Cannonball Adderley/Bill Evans: Know What I Mean? (Original Jazz Classics series) [CRAFT]

Why you'll love it

This Original Jazz Classics series reissue is pressed on 180g vinyl. It reunites two Kind of Blue sidemen with the Modern Jazz Quartet's Percy Heath and Connie Kay, and includes the second recording ever made of Evans' "Waltz For Debby."

This edition

• Original Jazz Classics series
• 180g vinyl
• Stereo mix
• Pressed in the USA

About the album

Cannonball Adderley usually came out swinging, all soul-jazz grins and big blues phrases. Here he did something different. He built the date around his friend Bill Evans, who arranged the sessions, and set out to make an album that broke away from his own popular style.

They recorded in New York over three sessions in early 1961, either side of Evans' trio album Explorations, with Percy Heath on bass and Connie Kay on drums. Adderley and Evans had already played together in the Miles Davis Sextet and on Adderley's Portrait of Cannonball and Jump for Joy. "Waltz For Debby" gets a lovely early outing, "Elsa" turns up on both this record and Explorations, "Venice" comes from John Lewis' film score, and the standards "Goodbye," "Who Cares?" and "Nancy (With The Laughing Face)" show off Adderley's lush ballad tone.

Producer Orrin Keepnews named the title track after one of Adderley's favourite conversational habits, and AllMusic's Rick Anderson found it hard to imagine any mainstream jazz fan not loving it. Look closely at the cover and there's a tiny photo of Evans tucked under the sculpture, which is as close as he ever came to hogging the spotlight.

Also at Kops: more Cannonball Adderley on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Riverside / Craft Recordings (cat# CR00716), a reissue of the 1962 album.