When Nat and his older brother Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley tried to start a quintet in the mid-fifties, hardly any one was interested in the newcomers from Florida. And that ,in retrospect, was good. Because the trumpeter Nat landed in this way in the bands of Jay Jay Johnson and George Shearing, and there refined his art of elegant blues-bopping ensemble playing. The alto saxophonist Cannonball in turn became Miles Davis' counterpart totenor saxophonist John Coltrane for a good four years. When the brothers came together again in 1959, they had both matured and were ready to lead one of the most successful jazz bands of the 1960s. Unlike experimental colleagues who tested the limits of music, but more and more lost their audience, the Cannonball Adderley Quintet managed to reach a large audience with hits like “This Here”, “Work Song”, “Jive Samba” and above all “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy”. Nowonder, then, that a wave of applause greeted the Cannonball Adderley Quintet in the Stuttgart Liederhalle in 1969. Completed by bassist Victor Gaskin and drummer Roy McCurdy, they had brought with them just the right repertoire.