Julian 'Cannonball' Adderley didn't always get a respectful critical press. A natural communicator of the joy of making music, he had none of the angst of John Coltrane, his sparring partner in the great Miles Davis groups that recorded Milestones and Kind of Blue. And where Davis was withdrawn and moody, Adderley was jovial.
His ebullience meant the more earnest jazz fan dismissed him as merely a populariser, but his peers got the point.
'He had a certain spirit,' said Davis. 'You couldn't put your finger on it, but it was there in his playing every night.' Phil Woods observed simply: 'He was the baddest thing we'd ever heard.'
Another fan is Tom Scott, who writes in the sleeve note to Cannon Reloaded - An All Star Celebration of Cannonball Adderley: 'He had a big robust sound on the alto sax and possessed a blistering technique, always knowing how and when to use it. He could infuse an otherwise trivial melody with passion and soul or, if the song called for it, burn the house down with lightning fast riffs, never repeating himself.'
Scott is well tuned in to both Adderley the artist and Adderley the populist. After all, there was a time when Scott on tenor, alto and soprano saxes was probably the most widely heard reed player in popular music. As well as leading his group the LA Express, which backed Joni Mitchell on some of her best jazzy recordings, and being a founder member of the Blues Brothers Band, Scott has appeared on countless fusion jazz albums as well as on pop records by Paul, George and Ringo, Barbra Streisand, the Carpenters, Quincy Jones and more.
Often his solos have turned numbers into hits. That's him blowing on Carole King's Jazzman, Blondie's Rapture, and Whitney Houston's Saving All My Love for You. He also wrote and performed Gotcha, the theme for the TV series Starsky and Hutch.
Adderley was a huge influence on Scott, and with Cannon Reloaded on Concord, his first studio album since 2002's New Found Freedom, he pays tribute to a musical hero. He has assembled quite a band for the purpose - fellow jazz-fusion session veterans drummer Steve Gadd, bassist Marcus Miller and keyboardist George Duke, and younger players in organist Larry Goldings and trumpeter Terence Blanchard. Dave Carpenter takes over the bass on Stars Fell on Alabama and I Should Care, and Nancy Wilson is featured as guest vocalist on two tracks.
