A Florida schoolboy with a voracious appetite was nicknamed Cannibal by his classmates, and over time the word softened into Cannonball. This episode follows Julian Cannonball Adderley from a Tampa household of educators, through teenage gigs in Tallahassee alongside Ray Charles, a job as band director at Dillard High School, and leading the 36th Army Dance Band, to the 1955 night at the Cafe Bohemia when he sat in for a late saxophonist in Oscar Pettiford’s band and was crowned the heir to Charlie Parker overnight.

We unpack what bebop demands mechanically, why Miles Davis wanted Adderley’s blues-drenched alto sound, and how he served as the hearth in the living room between Davis and John Coltrane on Milestones and Kind of Blue. Then we look at the band he built with his brother Nat, the talent he nurtured from Joe Zawinul to George Duke, his refusal to hide behind his instrument, and how that philosophy produced the 1966 crossover hit Mercy, Mercy, Mercy before his death from a stroke at 46.

• How a high school band director stepped onto a New York bandstand with zero rehearsal
• Modal jazz on Kind of Blue explained as exploring one scale instead of an obstacle course
• Miles Davis playing sideman on the 1958 Blue Note album Somethin’ Else
• Soul jazz, the Wurlitzer electric piano, and why a jazz instrumental hit the pop charts
• Electric fusion, Play Misty for Me, a Kung Fu acting role, and finding a new chalkboard