No idea where I got this, but I’d have been aware of Adderley through his work with Miles Davis. It’s a live recording of a 1966 ‘concert’ set up in Chicago over three days at Columbia Studios.
It opens with the title track, composed by Joe Zawinul, showcasing Adderley’s sax and Zawinul’s piano playing, before a lovely version of Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust. The playing and music remain laid back, until the band cuts loose on Zawinul’s Requiem for a Jazz Musician, which points to some of the work he’d be doing a decade later in Weather Report. Adderley gets us swinging again in The Sticks, before the finale of the set, Fiddler on the Roof. Overall, it’s a great performance from a top band, but too many of the tunes are merely good listenable jazz, without being memorable. However, there isn’t a bad one here, so it stands as a fine record of Adderley, and in particular his band with Zawinul.
4* - a great band at their peak.
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