Here we are again with Cannonball
and associates in The Jazz Workshop . . and it sounds like a very
good place to be. Which is exactly the way it sounded while this
warm and happy album was being recorded before a warm and happy,
no-empty-seats audience.
A great many thousands of
listeners must feel very much at home in this setting even though
most of them may never even have set foot in the city of San
Francisco. For the Workshop, one of the best-known and most
relaxed of the nation's jazz nightspots, was of course also the
scene of the Adderley's group's very first LP: the remarkable,
phenomenally best-selling "Cannonball Adderley Quintet in
San Francisco," which helped catapult this band to the
top and has become something of a landmark among on-the-job jazz
records.
The idea of again capturing the
band in action in this room is one that, naturally enough, all
concerned have had in mind for quite some time. It wasn't just a
matter of wanting to return to the scene of the band's initial
triumph - although the club will always have a special
sentimental value, something like a good-luck charm, for
Cannonball and for Riverside. It was also a matter of a
long-standing awareness that this is a band that responds
magnificently to the stimulus of the right crowd. And, with no
offense intended to any other place or people, it has been my
experience that audiences in San Francisco in general and at The
Jazz Workshop in particular are just about the rightest crowds
possible!
The group has of course been back
several times since that momentous first engagement in 1959. But
it wasn't until roughly the third anniversary of that occasion
that all the circumstance fell into place to bring about the
present album. And although this is not and could not be intended
as an 'duplication" of the earlier LP, there are some rather
remarkable similarities to be noted. For one thing, no less than
four members of the original quintet are still very much on hand:
the Adderley brothers themselves, and the unbeatable rhythm team
of Sam Jones and Lou Hayes. (In jazz today, such band longevity
is in itself something special.) The only changes are that Joe Zawinul, from Austria, has for some time been on piano, and that
the group has been augmented to sextet size by the addition of
the deep-toned tenor sax and vivid flute of Yusef Lateef.
For another thing, there is the
inclusion of what seems clearly destined to be another of those
rare, all-pervading tunes. The first album had, (do we need to
remind anyone?) Bobby Timmons' memorable This Here. Other
LPs have introduced other stand-outs (several of which have been
assembled on "Cannonball's Greatest Hits"). Now
we have Nat Adderley's richly low-down Jive Samba. There
was no difficulty in spotting this one: the first time I heard
it, and heard the reaction it provoked (such as you can hear on
the record), it was obvious that this tune had what it takes.
Which was no more than what the band had been telling me since I
arrived in town. And even before the release of this album, a
short 45-rpm single version of The Jive Samba (extracted
from this recording) had sky-rocketed into nation-wide
"hit" status.
The very mean Samba is
scarcely alone here. There is Cannon's thoroughly unique and
gripping Primitivo; Lateef's swinging, Ellington. tinged Mellow Buno; and Sam Jones' very pretty ballad, Lillie - a
total of four quite varied examples of the composing talents of
this group. Plus a wonderfully buoyant treatment of a Quincy
Jones tune, and an intriguing, adventurous new number contributed
by Donald Byrd. Small wonder that, after a night of music like
this, the audience gave Cannonball a hard time about leaving the
stand (as reported at the end of Side 2).
Fortunately, however, there is no
curfew hour for recorded club dates. All you have to do is
to start listening all over again, from the top.
- ORRIN KEEPNEWS
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