Know Your Jazz: Cannonball Adderley

Jazz music is not for everyone, I'll give you that. Although, I do believe if you delve far enough into music exploration, you are bound to enjoy it, or at least appreciate it, eventually.

Most people who only dabble in Jazz will pick up a copy of Miles Davis' seminal work Kind of Blue, or John Coltrane's Blue Train, but there is another album that is equally amazing and mass appealing-- Cannonball Adderley's Somethin' Else.


Recorded in 1958, Somethin' Else includes the amazing lineup of Miles Davis (as a sideman, mind you) on trumpet, Hank Jones on piano, Sam Jones on bass, Art Blakey on the drums, and Cannonball. of course, on alto sax. They are the kind of musicians that make it sound so easy, yet you never deny their brilliance.

Somethin' Else is ever bit as cool as Kind of Blue (which Adderley also played on) and is musically very similar, but there is a certain freshness to it. Maybe it's just because you hear it less, but I think it just happened to capture a perfect moment in time where jazz ruled and King Miles stepped aside and let one of his knights take the glory.