For his first live recording at the Village Vanguard Cannonball Adderley added original multi instrumentalist Yusef Lateef to his band who brought new sounds with him.
The Cannonball Adderley Sextet in New York (Craft, 2020)
After playing with Miles Davis’ sextet with John Coltrane and Bill Evans, alto Saxophonist Cannonball Adderley went on to form his own band with his brother, cornetist Nat Adderley, bassist Sam Jones and drummer Louis Hayes.
The personnel on the piano chair had been revolving with Bobby Timmons succeeded by Victor Feldman until it settled on Austrian expatriate Joe Zawinul who was still new to the band on this live recording from the Village Vanguard in December 1962.
Zawinul’s stay would be a long one until he left to form the band Weather Report with Wayne Shorter in 1970. Here he contributes the characteristic uptempo funky little song called ”Scotch and Water”.
Oriental flavors
Zawinul’s new presence in the band did not make itself felt as immediately as that of multi instrumentalist Yusef Lateef who very much affected it right away. His ”Syn-Anthesia” is a slow-moving song with an oriental flavor, much like the pieces he was recording on his own albums at the time.
Lateef himself plays the song on the for jazz unusual oboe. He plays it with a nasal quality not unlike the one Coltrane used when he played the soprano saxophone.
Lateef’s ”Planet Earth” sounds more suited to Adderley’s established repertoire of uptempo songs. Lateef plays it on the tenor saxophone on which he sounds more traditional and where traces from Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young can be heard.
Lateef’s flute playing can be heard briefly on the theme to Jimmy Heath’s ”Gemini” while he switches to the tenor on the improvisation.
Experimentation
Lateef was born in 1920 and was the same age as Charlie Parker. He recorded with Dizzy Gillespie in the late 1940s and began recording his own music in the mid-1950s which could be described as early examples of world music.
His addition to the Adderley band mostly gives it an impressive three horn front line in the manner of the contemporary Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, but he also brought with him an appetite for experimentation to the band not heard in many of their other editions.
Lateef would stay with Adderley for two years touring in Europe and Japan. He was replaced briefly by tenor saxophonist Charles Lloyd in 1964 until Adderley settled on a quintet. Lateef himself went on to lead his own bands.
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