News featuring Cannonball Adderley

Thursday 21st October

• “Hail, Hail, Rock'n'Roll”

  Like many pop songs, there's something of the sonnet about Tobi Legend's northern soul belter Time Will Pass You By

  The final three records traditionally played at Wigan Casino's northern soul all-nighters were known as the Three Before Eight, and fittingly, for the closing notes of the night, all three were concerned with the passing of time. The sequence opened with Time Will Pass You By by Tobi Legend, followed with Long After Tonight Is All Over by Jimmy Radcliffe, and ended with I'm On My Way by Dean Parrish.

  Read the complete article at www.guardian.co.uk

Saturday 2nd October

• “Chiddy Bang, Kid Cudi and Kidz In The Hall prefer blog-rocking beats to old soul samples”

  You're more likely to hear MGMT or Grizzly Bear on a hip-hop record than James Brown these days. So is the art of crate digging gone for good?

  "Last LP we got down right, showed all these corny motherfuckers what hip-hop's supposed to sound like." So boasted rappers Show & AG on their 1995 track Next Level. As practised by the duo, members of New York's revered Diggin' In The Crates crew, this ideal hip-hop aesthetic involved samples – generally from past genres of black music – gained by, well, diggin' in the crates.

  Read the complete article at www.guardian.co.uk

Friday 24th September

• “Readers recommend songs about vegetables”

  Last week's song choices were written in the stars, but now it's time to dig deep and root out those little lettuce gems

  Hello pop people, I'm glad you could make it. Well, actually I knew you would be here, because it was written in the stars. Years before Paul even thought about deciding to make fate and destiny a Readers Recommend topic a cosmic alignment made it inevitable.

  Read the complete article at www.guardian.co.uk

Tuesday 3rd August

• “Revealed: Notorious BIG's secret jazz education”

  Saxophonist claims he introduced a young Biggie Smalls to the work of Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Parker and Ella Fitzgerald

  Did Notorious BIG learn his flow from Cannonball Adderley? One of the late rapper's former neighbours, saxophonist Donald Harrison, claims to have introduced him to the work of jazz giants including Adderley, Charlie Parker and Ella Fitzgerald, teaching the teenage Biggie about diction, phrasing and scat techniques.

  Read the complete article at www.guardian.co.uk

Monday 5th July

• “50 great moments in jazz: Miles Davis and Kind of Blue”

  This groundbreaking 1959 album is as close to perfection as jazz gets without sacrificing its spontaneity

  I had hoped that a blog on the popular and funky Hammond organist Jimmy Smith might attract more than the average number of commentators, but I wasn't prepared for the gratifying deluge of responses following my inclusion of Smith in this series.

  Read the complete article at www.guardian.co.uk

Thursday 17th June

• “Graciela Peréz-Gutierrez obituary”

  Versatile and risque, she was known as the first lady of Latin jazz

  The Afro-Cuban singer Graciela Peréz-Gutierrez, who has died aged 94, was widely celebrated as "the first lady of Latin jazz" and known to her fans simply as Graciela. The Latin bandleaders Tito Puente and Tito Rodríguez championed her, while Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan were admirers. Graciela was known for her musical versatility, phrasing and emotive delivery, while her risque stage presence and skill with double entendres also helped win her notoriety as a nightclub entertainer.

  Read the complete article at www.guardian.co.uk

Tuesday 18th May

• “Hank Jones obituary”

  Prolific jazz pianist and composer, he was a sensitive accompanist to Ella Fitzgerald

  The great jazz drummer Elvin Jones, asked by JazzUK magazine in 2001 how it felt to be still playing full-on jazz in his 70s, simply pointed to the example of his older brother. The pianist Hank Jones, the first-born of the three jazz-playing Jones brothers, was 83 at the time and still playing with the same benign determination that had distinguished his work since the 1940s.

  Read the complete article at www.guardian.co.uk

Monday 17th May

• “Hank Jones, Legendary Jazz Pianist, Dead at 91”

  Filed under: News, R.I.P.

  Legendary jazz pianist Henry "Hank" Jones passed away Sunday at a hospice facility in New York at the age of 91. Throughout Jones's 60-plus-year career, he was known for what the Washington Post describes as a "light touch" around the piano, an in-depth understanding of bebop and the fast-paced phrasing that became a staple of modern jazz the '50s.

  Read the complete article at www.spinner.com

Thursday 6th May

• “James Morton's Porkchop: Don't You Worry 'Bout That | CD review”

  (Fresh Ground)

  When the young saxophonist James Morton surfaced in London on fellow Bristolian Andy Sheppard's 50th-birthday gigs in 2007, he energetically linked Sheppard's loose-improv contemporary approach to a hot, gospelly energy reminiscent of Cannonball Adderley or David Sanborn. Morton regularly plays with Pee Wee Ellis, the former James Brown and Van Morrison sax sideman, and Ellis's searing sound and punchy accents have been a significant influence. Still, it's hard to make anything beyond a retro impact from a soul-jazz album celebrating the anthemic hooks of the Crusaders, or the preachy melodramas of the Hammond organ funk bands of the 1960s. Morton, however, has done just that. He and his sidemen (particularly the classy guitarist Denny Illett) have reworked this familiar idiom with a relaxed affection that reignites it. Morton ascends from wistful beginnings to hypnotic eloquence on Forgiven, turns God Bless the Child into a soul groover, in effect, and if he mildly sends…

  Read the complete article at www.guardian.co.uk

Thursday 11th February

• “Joe Zawinul: Money in the Pocket | CD review”

  (Atlantic)

  The late, great Joe Zawinul is most fondly remembered for Weather Report and for his later leadership of one of the best world-jazz fusion bands, the Zawinul Syndicate. Money in the Pocket, however, represents the Zawinul story earlier on, in 1965, after he had been playing in Cannonball Adderley's band for four years. That band's catchy themes were significantly influenced both by Adderley's gospel roots and by Zawinul's melodic powers, and this session reflects the driving grooves of that popular soul-jazz style – so there are a lot of backbeats, repeating riffs, horn-harmony wailing and stagey stop-time breaks. But if some of this is generic early jazz-funk, Zawinul's piano-playing reveals his sophistication and sumptuous elegance, notably on solo outings such as the ballad My One and Only Love. The funky Some More of Dat is squarely in Lee Morgan's Sidewinder mode, but the closing Del Sasser shows how…

  Read the complete article at www.guardian.co.uk