The year before pianist George Duke featured on Frank Zappa’s The Grand Wazoo, he recorded two solo albums and spent the best part of the year playing in the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. If Zappa was Duke’s mentor in all things rock, Cannonball was his teacher in jazz and soul. Joining Adderley’s Quintet gave the young Duke an opportunity to develop not only as a performer, but also as a composer and arranger. In the summer of 1971, Cannonball and his band recorded a live album at The Troubadour club in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. The album was named after its title track, a composition by Duke, and was released later that year as a double album on Capitol Records.
Like many jazz musicians in the late 60s and early 70s, Adderley embraced the cross-pollination that was taking place between jazz and the more popular genres of the time such as rock, funk and soul. As with his previous late 60s recordings, Adderley enlisted the help of close friend and producer for black artists at Capitol, David Axelrod. A couple of years later, Adderley would return the favour producing Axelrod’s solo album Heavy Axe (1974).
The line-up on The Black Messiah consists of Adderley’s core quintet – himself on sax, his younger brother Nat Adderley on cornet, George Duke on keys, Walter Booker on bass and Roy McCurdy on drums – and features guest appearances from legendary percussionist Airto Moreira, Mike Deasy on guitar and vocals, Ernie Watts on tenor sax, Alvin Batiste on clarinet and Buck Clarke on African percussion. With a total of ten players, Adderley jokes with the audience that no matter how many members the group has, it will always be called The Cannonball Adderley Quintet.
Over the course of the album, Adderley and his band manage to cover a wide range of material drawing on a variety of musical styles. The album opens with its lengthy title track, after which the band change gears with ‘Little Benny Hen’, a guitar-led bluesy number which is more rock than jazz. This is followed by ‘Dr. Honouris Cousa’, one of two long fusion excursions on the album, dedicated to Herbie Hancock and composed by pianist Joe Zawinul (who Duke had consequently replaced in Adderley’s quintet).
On ‘Untitled’, the music takes a psychedelic turn as percussionist Airto Moreira transports the listener to Brazil with a verdant soundscape of natural and percussive sounds. The band continue to explore funky break-laden fusion on ‘The Chocolate Nuisance’ and ‘The Steam Drill’, before stretching out into the melancholic and spacey free jazz of ‘Eye Of The Cosmos’. Finally Adderley and co bring things back down to Earth with the mellow vocal track ‘Heritage’ before bidding the audience farewell on the swinging outro ‘The Scene’.
The album’s title track is arguably its best, a 16 minute long propulsive and percussive fusion workout. The band locks into a heavy 5/4 groove throughout with Moreira punctuating the rhythm with bells, reminiscent of Miles Davis’ ‘Black Satin’. After a fiery horn solo from Adderley, his brother takes over with an equally energetic offering. Duke follows with a funky Rhodes solo which he embellishes with effects, before taking things into more cosmic territory, echoing the experimental electronic tracks found on his double album The Inner Source, recorded that same year.
Following The Black Messiah, Adderley recorded a string of Axelrod-produced fusion albums before his untimely death in 1975 from a cerebral haemorrhage at the young age of just 46. Despite a relatively short career of 20 years, Adderley managed to leave behind an impressive musical legacy as an influential player in hard bop and member of Miles Davis’ ‘first great quintet’, and later as an enthusiastic explorer of fusion.
And finally…
As this is the last post of 2020, Dan and I would like to wish you all a belated jazzy Christmas and a happy, healthy 2021. For us and no doubt many others, music has been the voice of sanity during this difficult year and we hope that next year brings better things for everyone. Thank you for all the support in this first year of Jazz Impressions and we hope that you’ll stick around to continue the musical journey!
And for those of you who are still feeling festive, throw on our ‘We Free Kings’ Christmas playlist or for more funky fusion, dive into our ‘Fusion Intrusion’ playlist.
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