Spirits from the South

Adderley achieved immortality in the Miles Davis Quintet with Kind of Blue - and his Something Else is possibly the best of the Blue Note albums. That was the late 1950s. Ten years later Adderley was touring Europe with his own quintet and gave a performance at Stuttgart's Liederhalle. Even during the soundcheck the musicians must have sensed the concert hall's unique atmosphere; that evening would go down as a landmark performance. From soul jazz and blues (Sweet Emma, Why Am I Treated So Bad), to free-form contemporariness (Somewhere) and lollipops infused with canny com-merciality (Work Song, Walk Tall), the listener is treated here to the sublime art of the quintet - even at a time when that classic bebop formation was already on the wane.
And then there is Zawinul! If truth be told, it was his concert. A jet-black figure at the keyboard (Oh Babe), swinging and quirky on the piano (Rumpelstiltskin, The Painted Desert). A kobold stoking the flames - as if trying to shed the state of hypnosis that had gripped him a month earlier while recording In A Silent Way. Something stopped to make way for the new. Things Are Getting Better. The following year saw the Adderley Brothers big band collages and world music. Zawinul formed Weather Report and stormed to worldwide celebrity. But the concert of March 1969 remains: the legacy of a unique quintet. Soulful and swinging, a timeless classic even today.