Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

*

The Buckinghams made Joe Zawinul a lot of bread with their peppy cover of this extra-mellow number he wrote for the Cannonball Adderley Quintet in 1966. The Buckinghams version was a hit in the spring of 1967, during weather just like we're having in the backfilled swamp called Champaign, Illinois, by its Caucasoid settlers. So I'm putting it up here tonight as a bit of multisensory nostalgia for myself. I am a fan of the Buckinghams performance, but the original version isn't heard widely enough for my tastes. Besides, I think the Cannonball version even got some AM radio airplay in Chicago during spring 1967, but maybe on a "straight" station like WIND, WGN, or the thousand-watt wonder WBEE. So here it is.

Cannonball has long been a favorite of mine, busting onto the New York scene in the mid-50s sounding much like Charlie Parker, to my ear, without being a copycat. He was a meticulous technician on the alto, more deliberate and less of a daredevil than Bird; not as fast in terms of "clock speed," but always full of power, self-assurance, invention, and joy dee veever. There are no Cannonball acrobatics on this classic piece of soul jazz, though. The session was recorded live at "The Club," which was actually a large recording studio outfitted with a bar, tables, and invited guests for "the club atmosphere." One thing I enjoy about the whole album, which is entitled "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," of course, is how Cannon loves holding forth for the audience between numbers in his rich, stately voice. He had that easy manner with an audience that is needed to transform a great musician into a beloved entertainer.