Jazz Workshop Revisited

In 1963 Cannonball Adderley signed with the Capitol label, retaining the rights to some master tapes recorded earlier while he was with Riverside. This CD (a straight reissue of an earlier LP) therefore contains music much closer to the altoist's freewheeling Riverside period than to his R&Bish Capitol dates. Adderley's greatest band - his sextet with cornetist Nat Adderley, Yusef Lateef (on tenor, flute and oboe), pianist Joe Zawinul, bassist Sam Jones, and drummer Louis Hayes - is featured on such exciting numbers as "Jessica's Day," Jones' "Unit 7," and "The Jive Samba." A special treat of this live date is hearing the leader's introductory words to several of the songs.

Recorded live in Tokyo on July 14th and 15th, 1963, Nippon Soul is not the Asian-jazz fusion suggested by the title (check out Cal Tjader's Several Shades of Jade and Breeze From the East for that), but a solid live set that showcases one of Cannonball Adderley's finest groups, featuring himself, brother Nat Adderley on cornet, bassist Sam Jones, drummer Louis Hayes, and most notably pianist Joe Zawinul and reedsman Yusef Lateef. Both near the beginnings of their careers, Zawinul and Lateef nonetheless dominate this set; two of the original tracks are by Lateef, including the centerpiece "Brother John," for John Coltrane and featuring an astonishing extended Lateef solo on oboe, an instrument not normally associated with jazz, but which takes on an almost Middle Eastern fluidity and grace in its approximation of Coltrane's "sheets of sound" technique…

The "Poll-Winners" at the time of this recording were Adderley, guitarist Wes Montgomery and bassist Ray Brown; together with Victor Feldman doubling on piano and vibes and drummer Louis Hayes they cut this excellent quintet date. This was the only meeting on records by Adderley and Montgomery and, although not quite a classic encounter, the music (highlighted by "The Chant," "Never Will I Marry" and two takes of "Au Privave") swings hard and is quite enjoyable.

A plethora of "lost" recording dates have popped up since the dawn of the compact disc, especially in the jazz world. Unfortunately, most of them haven't been worth the wait and, indeed, as underwhelming as some of them have been, it might - at least aesthetically speaking - have been better had they not been unearthed. Happily, this isn't one of these occasions. The two sessions here were recorded in 1961 and 1962 in Chicago and New York, and feature Cannonball Adderley's quintet that included pianist Joe Zawinul, bassist Sam Jones, drummer Louis Hayes, and brother Nat on cornet. Cleanhead sings his ass off and plays some alto with Cannonball. These dates reveal an anomaly in jazz at the time: The recordings are the place on the map where jazz and R&B meet head on, bringing the full force of their respective traditions and neither giving an inch…

Although the nine songs on this new Cannonball Adderley reissue were originally done live at concerts in Japan and San Francisco in 1963, they nevertheless make a nice tribute to departed jazz giant Dizzy Gillespie. The assembled group was among the finest Adderley ever led, with Yusef Lateef providing a dynamic, unpredictable third solo voice on flute, tenor sax, and oboe, contrasting with Cannonball's pungent alto sax and Nat Adderley's pithy cornet solos. Bassist Sam Jones and drummer Louis Hayes were a top-flight tandem, while Joe Zawinul was then playing bluesy, funky piano in his pre-synthesizer, Miles Davis/Weather Report phase. Everything is illustrative of a prime band enjoying some great nights.