Nancy Wilson & Cannonball Adderley

Nancy Wilson & Cannonball Adderley

Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley had worked together on a number of live dates and had enjoyed the experience sufficiently well enough to agree to replicate it in the studio at a later point in time. That time came in 1961, when both were sharing the same manager and record label, thus making a recording collaboration so much easier to arrange.

Recorded in New York City over the course of a four day session (vocals tracks were laid down on 27 and 29 of June, instrumental tracks on 23 and 24 August), the album was intended to feature Nancy ‘as a sort of easy-going third horn’. The vocal tracks (there are six vocal tracks) are the album’s undoubted stand out tracks, with Nancy’s vocals floating on top of a wonderful musical bed provided by Cannonball and his excellent core musicians. Yet the five instrumentals are not to be overlooked either, with Joe Zawinul’s expert piano playing a delightful bonus.

The album was a major success when originally released in 1962, peaking at #30 on the Billboard chart, something of a breakthrough for both Nancy and Cannonball. Indeed the concept worked well enough for Nancy to record a further collaborative album with Ramsey Lewis more than twenty years later.