go to John Levy with the problem. I had signed a 5
year contract with the company, and the options were entirely at their
discretion. (I later found out the Union wouldn't allow more than 3
year contracts.) At first, being an unknown, I didn't even get any
advances for my dates. Then there was a publicity splash of sorts, and
they started that business about "The New Bird" which has plagued me
ever since. (4)
Bird
had died just 5 months before I arrived in the Apple. Record companies
and jazz writers were looking for someone that they could hail as "The
New Bird".
Well,
at this time Sonny Criss and Sonny Stitt, Jackie McLean and
Lou Donaldson, among others, were all playing great Bebop. Okay, here I
come, a new face, and the promoters grabbed the idea of putting me up as
Bird's replacement - my first record was advertised as such. You can
imagine what kind of resentment was built up against me in the minds of a
lot of players. When I objected - I wasn't even playing Bird's way -
the publicity experts said that they knew what they were doing.
Actually,
while the public was arguing which alto saxophonist was "The New
Bird", I can't recall any musician striving for that credit. (18)
We
were able to keep working fairly steadily through 1956. There was one
stretch with two weeks off and various periods with a week layoff. We
had come to New York with little money, and Nat and I both had cars, so
that transportation was no problem. The sidemen were paid only when we
worked; there was no one on retainer, so to speak.
II
learned that year how important it is to keep the books accurately and
to keep accounts separately. We were getting about a $1000 per week for 5
men. Out of that came $150 commission for my manager and booking
office, $75 in Union taxes, a third of which we eventually got back,
about $125 in Federal withholding taxes, and maybe another $15 in Social
Security taxes. Now we should have deposited the money due the
government in a separate account every week. But after a while, we began
spending the money, because we also had gasoline bills, hotel bills
(for ourselves, etc.). We were paying the sidemen $125 out which
they had to pay their hotel bills.
By
September of the next year, 1957, although we had been working
steadily, we were about $9000 in debt. We had had no royalties from our
recordings and had only made scale for making them. Besides, a lot of
recording costs were charged against us which shouldn't have been. The
band had not been particularly successful in that we had done about the
sam e amount of business all the time. Very few clubs lost money on us,
but they didn't make a hell of a lot either. (4)
We
found that Nat and I, with a group to pay, could not make as much
together as I could make alone with Miles. It was really a time of
struggling. So when Nat went with J. J. Johnson, and I went with Miles.
(18)
With Miles Davis
I
got an offer from Dizzy to go with his small band. I was opposite Miles
at the Bohemia, told him I was going to join Dizzy, and Miles asked me
why I didn't join him. I told him he'd never asked me. Well, Miles kept
talking to me for 2 or 3 months to come with him, and when I finally
decided to finally cut loose in October, 1957, I joined Miles. I was
with Miles from October, 1957, to September, 1959. (4)
Miles'
group was a combo that had much success, but which was fairly -
unusual. Miles was not satisfied with the group for reasons unrelated to
the music - I joined Miles to replace Sonny Rollins. Actually, John
Coltrane had left the group to play with Monk, and had been replaced by
Sonny Rollins. But, at the moment of leaving on tour with a "Jazz for
Moderns" show - where there was Gerry Mulligan, Chico Hamilton, Anita
O'Day, Lennie Tristano - Rollins decided to stay in town to form his
group. I became the saxophonist with the Miles Davis Quintet. But
you're going to see how this group was - unstable. Actually, I had just
arrived when, just before leaving on tour, Miles and Red Garland had
some words. Tommy Flanagan left with us. The second night of the tour,
Philly Joe didn't come, and Miles called Art Taylor. I watched all this
movement with my eyes wide open. After the tour, the original group -
Miles, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, john Coltrane - returned, and we
recorded Milestones, etc. Then Red left us again; he had some
alimony problems that prevented him from going where the group was
going. Bill Evans came - then Philly Joe and Miles argued, and Philly
Joe left. He was replaced by Jimmy Cobb. (11)
Especially
when he started to use ill Evans, Miles changed his style very hard to
a softer approach. Bill was brilliant in other areas, but he couldn't
make the real hard things come off. Then Miles started writing new
things and doing some of Ahmad's tunes. When Philly Joe left the band,
Miles at first thought Jimmy Cobb wasn't as exciting on fast tempos, and
so we did less of those. And although he loves Bill's work, Miles felt
Bill didn't swing enough on things that weren't subdued. When Bill left,
Miles hired Red again and got used to swinging so much that he later
found Wynton Kelly, who does both the subdued things and the
swingers very well. (4)
I
gained a lot of experience from Miles. He is one of the most tasteful
people in the business. He chooses his notes carefully, everything is
well thought out. I learned a lot about musical economy from him. You
can't repeat yourself night after night when you're working with Miles
Davis. Miles and John Coltrane are creating all the time, and the
challenge is tremendous. (3)
I
think I learned more through listening and playing with John than any
other musician I ever heard. When we were first together, it seemed that
John was playing more of what I wanted to play than anyone I have ever
heard. (18)
I've
got a new acetate I made of the kind of music that Miles doesn't
particularly dig now. He's got a new concept now. He's tired of tunes.
You know he says, "You play the melody, then everybody blows, and you
play the melody, and the tune is ended, and that's a jazz performance."
He says he's changed his concept somewhat - but it's one of those type
LP's. I had all "soul brothers." It's on Riverside. I used Bags, Percy
Heath, Wynton Kelly, and Art Blakey, and I thought it was a very good
date. It was a "soul" session .(13)
Second Quintet
In the fall of '59, Nat and I organized a new quintet. (18)
I
had planned when I joined him to stay with Miles for about a year. But I
stayed longer. Miles was getting more successful, and there was the
business recession. I was functioning meanwhile as kind of road manager -
paying off the guys, collecting money. Meanwhile I had been getting
inquiries from club owners about when I'd start my own band again,
because then kept noticing the response when my name was announced. I
told John Levy I'd try again if he could get the group a minimum of
$1500 a week. Nat helped me in the recruiting. I gave him a list of
the guys I contacted. John got about 2 months for us at $1500 a week. We
broke in the Peps in Philadelphia, then went on to the Jazz Workshop in
San Francisco. To start with, we had about 12 or 14 things in the book.
It just happened to work out that we had several gospel-type numbers.
Nat and I had some originals in the book, and we got more material from
Duke Pearson of Atlanta, now in New York, and Randy Weston. (4)
I'll
tell you what our repertoire consisted of when we went to work in
Philadelphia. We played Moanin'. We played Straight, No
Chaser - Spontaneous COmbustion, and some other things from our old
repertoire. Just tunes we enjoyed playing and tunes we learned to play
quickly. We had to get started without substantially new material,
because Louis Hayes (the group's drummer then and now) wasn't available
for rehearsal until 4 days before we were supposed to go to work; he was
still with Horace Silver.
Bobby
Timmons wrote "Dis Here" - he used to say, "Dis here's my new tune" -
in San Francisco, where we went after the first gig in Philadelphia. "Dis
Here" fascinated me. I had never heard a tune like that before. It's a
very difficult tune to play. Just playing the melody is tough. It was in
3/4 or 6/8, whichever way you want to look at it, and that made
it challenging. It's got something in it to work on. At first, we had
to force this tune on people, it seemed as if almost magically
some people started asking for it. (7)
The
album we made for Riverside at the Jazz Workshop is the biggest seller
I've ever had, and one big factor is Bobby Timmons' This Here in it.
Bobby wrote the tune in San Francisco, although he'd been working on it
before. The tune sort of gave us a sendoff, and everything else seemed
to fall in. The album went into 5 figures within 5 weeks. It has already
sold more than all my Mercury albums combined - except for the string
album. Now we're booked into the summer, plan to go to Europe then and
play the Cannes Festival, and come back for several of the American
festivals. (4)
This time, the group was an immediate success. (18)
I
think that the jazz amateurs were ready for this type of group,
because, at the time, all the combos appeared to be introverted. The
public appreciated us, because we were happy together, and because we
took pleasure in playing. (11)
We still don't know what we did that time that we didn't do the first time. (18)
It's
tough to say. People are funny. The records we made then are selling 3
times as well now. I can't explain people's reluctance to attach
themselves to a new group when there's not a reason for them to be
interested in some personality in the group. Our group had no stars.
There was no one in the group who was well known, including the leader -
the leader was a newcomer. (7)
Soul Jazz
We
were pressured quite heavily by Riverside Records when they discovered
there was a word called "soul." We became, from an image point of view,
soul jazz artists. They promoting us that way, and I kept deliberately
fighting it, to the extent that it became a game. It's like not
accepting the Nobel Prize, because it may tend to make one wealthy or
something. It's hard to put everything in its proper perspective, when
you are led to believe that you're going to be wealthy because of some
limited aspect of music that you make. (17)
It
doesn't seem to me that soul was a movement, at least among musicians.
Among the record makers, certainly! Everybody in the record industry
laid that label on thick to make it more durable, and especially more
salable. But that was all foreign to musicians. Besides, for as long as I
can remember, I always played as I play today, and I remember perfectly
well a quintet that I had 6 or 7 years ago, with Junior Mance and Jimmy
Cobb, and in which we played one of my things that I called Sermonette.
At the time, no one tried to baptize that way of playing that we were
already familiar with. People called that "jazz," simply! Maybe it's a
bit for that reason that it never sold very well. (16)
We
happened to hear a gospel group, the Staple Singers, doing [Why Am I
Treated So Bad?] a couple of years back. It hasn't been as big as Mercy
for us, but its still a big, big record - 150,000 singles, and the album
is still approaching that figure.
Nowadays
we sometimes work audiences who are totally fringe; that is, they
wouldn't come to hear us under any circumstances unless we had a hit
record. But once they're in the club, we have no trouble getting them
interested in everything we do.
We play things that are very commercial, others that are very modern; and we like ballads and play them. (10)
It
is not our intention to be typecast as exponents of soul music or
anything else. We have some of Ornette Coleman's pieces, and the only
reason that we haven't played them is that we haven't been able to
arrange rehearsals with Ornette. You see, whether we're playing
Ellington's music or Monk's or Ornette's, we try to establish the sound
the composer had in mind. (18)
Personnel
Actually,
we soon will have had Joe Zawinul for 2 years, but that is twice as
long as all the pianists that have played with us, excepting Junior
Mance. And that truly bothers me, because Nat has been in the group
since the beginning, and I have had the same bassist and the same
drummer for 4 years. And moreover, Sam Jones spent a year and a half
with me before those 4 years! (16)
Bobby
Timmons stayed with us for 5 1/2 months. He left us to return to Art
Blakey, and was replaced by Barry Harris, who stayed 6 months. (11)
As
for Barry Harris, who I personally consider to be one of the greatest
pianists of real jazz (he's the one who shaped Tommy Flanagan), he only
feels good in Detroit or New York and refuses to leave on tour. (16)
Victor
Feldman's the one who replaced Barry. Victor had already recorded an
album with me, Poll Winners, where there was also Ray Brown, Louis
Hayes, and Wes Montgomery. It was a good time with Victor, whom I like
very much. He also stayed 6 months with us. He left us, because of his
wife, who comes from California, was freezing in New York and wanted to
go back. Victor was replaced by Joe Zawinul, who has stayed with us for 5
years. (11)
Since
our outfit was going so well, we began looking around for a sixth
member whose playing would compliment our direction and expand the total
spectrum of the group. Yusef Lateef was perfect. He wasn't just a great
musician, he also was a dynamic personality.
When
he left to form his own group we knew that we'd never find a
replacement for him. Instead, we tried substituting for him. These
substitutes suffered by comparison - they didn't have Yuseef's charisma.
Then we found Charles Lloyd.
He wasn't the type of player that anyone would compare to Yuseef; he had his own sound and style, and it fit into the group.
At
this time, however, we went into this business doldrums, and we just
weren't pulling in the kind of crowds that could support a sextet. So we
cut back to our original quintet. (18)
Lloyd
stayed with us for a year and a half, and after he left, we decided not
to replace him. Charles' departure coincided with a change, the first
in the rhythm section. Louis Hayes left us, after 6 years of
collaboration, to go with Oscar Peterson. He was replaced by Roy
McCurdy. Six months later, Sam Jones left us to rejoin Louis Hayes with
Oscar. Herbie Lewis then became our bassist. (11)
Artistic Director
I've
had strong feelings for a long time about musicians who, like myself,
were stationed in Florida and various places like that and never got a
chance to be heard, and so I had an arrangement with Riverside Records
called Cannonball Adderley Presentations. I went to Florida and brought
up a trumpeter named Blue Mitchell and made him available. (19)
I'm
the one who introduced to the company Wes Montgomery, Blue Mitchell,
and the Mangione brothers, with whom my own drummer, Roy McCurdy,
played. (11)
I
went to Indianapolis and brought Wes Montgomery to New York. He had
been playing in the Missile Room, an after-hours kind of situation. He
was a musician who everyone knew about, but nobody was willing to make
an effort to do anything for him really. He had made a guest appearance
with his brothers with a group called the Mastersounds on Fantasy. But
really wasn't a good recording. I was so happy to be able to get Wes
recorded, and when he made a record in New York, his impact was
tremendous.
Nancy Wilson I brought to New York from Columbus, Ohio, and I had Riverside record Bill Evans for the first time.
Also,
there were a lot of neglected folk around New York, like Budd Johnson,
an older clarinet and tenor player - really plays well. We did a date.
Budd Johnson and the Four Brass Giants - Clark Terry, Harry Edison, Ray
Nance, and Nat Adderley. These were the kind of things that were
important to me. (19)
Dexter
had just left "college," where he had spent some time, and no one was
interested in him any more, As I had possibility of recording whoever I
wanted, I organized a session that permitted him to come back into
contact. The disc was named by Orrin Keepnews The Resurgence of Dexter
Gordan! A pompous title!
In
Paris, I supervised two sessions for CBS. The first was a Bud Powell
trio, with Pierre Michelot and Kenny Clarke. The record was issued in
the United States under the title Bud Powell Plays Thelonious Monk. The
second, with the same rhythm section plus Idress Suliemann and Don Byas,
has never been edited. I don't know why. (11)
There's
a guy right now down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who is head of the jazz
studies program at SOuthern University. His name is Alvin Batiste, and I
have never heard a finer clarinet player. We almost did an album one
time. We had done a little over a half, but I had to go out of town, and
we had an equipment foul-up with Riverside, and Alvin had to go back to
Louisiana. We never finished the date; in the end the company went out
of business, so Alvin's first chance to be heard fell through. He was
out in California last summer and played a few tracks we were recording.
He can hold his own with all the great players. (19)
Educator
We
went to Georgia, and spent a week in residence at Albany State College,
during Black Heritage Week. We found out that the kids there, all
black, had no concept of what jazz represented. They knew who we were,
because we had a record called Mercy, Mercy,, Mercy, and they identified
us as Cannonball Adderley Mercy, Mercy, Mercy - and that was the limit.
So I did a little inquiring and discovered that not only did they know
nothing about jazz, but they didn't know anything about the music that
they danced to or sang. They take for granted that there is going to be a
new James Brown record, that there is going to be a good choir at the
church to provoke certain things for them, or that B. B. King is going
to come out with a new record and it's all going to be beautiful. They
take it all for granted, but why? What is this all about? They're all
wearing dashikis and natural hairdos and saying, "I'm Black and I'm
proud," but proud of what? Are you proud because your skin is black? Is
that the reason you are proud? I don't think that skin color is any
reason to be proud or sorry. I think that a person should be proud of
himself - for whatever he is, if he has a reason to be proud of himself.
By the same token, he should not be ashamed of himself unless he has a
reason to be ashamed of himself. So, you walk around and say that you
are Black and proud, but you do not know anything about being Black?
Yes, they run down things to you, like Malcolm X or Stokely Carmichael or
anything that is recent, and even get into something about Africa,
"Well, we know that the slaves came over here, and so forth,"
generalities.
And
I say, "Well, you have a lot of things that are part of your everyday
existence that you have a reason to be proud of - you should be proud of
this music that is Black-oriented, that was begun, nurtured, and
developed by Black people, in essence. And you don't know anything about
it. Why don't you? If are really proud of being Black, why don't you
know something about it - you should." You see, we have been told in
print and over the air that, by and large, the music is dying - jazz is
dead or dying - and I resent it, because there's really a lot happening.
We have become alarmed about this thing, and, fearing that the rumors
might become reality, we decided to do something about it. (6)
Although
there is more interest in performing music today than ever before, the
standards for performance are lower than ever. When I was a kid, I knew I
had to be a pretty good saxophone player to get a job. It was obvious
to me that I couldn't play as well as Johnny Hodges, Jimmy Dorsey, or
Benny Carter. Today, though, a kid may be playing guitar just for his
own enjoyment, then find that someone who doesn't play any better than
he does just earned 5 million dollars with a couple of records.
There's
not enough public admiration for truly great artistry. The only ones
who are lionized and revered are the old men, like Pablo Casals. People
select this institutions to idolize rather than the artistic level to
emulate.
We're hoping, with our college tours, to stimulate young musicians into wanting to improve themselves. (2)
Our
seminar workshops consist of lecture demonstrations on jazz, styles in
jazz, and why jazz is a little bit different. We also go into the
sociological aspects of jazz and why we talk black. We don't talk black
about militancy or any such things - we never suggest that there is
anything wrong with any other music. It'd ironic that one of our
teachers and members is Joe Zawinul, who is white and has a great
concept of expressing this black-oriented music - anybody can do it if
they love it and get involved in it.
Racial
orientation has nothing to do with the performance of the music. We
talk about its origins and development on the basis of its blackness,
simply because that's the way that it has to be, but we don't say that
this is something that is peculiar to Black people, because that is
ridiculous. (6)
We're
one of the most popular groups that plays colleges, and I don't mind
being categorized as pop. But I don't like the idea of jazz as an
institution being dismissed.
Man,
we've gotten into everything. We've been reading everything we can put
our hands on. We've studied Melville Herskovits (who wrote The Myth of
the Negro Past). We've discussed Franklin Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie,
and we've found that it is just what it says it is. Now we have a
bibliography. We have a list of recommended records and instructional
material. By the first of the year, we'll have a syllabus in print, and
then ought to be really swinging. (1)
We
researched and even developed a syllabus, but we never put it into
print, because there were lots of people who suddenly appeared as
experts, and it never really mattered if it did get printed or not - we
just wanted to get the juices flowing.
We
do a formal presentation on the development of jazz, emulating the
styles and so forth, telling anecdotes about the people and maybe why
things worked out the way they did. It's not designed to be a course,
nor do we intend to lecture at the people. We want exchange, and that is
all.
We
don't have as many calls for these seminars today as we did, because
most schools have a resident jazz program. Our seminars are not just for
musicians, but for general students. Like we were at the University of
California doing just that, and at one of our sessions we had something
like 4000 people. So that's a really fantastic response, and it makes it
all worthwhile. We were artists in residence at UCLA for a week, and we
did a full spectrum of things there - clinics, seminars, concerts, and
rap sessions at night in the various dorms. Just exchanging ideas about
social issues, political things, about music, and things about our
personal lives.
In
all our formal sessions, we had in excess of 2500 to 3000 people. They
were telling me at UCLA that they had other groups like the Julliard
String Quartet, poets, and painters, but that the students weren't
really using them. That really made me feel good, because they really
used us. (19)
Final Years
[Performances
at the rock palaces, such as San Francisco's Fillmore West] The kids
really enjoyed our music, and the more far-out we played, the better
they like it. If we played a traditional Monk-type tune, it would go
over like a rock, but if we really got into other things, expressionism,
they called it "doing your own thing," and they dug it. Today, John
Coltrane would probably be bigger than bubble gum. (6)
Come
next month, Roy McCurdy will have been with us 8 years, Walter's been
playing bass about 3 1/2 years. George Duke is the newest member of our
group; he's only been in the band 14 or 15 months. He was teaching at
the San Francisco Conservatory. At 26, he's had more varied experiences
than most people have during their entire career. He's played with
Gerald Wilson, Don Ellis, Frank Zappa and the Mothers, and has had his
own group. (19)
We're
very loose. We don't have a real boss-employee relationship. I'm not an
ego leader. I like musicians who can play, and I like to hear them
play, and we don't need anyone decorating the bandstand to play behind
me. (19)
It's
not difficult to keep our band working; we can work far more than we
want to, but we just don't make any money at it. Our greatest expense is
airline tickets. We don't do that many club dates. We mostly college
concerts, festivals, and then some regular commercial package-type
concerts. We're managed by John Levy, who also manages Nancy Wilson,
Roberta Flack, Les McCann, and Freddie Hubbard, and so we can all be
packaged off with each other in these concerts.
None
of us really like to take care of the business angle of the business. I
was lucky, because I got started out with John Levy. Miles Davis told
him years ago to take care of me. John takes care of all the logistics
of this type of operation. He sees to it that we get there, and that
relieves me of the things other than the musical responsibilities. (19)
We're
doing a one-nighter in Finland - I can hardly wait - a one-night in
Cannes, and this month a tour of South America. In October we're doing a
Japanese tour, and in November we're going to do a European tour that
includes Prague, Warsaw, Belgrade, Bucharest, Budapest - i'm just
thrilled - along with the standard western European places, including
Lisbon - I don't anybody who's ever played there. Isn't that wild?
My
brother and I think these things up; we have our own self-contained
think tank. We've been trying to help small impoverished schools,
colleges, and so forth, to apply for grants from the National Endowment
for the Arts to get us on the campuses where we would otherwise never
be. We Jackson State College in Mississippi and Benedict College in
South Carolina. These are Black schools that really have no money for
this type of thing. The fees are approximate, just so we can get there
and it doesn't cost us anything - we don't go in for profit.
We
have a booking coming up in South Dakota for 2 days that's been made
possible by matching funds from 3-M and the National Endowment for the
Arts.
The
following summer we're going to do an Upward Bound jazz camp at Florida
A & M for 5 weeks. I'm going to get people like DOnald Byrd to come
in and do a week. We're even going to do a course on "Show
business-business." (19)
Alto
saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley died August 8, 1975, in a
Gary, Indiana hospital following a massive stroke. He was 46. (15)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Anonymous. Black Music. Broadcast Music Incorporated (January 1970), p. 19.
• Anonymous. Jazz on Campus. Downbeat, xxxvi (November 13, 1969), p. 32.
• Anonymous. Now We’re Moving Back to Where We Belong. Melody Maker, xxxviii (September 21, 1963), p. 7.
• Adderley, Julian. Paying Dues: The Education of a Combo Leader. Jazz Review, III/5 (May 1960), pp. 12-15.
• Adderley, Nat. Cannon and I. Metronome, LXXVII/12 (December 1960), pp. 19-19.
• Albertson, Chris. Cannonball the Communicator. Downbeat, XXXVII (January 8, 1970), pp. 12-13.
Walk Tall: The Music and Life of Julian "Cannonball" Adderley by Cary Ginell, Hal Leonard Books, 2013
Cannonball
Adderley introduces his 1967 recording of "Walk Tall," by saying,
"There are times when things don't lay the way they're supposed to lay.
But regardless, you're supposed to hold your head up high and walk
tall." This sums up the life of Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, a man who
used a gargantuan technique on the alto saxophone, pride in heritage,
devotion to educating youngsters, and insatiable musical curiosity to
bridge gaps between jazz and popular music in the 1960s and '70s. His
career began in 1955 with a Cinderella-like cameo in a New York
nightclub, resulting in the jazz world's looking to him as "the New
Bird," the successor to the late Charlie Parker. But Adderley refused to
be typecast. His work with Miles Davis on the landmark Kind of Blue
album helped further his reputation as a unique stylist, but Adderley's
greatest fame came with his own quintet's breakthrough engagement at San
Francisco's Jazz Workshop in 1959, which launched the popularization of
soul jazz in the 1960s. With his loyal brother Nat by his side, along
with stellar sidemen, such as keyboardist Joe Zawinul, Adderley used an
engaging, erudite personality as only Duke Ellington had done before
him. All this and more are captured in this engaging read by author Cary
Ginell.
Cannonball Adderley Sextet in Switzerland 1963 - "Bohemia After Dark":
Cannonball Adderley Sextet- "Bossa Nova Nemo" (aka "Jive Samba"):
Cannonball Adderley Quintet:
Nat Adderley, Yusef Lateef, Joe Zawinul, Sam Jones, Louis Hayes from Oscar Brown Jr's 'Jazz Scene'--1962
Jazz Casual - Cannonball Adderley Quintet (1961):
San Francisco based television show Jazz Casual with host and music critic Ralph Gleason who interviews Cannonball on his San Francisco based television show
Nat Adderley, cornet;
Cannonball Adderley, alto sax;
Joe Zawinul, piano;
Sam Jones, acoustic double bass;
Louis Hayes, drums.
Cannonball Adderley--alto saxophone Miles Davis — trumpet Hank Jones — piano Sam Jones — bass Art Blakey — drums
Cannonball Adderley-- "Brother John 1963":
The Cannonball Adderley Sextet - In New York (1962):
Tracklist: A1 Introduction by Cannonball 0:00 A2 Gemini 2:00 A3 Planet Earth 13:42 B1 Dizzy's Business 21:43 B2 Syn-anthesia 28:45 B3 Scotch and Water 35:49 B4 Cannon's Theme 41:45
Cannonball Adderley Quintet--"This Here":
"Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Now it's time to carry on
some. Can we have the lights out please, for atmosphere? Now we're about
to play a new composition, by our pianist, Bobby Timmons. This one is a
jazz waltz, however, it has all sorts of properties. It's
simultaneously a shout and a chant, depending upon whether you know
anything about the roots of church music, and all that kinda stuff -
meaning soul church music - I don't mean, uh, Bach chorales and so,
that's different. You know what I mean? This is SOUL, you know what I
mean? You know what I mean? Allright. Now we gonna play this, by Bobby
Timmons. It's really called "This Here". However, for reasons of soul
and description, we have corrupted it to become "Dish-ere". So that's
the name: "Dish-ere"
--Introduction by Cannonball Adderley Cannonball Adderley -- alto saxophone Nat Adderley -- cornet Bobby Timmons -- piano Sam Jones -- bass Louis Hayes -- drums
BEAUTIFUL CLASSIC 1961 RECORDING BY NANCY WILSON AND CANNONBALL ADDERLEY QUINTET CAPITOL RECORDS:
Nancy Wilson / Cannonball Adderley Year: 1961 Label: Capitol
An
excellent collaboration of the Nancy Wilson voice with the Cannonball
Adderley alto sax from the early '60s. While this 1961 recording was the
first time Wilson was with Adderley in the studio, it was not the first
time they had worked together. After singing with Rusty Bryant's band,
Wilson had worked with Adderley in Columbus, OH. (It was there that
Adderley encouraged her to go to N.Y.C. to do some recording, eventually
leading to this session.) Not entirely a vocal album, five of the 12
cuts are instrumentals. A highlight of the album is the gentle cornet
playing of Nat Adderley behind Wilson, especially on "Save Your Love for
Me" and on "The Old Country." Cannonball Adderley's swinging, boppish
sax is heard to excellent effect throughout. Joe Zawinul's work behind
Wilson on "The Masquerade Is Over" demonstrates that he is a talented,
sensitive accompanist. On the instrumental side, "Teaneck" and "One
Man's Dream" are especially good group blowing sessions. On the other
end of the spectrum, Adderley's alto offers a lovely slow-tempo
treatment of the Vernon Duke-Ira Gershwin masterpiece, "I Can't Get
Started." To keep the listeners on their musical toes, the first couple
of bars of "Save Your Love for Me" are quotes from "So What" from the
Miles Davis Sextet seminal Kind of Blue session. Given the play list and
the outstanding artists performing it, why any serious jazz collection
would be without this classic album is difficult to comprehend.
A
GREAT SPOKEN INTRODUCTION BY THE ALWAYS SOULFUL AND ELOQUENT CANNONBALL
ADDERLEY TO A GREAT SONG PLAYED BEAUTIFULLY BY A GREAT, GREAT BAND. THE
YEAR IS 1966. LISTEN AND REVEL IN WHAT THIS MUSIC ALWAYS DOES AND
EVOKES AT ITS VERY BEST NO MATTER WHAT 'STYLE" OR 'GENRE" IT HAPPENS TO
USE OR REFERENCE. YESSSSS...
"You
know, sometimes we're not prepared for adversity. When it happens
sometimes, we're caught short. We don't know exactly how to handle it
when it comes up. Sometimes, we don't know just what to do when
adversity takes over. And I have advice for all of us, I got it from my
pianist Joe Zawinul who wrote this tune. And it sounds like what you're
supposed to say when you have that kind of problem. It's called
Mercy...Mercy...Mercy..." --Cannonball Adderley "Live at the Club" (Capitol, 1966)
Cannonball Adderley Quintet:
Cannonball Adderley (alto saxophone); Nat Adderley (cornet) Joe Zawinul (acoustic & electric pianos); Victor Gaskin (bass) Roy McCurdy (drums)
Cannonball Adderley - "74 Miles Away"-1967:
Cannonball
Adderley--Alto saxophone, Nat Adderley (cornet, flugelhorn), Joe
Zawinul (piano), Victor Gaskin (bass) and Roy McCurdy (drums).
Cannonball Adderley - "Walk Tall":
"Walk Tall" (1967)--Composition by Cannonball Adderley from his recording "74 Miles Away" on Capitol Records
LIVE RECORDING VERSION:
Intro
features a young 25 year old Rev. Jesse Jackson. This is a Capital
release - recorded live in Hollywood, California on June 12th-24th 1967.
You will find this track on the LP 74 Miles Away - The Cannonball
Adderley Quintet.
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
Cannonball Adderley in 1966
.jpg)
