Cannonball Adderley - Big Man: The Legend Of John Henry (1975) [Remastered 2015]

In what would turn out to be the final years of his short life, jazz great Julian “Cannonball” Adderley embarked on a number of ambitious, genre-stretching projects. The last of these was 1975's Big Man, the score for a musical play based on the John Henry (“the steel driving man”) American folk legend. The album was released as a two-LP set with libretto, and featured music from Adderley and his then-current musical associates including brother Nat Adderley, George Duke (using the alias “Dawilli Gonga”), Roy McCurdy, Airto Moreira, Carol Kaye and others. The sessions also made full use of a large string section and chorus, while the primary vocalists in Big Man sang and read their lines in character; the vocal cast included lead vocalist Joe Williams, Randy Crawford (making her professional debut on record here at age 21), and Robert Guillaume (later to win two Emmy Awards for his work on TV series Soap and Benson, and a Grammy Award for his work connected to The Lion King). Long out of print and never before issued on CD, Real Gone Music's reissue of Big Man boasts liner notes by Bill Kopp (Kopp also penned the liners for RGM's first Adderley reissue, The Black Messiah) with quotes from Robert Guillaume, and the full libretto, with remastering by Joe Tarantino. The final artistic statement from a jazz giant!