Cashbox : 12/10/1960
Jazz Pick of the Week

Adderley returns to the West Coast, the scene of his first “live” LP triumph, for his third quintet outing for the label. The group has been caught in performances at the Lighthouse, rocking the customers with its brand of earthy, lowdown “soul” music. Tracks include Sack O’ Woe, Azule Serape, Blue Daniel and 3 others. Highly marketable jazz.

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American Record Guide
Joe Goldberg : February, 1961

To state immediately that this is the most musically satisfying of the three recordings of the Cannonball Adderley Quintet is to report an easily discernible truth, give the group its due and evident desire, and call into the question the importance of jazz and the ways in which we judge it. The album, musically, is not worth the preceding remarks – it is not Ellington‘s Mood Indigo, or Parker‘s Ko-Ko, or even the best record of the year. But it may raise questions as fundamental. The basic point is that the new hero among funky pianists and composers, Bobby Timmons, has been replaced in the group by Victor Feldman. Feldman, a white Englishman, is every bit as effective in the group as the American Timmons was. If one accepts this value judgement, there is one of two conclusions to be drawn from it. Either gospel-funk-soul jazz is not the protest music of the Negro it has been called (and then the whole sociological basis of looking at jazz – valuable aids to understanding, neurotic in-group faddism and all – would be suspect), or else the style of playing has very quickly disintegrated into a convention, as easily grasped by the professional musician as the cha-cha. Despite the enormous excitement of parts of this record (particularly Sack O’ Woe, before the ensemble destroys what the rhythmic section has built up), I would bet on the latter thesis. There are examples to support it in contemporary jazz, but one need go no further than the opening measures of the cornet solo on Blue Daniel (written by the white west-coast trombonist Frank Rosolino, when Nat Adderley truly touches the soul with a simple directness that is beyond that scope of most of this technically achieved music.

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Minneapolis Star Tribune
Charles Hanna : 01/01/1961

The Adderley group is probably one of the most consistently good units in the business. This is another in a series of musically solid LPs produced by Cannonball and company. Victor Feldman, on piano, almost steals the show with his fine playing. He makes up for any weaknesses of improvisation in Cannonball’s alto solos. A fine unit sound and generally superior solos.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 01/01/1961

This is the regular Adderley unit with Vic Feldman on piano recorded at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach. With the exception of Frank Rosolino‘s original tune, Blue Daniel, this is merely more of the so-called gospel-funk style which is the group’s forte and of which Dis Here is the prime example. It has now reached the point of diminishing returns and I for one am bored with it. Despite the fact that I have only the greatest admiration for all concerned, I don’t care to hear this LP again.

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St. Paul Recorder
Albert Anderson : 01/27/1961

Backed up by his celebrated brother, Nat, on cornet; Victor Feldman, piano; Sam Jones, bass, and Louis Hayes, drums, “Cannonball” adds still another gem to his already sparkling jazz crown with this waxing… On this track, however, the famous alto saxophonist explores several new angles as he artfully solos with striking introductions. The introductions include both verbal and musical material, accentuated by the traditional vamping “Cannonball” style… Best number in the set is Exodus, and Julius stays with it all the way, although the other sidemen join in… Exodus is challenged by the jaunty Sack O’ Woe, and the easy-moving Azule Serape, on both of which Feldman piano work stands out… The other tunes meanwhile, are marked by special features, with solos giving way to background music and improvisation… Another solid sender for “Cannonball.”

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Washington Post
Tony Gieske : 12/25/1960

In an utterly square and superfluous new edition of The Real Jazz (Barnes), Hugues Panassie, the Barry Goldwater of jazz criticism, puts his finger on what may be an inspiring development in the history of jazz, although he’s dead wrong in what he makes of it.

He says that with the advent of bebop, jazz stopped being mainly Negro music. He may be right. But he thinks the music stopped being jazz and became corrupt at that point, and that’s where he’s wrong.

Nevertheless, there are those who agree with him on the latter point, or act as though they do. One of them is Cannonball Adderley. The Cannonball Adderley Quintet at the Lighthouse. Adderley, as readers of this column have read before, talks rather annoyingly about the Negroid aspects of jazz, aspects which are currently masquerading under the deliberately ambiguous euphemisms “groove,” “soul” and “funk.”

Now Adderley is a former high school music teacher, who studied at the U.S. Naval School of Music here, and is technically one of the most brilliant alto saxophonists playing today. He is a thoroughgoing bebopper, drawing to an even greater degree than his colleagues on European – that means white – musical resources.

The result here is a superb record which is as full of theoretical cunning as it is of “soul.” Sack O’ Woe, introduced by Cannonball as though it were the next thing to a field holler, owes just as much to the Petrushka chord as it does to blue tonality. (The Petrushka chord was an innovation by Stravinsky that is held to mark the beginning of bi-tonality in the non-twelve-tone stream of modern music.)

Although it would be pointless to deny that jazz is still led by a Negro cabal, members of that cable like Miles Davis and John Lewis are playing whiter and whiter, and white musicians like pianist Vic Feldman on this very record are exuding more and more “soul.”

Jazz is slowly becoming an integrated music, it is getting better as it does so, and I think Adderley is doing jazz a disservice by arrogating the credit to Negroid elements which really influential musicians have long ago assimilated without racial fanfare. The excellent of Cannonball’s playing itself rests unequivocally on his “European” foundation.

Horace Silver, who started the “soul” trend years before anybody heard of Cannonball Adderley, quickly gave it up as a steady diet, and now explores a complex world of Spanish rhythms, extended metrical structures, pedal points, dense dissonant harmonies like chunks of beef in a stew and sad, sinking chord changes. (Horace-Scope, Blue Note 4042).

At this point I’d better explain that my assumptions on the race question are: that there is such a thing as race, that therefore there must be a difference between races, but that this difference must be discussed in vague, general terms, as one discusses the differences between a Frenchman and a German. (If you deduce from this that I think one race is better than another, you’re nuts.)

The only point I want to make is that Adderley insists on coming on like a barefoot woolhead when he knows quite well he isn’t. I think he’s laughing up his sleeve at the public, and I think it’s time somebody called him on it. That’s what I’m here for.

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Down Beat : 02/02/1961
John S. Wilson : 3.5 stars

The presence of Feldman in the Adderley quintet may create a problem. At least that possibility is suggested on this record, for Feldman’s consistency cuts the two Adderleys. And there is another difficulty with this group: it has unusually good basic material, and the opening and closing ensembles which bring this material into focus are so intriguing that one wishes they could be developed at greater length instead of being thrown aside to let the soloists take over. Only Exodus, of this collection, holds up all the way through – ensembles, solos, and all. Nat has a well-developed solo on Blue Daniel, and Cannon starts out brightly on most of the pieces but does not sustain his solos. Feldman, on the other hand, plays with perceptive variety, stomping guttily through the jaunty Sack O’ Woe, evoking an appropriately sweeping expansiveness on Blue Daniel, and building on Azule Serape from a deceptively easy entrance to a rocking climax.

The set was recorded at the Lighthouse and includes Cannon’s gracefully amusing introductions. His unique ability to talk to an audience with intelligence, civility, and wit does a great deal toward establishing a warm, receptive atmosphere for his group.

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Liner Notes by Orrin Keepnews

This heart-warming exciting and deeply earthy album is the third – and in many ways the most satisfying recording by the remarkable Cannonball Adderley Quintet, a group that has proven to be one of the major, and certainly one of the very swiftest, success stories in jazz.

Like their first LP (the phenomenally widely-enjoyed Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco), this one was taken down while the band was in the process of acting upon and re-acting to a richly enthusiastic and more than room-filling night club audience. The setting is the most celebrated of southern California jazz spots, The Lighthouse, located in a suburb of Los Angeles. The occasion was a one-day, Sunday afternoon-and-night stand by the Adderley group. the culmination of a month-long triumphal stay in and around L.A. (one-time stronghold of “cool” jazz) by this thoroughly warm and soulful band.

The Lighthouse itself is something of a phenomenon among jazz clubs, not only because it has stayed in business for a dozen years, but even more because it has remained a relaxed, low-pressure and resolutely popularly-priced club — and therefore, from a musician’s point of view, invariably a good place to play in and a magnet for good, listening audiences. It has been famous for more than a decade as a focal point for the West Coast brand of jazz; Cannonball’s quintet is one of the few Eastern groups to have played there. They became the first non-cool group to record there largely because of the nature of the audience response a month earlier, when the quintet had opened their Los Angeles stay in front of a consistently overflow Lighthouse crowd. The very next day Cannonball called New York to report enthusiastically that (a) the band, to which pianist Vic Feldman had just been added, would decidedly be fully ready and eager to record before leaving California, and (b) these stimulatingly appreciative fans were by all means the people to do it with.

There is really nothing surprising in the Californians’ reaction to the group, for it has become quite clear that this quintet is just about universally recognized as one of the most invigorating ingredients ever added to the unique musical brew we call jazz. Organized in the Fall of 1959, they have enjoyed from the start an overwhelmingly widespread and passionate public acceptance. Their previously-mentioned first album (recorded almost exactly a year before this one, during their first sizable engagement, which was at one of northern California’s top clubs, The Jazz Workshop) was an instantaneous hit. It was followed by a steady flow of gratifyingly crowded appearances at clubs, concerts and festivals. Almost overnight, they leaped from nowhere to a spot somewhere near the top of the heap. There is actually nothing particularly mysterious about this jet-fast ride to fame. This is a group made up of two. horns of immense jazz stature, buoyed up by a most enviable rhythm section. It is amazingly close-knit, both musically and personally. Julian and Nat are not only brothers, but even more importantly (to repeat a phrase I have used before but like too well not to stick with) they are soul-brothers. Sam Jones has known and valued the Adderleys since Florida boyhood days; Lou Hayes, a young but musically mature powerhouse, has meshed completely with the group from the first. As for the newcomer, Victor Feldman, his performance here tells (far more clearly than words could) just how exciting and funky a musician this young Englishman is and just how deeply his presence is welcomed by the others. Feldman is going to startle a lot of people: in four years in this country, spent mostly on the West Coast, he had given few indications that he could play like this. Maybe musical environment has a lot to do with it, but those of us who heard his very first rehearsal with the group had thereafter no doubt at all that Cannonball had made a totally right move in hiring him.

It is also quite obvious that these five are craftsmen, real professionals in the best sense of the word – a quality that is as uncommon in jazz as anywhere else in the world. There are superb soloists here, but listen to the ensembles and backgrounds and you’ll become aware that this is far more than just another good ‘blowing’ band. It is also deeply apparent that they love
and enjoy their work, and that this includes another rare trait: a real desire to have their listeners enjoy it, too. (This last point is firmly underlined by Cannonball’s warm, witty and articulate spoken additions to the proceedings.)

The six selections here make up a strong and varied cross-section. Cannon‘s Sack O’ War is irresistibly rhythmic and deeply in the “soul” groove (a different version of it appears on Nat Adderley’s “Work Song” album.) The bright and surging Big “P”. written by tenorman Jimmy Heath, is named for his noted brother, bassist Percy Heath. By way of contrast is the almost delicate charm of Frank Rossolino’s Blue Daniel. Vic Feldman contributed the unusual Azule Serape (approximate English translation: Blue Shawl), which has been described as “funky Latin.” Exodus is a brisk and rather intricate line; and the closer is a romp through the standard What Is This Thing Called Love?

In the opening paragraph I called this album more “satisfying” than its predecessors. This is by no means whatsoever to belittle the earlier albums. “. . . in San Francisco” has a rare, captivating fire and spontaneity that renders completely irrelevant the fact that this was then a newly-formed group. “Them Dirty Blues” is, naturally enough, musically better-knit. more than compensating for the fact that it presents this volatile group in a studio, or non-audience-reaction, setting. We are more than proud of both. But the album in hand would seem to join the well-organized togetherness of one with the “live” vitality of the other — a combination that has to be pretty unbeatable.

(The cover photo, by William Clarion, shows — left to right — Victor, Nat, Cannonball, Sam and Louis on the beach near The Lighthouse.)