Cannonball Adderley



Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley (September 15, 1928 – August 8, 1975) was a jazz alto saxophonist of the hard bop era of the 1950s and 1960s.

Adderley is remembered for his 1966 single "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", a crossover hit on the pop charts, and for his work with trumpeter Miles Davis, including on the epochal album Kind of Blue (1959). He was the brother of jazz cornetist Nat Adderley, a longtime member of his band.

Early life and career
Originally from Tampa, Florida, Adderley moved to New York in 1955. His nickname derived from "cannibal", a title imposed on him by high school colleagues as a tribute to his voracious appetite.

Cannonball moved to Tallahassee, when his parents obtained teaching positions at Florida A&M University. Both Cannonball and brother Nat played with Ray Charles when Charles lived in Tallahassee during the early 1940s. Adderley moved to Broward County, Florida, in 1948 after finishing his music studies at Tallahassee and became the band director at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale, a position which he held until 1950. Cannonball was a local legend in Southeast Florida until he moved to New York City in 1955.

One of his known addresses in New York was in the neighborhood of Corona, Queens. He left Florida originally to seek graduate studies at New York conservatories, but one night in 1955 he brought his saxophone with him to the Café Bohemia. Asked to sit in with Oscar Pettiford in place of his band's regular saxophonist, who was late for the gig, the "buzz" on the New York jazz scene after Adderley's performance announced him as the heir to the mantle of Charlie Parker.

Adderley formed his own group with his brother Nat after signing onto the Savoy jazz label in 1957. He was noticed by Miles Davis, and it was because of his blues-rooted alto saxophone that Davis asked him to play with his group. He joined the Davis band in October of 1957, three months prior to the return of John Coltrane to the group. Adderley played on the seminal Davis records Milestones and Kind of Blue. This period also overlapped with pianist Bill Evans' time with the sextet, an association that led to recording Portrait of Cannonball and Know What I Mean?.

His interest as an educator carried over to his recordings. In 1961, Cannonball narrated The Child's Introduction to Jazz, released on Riverside Records.

Band leader
The Cannonball Adderley Quintet featured Cannonball on alto sax and his brother Nat Adderley on cornet. Cannonball's first quintet was not very successful; however, after leaving Davis' group, he formed another, again with his brother, which enjoyed more success.

The new quintet, which later became the Cannonball Adderley Sextet, and Cannonball's other combos and groups, included such noted musicians as saxophonists Charles Lloyd and Yusef Lateef, pianists Bobby Timmons, Victor Feldman, Joe Zawinul, Hal Galper, Michael Wolff, and George Duke, bassists Ray Brown, Sam Jones, Walter Booker, and Victor Gaskin, and drummers Louis Hayes and Roy McCurdy.

Later life
By the end of the 1960s, Adderley's playing began to reflect the influence of the electric jazz, avant-garde, and Davis's experiments on the album Bitches Brew. On his albums from this period, such as Accent on Africa (1968) and The Price You Got to Pay to Be Free (1970), he began doubling on soprano saxophone, showing the influence of Coltrane and Wayne Shorter. In that same year, his quintet appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival in California, and a brief scene of that performance was featured in the 1971 psychological thriller Play Misty for Me, starring Clint Eastwood. In 1975 he also appeared in an acting role alongside José Feliciano and David Carradine in the episode "Battle Hymn" in the third season of the TV series Kung Fu.

Songs made famous by Adderley and his bands include "This Here" (written by Bobby Timmons), "The Jive Samba", "Work Song" (written by Nat Adderley), "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" (written by Joe Zawinul) and "Walk Tall" (written by Zawinul, Marrow, and Rein). A cover version of Pops Staples' "Why (Am I Treated So Bad)?" also entered the charts. His instrumental "Sack o' Woe" was covered by Manfred Mann on their debut album.

He had a cerebral hemorrhage and four weeks later, on August 9, 1975, he died at St. Mary Methodist Hospital in Gary, Indiana. He was 46 years old. He was buried in the Southside Cemetery, Tallahassee.

Legacy
Later that year he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. Joe Zawinul's composition "Cannon Ball" on Black Market is a tribute to his former leader. Pepper Adams and George Mraz dedicated the composition "Julian" on the 1975 Pepper Adams album of the same name days after Cannonball's death.

Adderley was initiated as an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity (Gamma Theta chapter, University of North Texas, '60, & Xi Omega chapter, Frostburg State University, '70) and Alpha Phi Alpha (Beta Nu chapter, Florida A&M University).