CANNONBALL ADDERLEY - Sophisticated Swing
Cheese Cake 8240
Cannonball Adderley (as); Nat Adderley (cornet); Junior Mance (pno); Sam Jones (b); Jimmy Cobb (d) New York February 6 1957 to March 6th 1958
Two LPs for the price of one are offered on this CD with the first from ’57 and the second, Cannonball’s Sharpshooters issued in 1959. The same personnel appear on both discs and this was, in fact, Cannon’s first quintet and a very good one, before his more celebrated and widely recorded unit with Bobby Timmons and Louis Hayes for Riverside in 1961.
These two sessions were part of only three discs recorded for Emarcy before Cannon broke up and joined Miles Davis and the classic sextet with Coltrane and Philly Joe Jones. Kicking off with Another Kind Of Soul, the band sounds good, swinging and playing music similar to the later band, all of which makes it strange that this quintet was not more successful than it was. Miss Jackie’s Delight is indeed a delight with Sam Jones’ walking bass leading the front line in on a serpentine blues. Cannon is down and dirty here, spinning out long lines with a sanctified sound and followed by Nat, big and brassy.
The later session starts with Tadd Dameron’s Our Delight and includes good old modern jazz standards like Fuller Bop Man and Stay On It by Dizzy Gillespie in conjunction with Dameron. This later record is in stereo and has a more varied and ambitious programme of music but both sets are worthy of any jazz enthusiast’s attention. The slow but intense take on Monk’s Straight No Chaser is another delightful track. The music is fine all through although I wonder about the cover of the Sophisticated Swing LP. It shows a young lady with one leg in and one leg out of a swish Mercedes convertible as she displays her pale blue clad posterior. Sophisticated?-- not really but maybe it sold a few extra LPs in 1959 in those politically incorrect times!
Reviewed by Derek Ansell
Cheese Cake 8240
Cannonball Adderley (as); Nat Adderley (cornet); Junior Mance (pno); Sam Jones (b); Jimmy Cobb (d) New York February 6 1957 to March 6th 1958
Two LPs for the price of one are offered on this CD with the first from ’57 and the second, Cannonball’s Sharpshooters issued in 1959. The same personnel appear on both discs and this was, in fact, Cannon’s first quintet and a very good one, before his more celebrated and widely recorded unit with Bobby Timmons and Louis Hayes for Riverside in 1961.
These two sessions were part of only three discs recorded for Emarcy before Cannon broke up and joined Miles Davis and the classic sextet with Coltrane and Philly Joe Jones. Kicking off with Another Kind Of Soul, the band sounds good, swinging and playing music similar to the later band, all of which makes it strange that this quintet was not more successful than it was. Miss Jackie’s Delight is indeed a delight with Sam Jones’ walking bass leading the front line in on a serpentine blues. Cannon is down and dirty here, spinning out long lines with a sanctified sound and followed by Nat, big and brassy.
The later session starts with Tadd Dameron’s Our Delight and includes good old modern jazz standards like Fuller Bop Man and Stay On It by Dizzy Gillespie in conjunction with Dameron. This later record is in stereo and has a more varied and ambitious programme of music but both sets are worthy of any jazz enthusiast’s attention. The slow but intense take on Monk’s Straight No Chaser is another delightful track. The music is fine all through although I wonder about the cover of the Sophisticated Swing LP. It shows a young lady with one leg in and one leg out of a swish Mercedes convertible as she displays her pale blue clad posterior. Sophisticated?-- not really but maybe it sold a few extra LPs in 1959 in those politically incorrect times!
Reviewed by Derek Ansell