Pepper Adams

condition (record/cover): NM / EX- (light foxing on back)

Insert included. No obi.

Named for Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, who had died the year before, and played by a man who never once softened his sound to make anyone comfortable. Pepper Adams made the baritone saxophone into a bop instrument through sheer force of line: fast, dry, hard-edged, with a tone that sits somewhere between a bassoon and a car horn and swings harder than either has any right to. Julian is Adams in his prime working the standard quartet format, and the pleasure of it is entirely in the phrasing. Nobody else built solos this way. Nobody else got that particular gravelly warmth out of the horn.

Japanese pressing on Enja, laminated sleeve and obi-era production values. The baritone player other baritone players still talk about in hushed tones.