Being immersed in education through half of the fifties in Florida, Julian 'Cannonball' Adderly probably wouldn't have met with the same success he knew if the sax player decided against moving to New York City. At the time that he moved there - 1955 - jazz was in a transitional period, trying to work out what to do with be bop and all of it's associated trappings. Cannonball's blustery blues would play a part in its next evolution, though.

When he arrived, a virtual unknown, he was relegated to sitting in with groups that would have him. But very quickly his prowess was recognized. And at some point Miles Davis, who was looking for a replacement seeing as Coltrane had briefly departed, tapped Cannonball to record with his groups for a few notable dates - including Kind of Blue. This one recording wouldn't cement Cannonball's renown. But as opposed to his unsuccessful time leading groups in New York prior to working with Miles, Cannonball in addition to his brother Nat on cornet and an assortment of jazz's future cognoscenti embarked on a twenty year run of critical and artistic success.

The most bizarre thing about the prominence of Cannonball Adderly, though, was the fact that often times his albums were made up mostly by his sidemen's compositions. Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, released in 1966, of course sported his own tune "Sack o' Woe," but the other notable tracks on there were contributed by other folks in his band.

That, however, just means that the sax player was able to surround himself with a great many adept players and writers. The forward looking Experience in E is ample proof of that. The disc, released in 1970, while starkly different in tone and content than the aforementioned Mercy, Mercy, Mercy still used blues and grooves as a base - but to a different end. By the time that this set was recorded, jazz had already been completely electrified, brought back to its roots and freaked out. And on this date, Cannonball and his quintet look to work in the past and present. While Joe Zawinul's keys were certainly electrified by this point and Roy McCurdy took a page outta rock drumming for brief moments here, the quiet and soulful portions of this disc are the most remarkable. But as before, Cannonball didn't compose any of these tunes - Zawinul penned the title track, producer David Axelrod was responsible for "Tensity" and conductor Lalo Schifrin wrote "Dialogues for Jazz Quintet and Orchestra."

Considering that the disc sports a pretty unified sound, one must figure that between Axelrod and Schirfrin, they must have devised some way in which to constrict the inherent compositional differences of each song. And whatever they did seemed to work. Even if each sprawling track is made up of innumerable disparate sections, no single player seems to receive any sort of preferential time as a soloist.

Cannonball obviously is vociferous as ever, bleating a few notes listeners might be unaccustomed to coming from his sax. But the grooves that the band reaches amidst each of these ten plus minute tracks is more than enough reason to hunt this biscuit down.