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Released today by Reel to Real Records, Swinging\u2019 in Seattle: Live at the Penthouse 1966-1967 <\/i>represents the first release in a long while of previously-unheard (and previously un-bootlegged) Adderley recordings. I had the honor of writing the liner notes for this album. And I\u2019d like to tell you about why I wrote them, and why I think the album is special.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until the mid 1990s \u2013 by which time Cannonball Adderley had been gone nearly two decades \u2013 that I discovered his music. I fell in love immediately, and I think that had he known, he would have enjoyed some satisfaction from my awakening.<\/p>\n
It was a Saturday morning in late spring, and I was making my regular rounds of local suburban garage sales. The mid 1990s were that peculiar time during which vinyl LPs had fallen out of fashion, yet to be rediscovered by nostalgists or a new generation. Families holding garage sales often didn\u2019t even bring their long-ignored record collections out to the garage; the thought that someone would want them simply didn\u2019t occur to most.<\/p>\n
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So when I would encounter a sale displaying a certain character, I would gamble on the chance that the family might have a stack of records somewhere in its home. I\u2019d politely inquire, and as often as not, they\u2019d reply in the affirmative. Then they\u2019d invite me into their home and let me cherry-pick through their stack of vinyl. They were typically quite happy to accept a dollar apiece.<\/p>\n
It was at one of those encounters where I found an LP housed inside a glossy black cover: Julian \u201cCannonball\u201d Adderley\u2019s Somethin\u2019 Else<\/i>, a 1958 album released on prestigious Blue Note Records. I knew next to nothing about jazz, but I figured that a Blue Note album from thirty-odd years prior \u2013 and hey, with Miles Davis on it \u2013 might be worth a buck, and a half hour of my listening time.<\/p>\n
It is no overstatement to say that the record changed my life. His music opened my mind and ears to jazz in a way nothing else had.<\/p>\n
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In short order, I learned that Adderley\u2019s musical career took him through a number of phases. He immersed himself in what is now called \u201cworld music,\u201d and late in life (he died terribly prematurely at age 46 in 1975) he embarked upon an adventurous foray into fusion. He also created an ambitious (if uneven) work for stage, Big Man: The Legend of John Henry<\/i>.<\/p>\n
For me, riches were to be found on most every Adderley session, from his earliest sides for EmArcy to his final, unfinished work, the posthumously-released Lovers<\/i>. But as I write in the liner note essay for a new Adderley recording, Swinging\u2019 in Seattle: Live at the Penthouse 1966-1967<\/i>, \u201cthe most fun<\/i> \u2013 and that\u2019s a word that meant a great deal to the man \u2013 recordings and performances in Adderley\u2019s deep catalog came during what was also his commercial peak.\u201d<\/p>\n
That same Quintet lineup that cut <\/span>Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! Live at \u201cThe Club,\u201d<\/i><\/span> Cannonball in Japan<\/i><\/span>, <\/span>74 Miles Away<\/i><\/span> and <\/span>In Person<\/i><\/span> \u2014 Adderley, Adderley, Gaskin, Zawinul and McCurdy \u2014 would be captured live <\/span>by KING-FM radio in Seattle, Washington on at least four dates between early October 1966 and late June of \u201867. The new album Swingin\u2019 in Seattle<\/i> is drawn from those recordings.<\/p>\n It\u2019s one of the myriad joys of jazz that \u2013 in contrast to my first love, rock \u2018n\u2019 roll \u2013 by its very definition, every performance of a song, even one that\u2019s been performed countless times, can be a completely new experience. And so it is that while Adderley fans will have heard these songs before \u2013 most have appeared on at least one other previously released album \u2013 if you haven\u2019t heard these Seattle recordings, they\u2019ll be new. And each will reveal something that no other recording has.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/adderley_lp3.jpg\")
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