Cannonball Adderley - Burnin' in Bordeaux: Live in France 1969 (2024)

Burnin' in Bordeaux: Live in Paris 1969 is one of two Record Store Day 2024 releases from Elemental Music. The other is Poppin in Paris: Live at l'Olympia: 1972; the original tapes were stored in the French national audio-visual archive. Producer Zev Feldman prepared both releases with the Adderley estate. He made sure everyone was paid. Some of the music from both releases has been available online for years, but these double discs from Elemental place the music in its proper context and marks the first official release of both dates.

Critic Bob Blumenthal makes clear in his excellent liner essay that naming the "definitive" Cannonball Adderley Quintet was complex, a nigh on impossible task given the number of gifted musicians who passed through it. This group is one of his very best with brother Nat Adderley on cornet, Joe Zawinul on piano, Victor Gaskin on bass, and Roy McCurdy on drums.

Zawinul composed opener "Scavenger" (and five other tunes here), a burning modal jam in 7/4. Cannonball's furious solo is everywhere, moving through weird blues, hard bop, and Eastern modes before Nat enters with a Spanish tinge before delivering a furious run while Zawinul's muscular chord vamp buoys him before finding its own space for an investigative solo. The reading of Luis Bonfa's "Manha de Carnival" joins modal to bossa, samba, and blues with a two-horn front line. Zawinul holds the harmonic center through tasteful, lyric solos by both Adderleys. Nat Adderley composed the classic "Work Song," which is delivered here as a perfect illustration of the quintet's ability to weave soul into blues and hard bop into soul, and vice-versa. Delivered at a brisk tempo it's fingerpopping in its swing and groove, with excellent solos by Zawinul, Cannonball, and Nat. McCurdy's rim shots and breaks add a funky undercurrent. They return to covers with the West Side Story number "Somewhere," offering a limpid, yet elegant intro before slowly unveiling the tune's tender beauty. The first set ends with Pops Staples' "Why Am I Treated So Bad" that showcases the Rhodes piano, an instrument Zawinul introduced to the quintet some four years earlier. The quintet amplifies the dynamic of the blues with the Rhodes' built-in distortion. The second set kicks off with "Experience in E," a knotty post-bop jam wedding dissonance and expansive harmony amid complex rhythms. The group deliver bebop fire on Dizzy Gillespie's "Blue 'N' Boogie." Cannonball's and McCurdy's solos are dazzling; the group turns with Duke Ellington's "Come Sunday" in a lyric showcase for Gaskin and Zawinul. The rest of the set is rippling with funk in the bumping "Walk Tall," the gospel-jazz in "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," and the souled-out "The Scene," as well as the Adderleys' gritty barroom blues "Oh Babe" to take things out. Fidelity is excellent; and, as is typical of Feldman's productions, the booklet contains rare photos, a Blumenthal's essay, and reminiscences by Cannonball pianists Hal Galper and Michael Wolf, McCurdy, and saxophonist Chris Potter.