Billboard : 12/28/1959

Cannonball and company generate a lot of live excitement on this “on location” assignment. The set was cut at San Francisco’s Jazz Workshop, with Adderley introducing the numbers. The quintet drives hard with a robust sound and the effect of its vitality is only increased by the live atmosphere of appreciative fans stomping and clapping. A couple of Adderley originals, Spontaneous Combustion, and You Got It, are grouped with tunes by Pettiford, Randy Weston and Bobby Timmons. An exciting set.

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : March, 1960

In its first recording, Cannonball Adderley‘s new group – with his brother Nat on cornet, Bobby Timmons, piano, Sam Jones, bass, and Louis Hayes, drums – already shows the stamp of authority. Cannonball appears to have gotten over his habit of playing meaningless runs during his tenure with Miles Davis, Nat’s range has broadened considerably in the past couple of years, and both are now backed by an exceptionally forceful rhythm section, sparked by the constantly challenging excitement of Hayes’s drumming. The band rocks solidly at slower tempos, sails with tremendous velocity when the tempos move up, and plays as though it really meant it. The life and genuine warmth in their playing is complemented by Cannonball’s introductory remarks (made before an audience in San Francisco), which are gracious, witty, and uncondescending.

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Minneapolis Star Tribune
Charles Hanna : 01/10/1960

“Cannonball was a square peg in a round hole when he played with Miles Davis,” said drummer Philly Jo Jones.

“He (Julian Adderley) just didn’t fit. He never belonged, at least not like the others.”

It is a moot point, perhaps, but there is a certain amount of truth in Philly Jo’s statement. Now that the pudgy young alto saxophonist is free of the confines of the Davis quintet, there is little room for argument.

Cannonball has displayed his individual talents before in featured recordings, but he has never sounded better than as the leader of his own quintet.

The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco (Riverside) is his brightest effort. The album was taped at the Jazz Workshop club Oct. 18 and Oct. 20 last year.

If Adderley didn’t fit the Davis organization, he did prosper because of his association. In the summer of 1955 he arrived in New York nearly unnoticed, and he didn’t really blossom until a little more than two years later when he joined Davis.

In Minneapolis with the Davis group last summer, he complained bitterly about his role in the band. He had tremendous admiration for Davis, but he felt the band didn’t allow him the freedom he wanted.

Early last fall he broke away and formed his own group. His younger brother Nat joined him on cornet. He hired Bobby Timmons, former pianist with Art Blakey, Sam Jones on bass and Louis Hayes on drums.

By the time the four-week stint at the Jazz Workshop ended, the group had become well-knit. Evolving around a strong blues style, the group adhered to Cannonball’s powerful rhythmic form and brother Nat’s restrained drive.

I’m sure you’ll be impressed when you hear the group on such jazz vehicles as Bobby Timmons’ This Here, a blues waltz, and Bohemia After Dark, a composition by bassist Oscar Pettiford.

Okay, Riverside, let’s have the rest of what you recorded.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 12/20/1959

If I had my way there would be a lot of things changed about the portion of the phonograph record industry that captures the music of our great creative artists (performing for them the same service notation performed for Bach) and preserves it for posterity.

One of the first things I would like to change is the habit of making jazz recordings in studios. This is, whether they know it or not, a result of the fact that the entire recording industry was structured by classical music. When classical music is recorded, perfection to the impossible degree is the goal. No informality, no outside sound, nothing to interfere with the pure rendition of the composer’s music.

Jazz, which is by and large a music of performance, does not need this and never has. A jazz, performance is enhanced by an audience reaction. A jazz solo may even be enhanced by a clam, a goof or a plain wrong note. It’s part of the enjoyable game of jazz playing to be able to take a trumpet solo, say, and in a descending series of notes hit a wrongo, and then make the rest of the solo conform to that so that the end result is logical.

Then there is the fact that it’s pretty hard to warm up in a studio even with the help of a couple of fifths from the corner dispensary. The whole studio set-up is anti- jazz. Rhythm sections are spread around so they can’t feel each other’s sound and big bands are placed in the most unnatural positions.

The proof of the thing, however, lies in the fact that the best jazz recordings made, really, have been made on the job; in-person performances of great musicians and great music with an added zing that no studio session has ever managed to reproduce.

Regardless of the lost solos of yesterday by Pres and Herschel Evans, the best recording Count Basie ever made was the Count Basie LP on Verve. It was actually cut in Stockholm (why Verve used London in the title, no one knows). It has the snap and the crackle of the real Basie sound to it to a degree that makes all his other LPs sound pallid in this sense.

Lee Konitz‘ best work is an in-person performance from a Pittsburgh night club issued on Atlantic. Norman Granz discovered this a long time ago with Jazz at the Philharmonic. Dave Brubeck carried a tape recorder around with him night after night and taped his group on concerts and in clubs and came up with the best recordings he could make.

It works every time there’s a chance for it to work. Bad acoustics and dull music, on location, in person or in a studio, add up to a dull LP. But given a good band and the proper surroundings you can’t beat the portable Ampex sitting in front of the bandstand, goofs, crowd noises, cash register bells and the rest notwithstanding.

A couple of classic examples have just been released. They are Jimmy Witherspoon at Monterey (HiFi J421) recorded at the opening night of last fall’s Monterey Jazz Festival, and The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco, (Riverside RLP 12-311) recorded at the Jazz Workshop last October. Both of these albums have that rare quality of spontaneity that is almost impossible to get in a studio. In addition the Witherspoon LP has a classic solo by Ben Webster and some remarkable Earl Hines piano, and the Adderley LP has a tune by pianist Bobby Timmons, This Here, which looks like a jazz classic. If any ne thinks that the fact I wrote the liner notes to these two LPs constitutes a conflict of interests, It’s just too bad. I simply think they are both the end.

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San Francisco Review
C.H. Garrigues : 01/03/1960

During the year just ended, San Franciscans have had the opportunity of hearing, one after another, most of the great Jazzmen of the East Coast “hard bop” school – an opportunity which might have been lacking had not owner Art Auerbach of the Jazz Workshop decided to make a pitch for the serious jazz patrons by importing the big ones direct from New York.

One after another, Auerbach brought Rollins, Stitt, Rollins again, Johnny Griffin, J. J. Johnson, Red Garland, Benny Golson, Cannonball Adderley and, finally, Stitt again – to come near completing the roll of the top East Coast men.

Easily the peak of the year, according to those who attended (I, myself, was prevented by a previous engagement with a surgeon) was the performance of the new Cannonball Adderley Quintet. This judgment tends to be borne out with great certainty in The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco (Riverside 12-311) which has recently been issued, and which, recorded at the Workshop, reveals one of the most flawless performances of modern jazz it has been my opportunity to hear.

There is about this group (Cannonball Adderley, alto; Nat Adderley, cornet; Bobby Timmons, piano; Sam Jones, bass; Louis Hayes, drums) a musicianship, coupled with a freshness, a delight in playing together, which one rarely hears on record or in person.

The excellent liner notes are responsible for the statement that, when the quintet finished the last notes of its final number, the audience stood and whistled and clapped for 15 minutes. This I would doubt, never having heard a jazz club audience give better than a spatter of applause. But, if it ever happened, it might well have happened here.

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Saturday Review
Wilder Hobson : 01/30/1960
Salute to the Siblings

Like many others, I have frequently suffered from another person’s early efforts to learn to play a musical instrument. And yet, in this regard, I think I can claim to be more fortunate than most. As an only child, I never had to endure a brother’s or sister’s mismanagement of the piano. My father’s latter-day exercises on the guitar were discreet, and usually confined to his bedroom. My daughter is so shy about her viola and piano practice that it sometimes seems as if we were paying her tuition in vain; my son’s hearty butchery of the cornet is taking place not at home, but in eastern Massachusetts. During the past ten years my wife has become an accomplished tuba player, but this has taken place largely during hours while I was away at work, with an effect which may have seemed peculiar to some of our neighbors, but which was scarcely calculated to disturb my ears. Also, when she first essayed to play with bands, she sat, naturally enough, in the back row, her pitch and volume were low, her rhythm was simple and satisfying, and, all in all, she emerged from the larval stage with a minimum of agony for the bystanders.

It is always a question, of course, which instrument starts worst. I believe it is the most common opinion that the purest pain is to be obtained from a young person’s endeavor to crank up the violin. Unquestionably that can be bad – although there is also something to be said for an exhibition of loathsome trap drumming or really ripe misconduct on the saxophone.

I prefer not to dwell on such bilious thoughts, however, but to consider homes where there was an unusual richness of talent and where, musically speaking at any rate, it must have been great fun to grow up with the beginners. Consider, for instance, the Dodds household, in which Johnny was on his way to becoming one of the greatest of New Orleans-style clarinetists and had his deft and subtle brother, Baby, on the drums. Over at the Teagardens’ in Oklahoma a single roof-tree sheltered one of the finest brass teams in the history of jazz: Jack, trombone, and Charlie, trumpet. Up in Pennsylvania the bandmaster Dorsey must have taken much satisfaction in the progress of his sons Tommy, trombone, and Jimmy, clarinet and alto saxophone. To think of all these families is to be imbued with a kind of resonant warmth. The family band or musical cluster has been a heartening feature of American life, often overlooked because so many homes are utterly dependent on electronic devices. But let us not forget the Powells’, where two boys, Bud and Richie, were jazz piano masters, and I am particularly fond of imagining the Joneses’, where young Thaddeus perfected his supple and brilliant command of the trumpet while brother Hank provided a delicate piano accompaniment and brother Elvin gradually – and it could not have been too gradually – became one of the most magical and imaginative of jazz drummers. I use the word magical here advisedly (some people in this allegedly rational age seem to think it is too vague or romantic a term). The final effects of an Elvin Jones with a set of drums are literally magical (secret, occult); they are not, strictly speaking, learned and cannot be taught; they are projected out of the mysteries of the rhythmic instinct and capacities.

Two of the finest family musical associations in jazz are represented among the sparsity of new records which has followed the annual holiday outpouring. For traditional tastes there is That’s a Plenty with Wilbur de Paris, trombone, and his brother Sidney, cornet; also Doc Cheatham, trumpet; Omer Simeon, clarinet; Sonny White, piano; John Smith, guitar; Hayes Alvis, bass; and Wilbert Kirk, drums. The de Paris brothers scarcely need introduction at this late date. For a dozen years now they have fronted the stablest Dixieland combination in the land. Fastidious or pretentious addicts of the newer jazz schools often take a patronizing attitude toward them, but not this department. I have sometimes found the de Paris rhythm section inclined to stodginess, but through the years the band has made a great deal of spirited music in the lyrical New Orleans vein. These men are not reconstructors; they are genuine preservers, and I am glad the ark is in their hands. In addition to the title tune, the numbers include Mack the Knife, Hesitatin’ Blues, and other standards (Atlantic 1318).

In the modern trend, but with any amount of traditional steam and flair, is the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, with the opulent Cannonball on the alto saxophone, his brother Nat on the cornet; Bobby Timmons, piano; Sam Jones, bass; and Louis Hayes, drums. In public performance at San Francisco’s Jazz Workshop, the band offers five originals, of which my own favorite is the detonating Hi-Fly, by the pianist Randy Weston. Life in the Adderley family must have been a rousing business while the boys were growing up; it still is (Riverside RLP 12-311).

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Down Beat : 05/26/1960
Ira Gitler : 2.5 stars

It is rather a strange assignment to review an album that has already sold “between 25,000 to 30,000 copies” (Down Beat, April 14), doubly strange because this reviewer feels it is a much overrated album. Perhaps some of the 25,000 do now, too, for my contention is that it is not jazz that wears well.

The Down Beat news items said, “The sales have been attributed mostly to the popularity of This Here.”

I first encountered This Here, written by pianist Timmons, at a party where it succeeded in boring me on the first of three successive times it was played. (At 12:26, it is the longest track in the set.)

This Here is a perfect example of “over-funk,” an east coast diametrical counterpart of the “overslick” we’ve come to recognize in certain west coast jazz (Shorty Rogers, etc.). Its particular use of waltz time and constant repetitive phrases are exceedingly monotonous. Horace Silver has shown us how the roots of jazz can be intelligently and effectively utilized in a modern group. This Here is so overdone that it smacks of unintentional parody.

In an interview I did with Cannonball Adderley for Jazz, he said, “You can even try to put too much funk in a thing.” He proved it here, with Timmons’ help.

Since the time of the Adderley brothers emigration from Florida, Nat has improved tremendously. In this album, I find him less affected than Julian and also warmer and wittier than his brother. As I have told Cannonball, he (Cannonball) has several different ways of playing, and I don’t dig them all. His double-timing is often devoid of anything but a run for the sake of a run. Listen to Spontaneous Combustion for examples of this – and, speaking of that tune, it is illuminating to hear the brothers’ original recording on Savoy. Cannonball is much more natural. He says that he learned a lot by playing with Miles Davis, including restraint. I agree, but it seems that he tends to discard that quality at various times.

The highlight of the album is Randy Weston‘s Hi-Fly. One reason may be that it is the best piece of material the group has to work with here. Cannonball solos intelligently, with restraint, and yet with plenty of “soul” for anyone.

Everything is fine until the end of Timmons’ solo when Bobby quotes I’m Beginning to See the Light several times in a way that reaches a new level of banality. His solo on Combustion degenerates, too, with Hayes laying so heavy on the afterbeat that it seems a burlesque.

On Bohemia, however, Timmons flashes some of the form that so impressed everyone during his first stint with Art Blakey. Hayes, who is featured here, indicates why he is considered to be one of the best of the young drummers. His accents are extremely apt.

If this is the road Cannonball is going to travel (This Here), he will only succeed in making money, I guess. Solid. He may call it “soul.” I call it another brand of “pop” jazz. (I.G.)

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Liner Notes by Ralph J. Gleason

When the Cannonball Adderley Quintet finished Hi-Fly – its closing number after a four week engagement at The Jazz Workshop in San Francisco in October of 1959 – the audience stood and cheered and whistled and clapped for fifteen minutes.

In a dozen years of covering jazz events in San Francisco I have never seen anything like this happen. Believe me, it was impressive. The audience absolutely loved that band and the feeling of love spread throughout the club night after night, set after set.

It may strike you that the word “love” is a little oversentimental in such a context. But it was true. There is in the current Cannonball Adderley group a great, sweeping feeling of warmth that is the characteristic of jazz which, all attempts to intellectualize it to the contrary notwithstanding, marks it as a reflection of the best of American culture.

When Dmitri Shostakovich, the Russian composer, went to hear his first authentic American jazz, he went to the Jazz Workshop and sat for an hour attentively listening to Cannonball’s group. He made no comment whatsoever, which is in itself a comment of sorts. But he dug. He smiled appreciatively several times, applauded vigorously on occasion, and leaned forward intently to watch a Louis Hayes drum solo.

The Russians were the only people in four weeks who did not move a muscle in time to the band. The rhythm of this group is contagious and its overall effect might well cause the lame to walk and the halt to throw away their crutches. At times the atmosphere of the Jazz Workshop resembled a church as much as jazz club. The band quite obviously was having a ball (“I have never worked a job I enjoyed more” was the unanimous verdict of Julian and Nat) and there was no reluctance on their part to show it. When Bobby Timmons‘ exciting This Here (“it’s part shout and part moan”) would get moving, with Bobby in the midst of one of his full-fingered, rocking solos where he seems almost to be playing a duet with himself, the whole place would start rocking and stomping with the band.

The Jazz Workshop is a small club on Broadway in the North Beach district of San Francisco. That street is today’s 52nd Street with jazz clubs and action going on all night long, people carrying on in the streets and flowing off the sidewalks into the traffic lane on the weekends. Cannonball did capacity business all through his four weeks. On the weekends you couldn’t get into the club until someone else got out (shades of the old Famous Door and the Onyx). People gathered outside the club to hear the band on the street (you could hear this band on the street, believe me) in clusters that blocked traffic.

It was, as I’ve said, quite an experience even for San Francisco, which has had a few jazz experiences.

The band was together only briefly before opening in San Francisco, but by the time the album was cut they were sounding like a series of identical twins (or should I say a set of quintuplets?). For me, hearing this group was delightful: one after another its members dominated my listening on a number. And then the impact of the full band would hit. I can honestly say that it has been a long time since I have so thoroughly enjoyed a group. I only hope that some portion of this comes through to you in hearing the album so that you may share this enjoyment.

I would like to draw attention especially to two tracks, Randy Weston‘s smashing Hi-Fly and Bobby Timmons‘ This Here; to Nat Adderley’s jubilant, puckish playing throughout; to Julian’s incredibly rhythmic soloing (a chart of his accents would read like a drum part), to Sam Jones and to Louis Hayes.

And then I would like to add Jon Hendricks’ classic one word jazz poem: “Listen!”