Cannonball Adderley only recorded once as a leader for Blue Note, but this sampler manages to cover most of his prime years. There are cuts taken from the Riverside catalog ("Au Privave" with
Wes Montgomery, "Sack O' Woe" and "Gemini"), plus
Adderley's big Capitol hit "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," "One for Daddy-O" (taken from the Blue Note set with
Miles Davis as a sideman), and a previously unreleased "Bohemia After Dark" from 1966. The latter (a hot uptempo version taken from a Japanese concert) will drive completists mad, since they will undoubtedly already own all of the rest of the material. For beginners, this is an excellent overview of the exuberant altoist's bop-oriented years, before he gradually switched to funkier sounds. ~ Scott Yanow