Known to jazz and music fans the world over as “Cannonball” Adderley, alto saxophonist Julian Edwin Adderley was born on Sept. 15, 1928, in Tampa, Florida. Though he joined the ancestors in 1975 at the young age of 46, he left behind a legacy of exposing new audiences to the more rarified world of be-bop, which would later be dubbed “soul jazz.”
While music fans celebrate his virtuosity, one aspect of his life and work is often overlooked: Cannonball was also an educator. He dedicated much of his career to not only playing, but teaching.
”Black Music Sunday” is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 225 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
Leo T. Sullivan’s Jazz Giants website has an extensive Adderley biography:
Julian Adderley was born on September 15th, 1928 in Tampa, Florida. He initially wanted to play tenor saxophone, but since both money and instruments were scarce during the Second World War, Adderley ended up buying a beat-up alto.
While in high school, Julian received his nickname Cannonball. Originally, friends called him “Cannibal,” because of his large appetite, but through many mispronunciations it became “Cannonball.”
After high school, he attended Florida A&M University, then taught music to high school students at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale. In 1950, Adderley was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was a member of the 36th Army Band, which played mostly dance material. Several other notable jazz musicians in this band were trombonist Curtis Fuller and Cannonball’s brother Nat, who played trumpet and cornet.
The band eventually wound up being stationed in Washington D.C., where Cannonball studied music at the United States Naval Academy. He then ended up in Kentucky, where he led the base band at Fort Knox. Cannonball and Nat were both discharged in the mid 1950s, at which point they decided to move to New York City together.
Initially, Cannonball enrolled at New York University for graduate studies in music, but quickly became too busy playing gigs to attend class. His got his first gig in the city with bassist Oscar Pettiford at the Café Bohemia, after one night when he went to see the band and saxophonist Charlie Rouse forgot his horn. Since no one else in the band had one, Pettiford asked Cannonball to sit in on “I Remember April,” and he quickly got the gig.
Musician and author John Cohassey continues Cannonball’s biography for Musicians Guide:
Following Adderley’s performance at the Cafe Bohemia, he signed a contract with the Savoy label and became a regular member of Pettiford’s band. Attending the band’s performances at the club, Miles Davis often sat and watched the 262-pound alto saxophonist perform. “Everybody knew right away that [Cannonball] was one of the best players around,” Davis said in his autobiography, Miles. “Even white critics were raving about his playing. All the record labels were running after him. Man, he was hot that quick.”
To the astonishment of many musicians, Adderley returned to his teaching job in the fall of 1955. But rave reviews and an increasing demand for his presence in New York encouraged Adderley to return to the city in 1956 and form his own quintet with his brother Nat, pianist Junior Mance, and bassist Sam Jones. Plagued by financial difficulties, however, the group disbanded in the fall of 1957.
In October of 1957, Adderley replaced Belgian saxophonist Bobby Jaspar in the Miles Davis Quintet. Davis recalled his early interest in Adderley’s musicianship in Miles, remarking, “I could almost hear him playing in my group the first time I heard him. He had that blues thing and I love me some blues.” Adderley remembered, as quoted in the book Milestones, “I had gotten an offer from [trumpeter] Dizzy [Gillespie] 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 never asked me.” After a few months, Miles hired Adderley and took him on the Jazz for Moderns tour. Soon afterward, Davis expanded his group to a sextet, bringing together the saxophones of Adderley and John Coltrane. As Davis explained in Miles, “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.”
Give a listen to “Miles Davis: “Love for Sale” featuring John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Cannonball Adderley:
All About Jazz covers Adderley’s continued career up to the time of his death:
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.
1959 marked the year that Cannonball would form and record with his newly formed quintet. Here’s the full 1959 recording of the Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago.
Alto Saxophone – Cannonball Adderley, Tenor Saxophone – John Coltrane (tracks: A1, A3 to B3) Piano – Wynton Kelly, Bass – Paul Chambers, Drums – Jimmy Cobb
I wore out several copies of his 1961 collaboration with vocalist Nancy Wilson:
Here he is in a lively rendition of “I’d Rather Drink Muddy Water” featuring Lou Rawls, live in 1968:
Settle in for an hour and a half of great listening, from 1963:
Cannonball Adderley – Alto Sax, Nat Adderley – Cornet, Yusef Lateef – Tenor Sax, Flute, Oboe, Joe Zawinul – Piano, Sam Jones – Bass,Luis Hayes – Drums
“A Musician for the People: Julian “Cannonball” Adderley” is a paper written by Levi Carpman about Cannonball’s unique relationship with his audiences, which he reads aloud in the video below.
Here’s an excerpt from the text:
Cannonball was an excellent spokesperson for the genre and gained it a lot of popularity among new audiences. His main goal on and off the bandstand seems to have been to show people the joy of the music. Perhaps the most recognizable attempt manifested in Cannonball’s monologues between tunes. Cannonball would often introduce the tune, the origin of its name, the composer, the members of the band, and of course his electrifying whit. A producer for Riverside Records, Orrin Keepnew, recognized Cannonball’s unique connection with the audience during his residency at The Jazz Workshop in 1959. The recordings of the quintet from
these performances were later called “the birth of contemporary live recording,” which was an attempt to capture the excitement of the audience rather than reproduce the sounds of a studio.The well spoken but nonchalant qualities of these monologues would become a well
known trademark of Cannonball Adderley, and despite objections at first from Riverside, the introduction for songs such as “Dis Here” resonated with audiences, featuring humorous phrases like “Bobby Timmons wrote “Dis Here”—He used to say ‘Dis Here’s my new tune.’”
The audience had never been spoken to this way by a jazz musician, many of them not speaking at all and viewed as self involved or unapproachable, and the enthusiasm of the audience only amplified the band’s abilities.
Cannonball’s connection with the audience manifested itself in other ways as well, with a signature sort of dance he did while a member of his band was soloing. He would rotate his wrist and snap his fingers, and this action would eventually earn applause from the crowd all on its own. He would also make noise on the bandstand, cheering for his fellow soloists, encouraging the audience to do the same. Audiences would yell out the names of tunes they wanted to hear or
clap along. This electricity around his performances resulted in many of his albums being recorded live to cater to his audience. On recordings done by Columbia Records at The Club in Chicago, the audience can be heard playing along with small pairs of drumsticks they were given by the band. Tapping on tables, glasses, and anything within reach can be heard on the tunes “Money In the Pocket” and the aptly titled “Sticks.” Instruction was even given as to what beats should be played and audiences obliged, although Columbia was not too fond of these antics.
They kept these tracks unreleased until the reissue of Money In the Pocket in 2005, 30 years after Adderley’s death.
Here’s “This Here,” which is really “Dis Here”:
For those of you who have youngsters around or are teachers, this introduction to jazz for children is a must-watch:
From “A Child’s Introduction to Jazz,” narrated by Cannonball Adderley:
The story of jazz is the story of an exciting and truly American art form – a music bursting with the vitality of American life. Characterized by a regular beat and a direct emotional appeal, jazz can-if properly presented-have deep fascination and rich meaning for young children from the time they first begin to show an interest in music.
To insure such proper presentation, we have enlisted the aid of one of today’s most famous jazz musicians – Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, who is also noted as a highly articulate and well-informed writer in this field. His commentary is neither an over-formal history nor a technical ‘music lesson.’ Instead, it is an easy-going, conversational discussion of the highlights of the jazz story in terms of the major styles and great performers from New Orleans Up to the present-illustrated at every step of the way by excerpts from the celebrated Riverside catalogue.
Included are such notable jazz names as Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, Sidney Bechet, Thelonious Monk, and Cannonball himself.
This trailer is an introduction to Cary Ginell’s biography of Adderley.
Award-winning journalist Cary Ginnell has crafted an extremely informative biography of the great jazz saxophonist-bandleader Julian “Cannonball” Adderley. This musician became one of the most respected alto saxophonists in modern jazz after Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt, and Jackie McLean had arrived. Adderley was also very important to jazz history as a bandleader whose repertory and recordings did much to define the modern style known as hard bop. A subcategory of hard bop was influenced by African American church music and became dubbed “funky jazz” or “soul jazz.” This style is exemplified by three pieces in the Adderley band’s repertory that were written by Julian’s brother Nat: “Work Song,” “Sack o’ Woe,” and “Jive Samba,” and two pieces by the band’s pianist Bobby Timmons: “Dis Here” and “Dat Dere.”
[…]Ginnell attributes some of Adderley’s success to his personality and the ways he treated his audience: “He addressed them directly with respect and treated them as if they were his friends. He didn’t preach to them, but he did explain in often humorous ways what they were going to be listening to, who wrote the song, who was playing in the band, and even how the songs got their titles.“ (p. 62) The author recounts comments by Adderley’s one-time employer Miles Davis that the saxophonist always seemed to be laughing, and that Davis admired his ability to get along with other band members.
[…]A major focus of the work, which may be the most valuable information in the book, is the back story behind almost every recording session and significant gig in Adderley’s career. A staggering depth of research must have been undertaken to obtain these details. Ginnell managed to determine the economic, aesthetic, and personal factors that led up to each record date and its program of selections. For example, he describes not only the background behind such well known albums as The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco, Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, and the book’s namesake, Walk Tall, but also the germination of lesser known albums such as Fiddler on the Roof, Alabama Concerto (with music by composer John Benson Brooks), and an elaborate project to celebrate the legend of John Henry. A fascinating account tells how his brother’s “Work Song” was inspired by Nat’s childhood memory of witnessing convicts working on a chain gang, and how the tune acquired lyrics and popularization by singer Oscar Brown, Jr.
Here’s “Work Song,” followed by Oscar Brown Jr.’s version:
I featured “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” written by Joe Zawinul, in my recent story about Weather Report titled “Black Music Sunday: Sizzle into summer with Weather Report.”
Let’s play it again here:
In closing, here are some musical tributes to him. The first is from Weather Report:
The second from Freddie Hubbard’s “The Complete Jazz Heritage Society Recordings”:
Let’s close with the 1979 album “A Tribute to Cannonball” from pianist Bud Powell and tenor saxophonist Don Byas:
Join me in the comments below for more Cannonball classics, and please post your favorites.
