@pjw81563 , dont skip that James Clay....
Cannonball Adderley: So long as there's a Duke Ellington you don't have advancement in jazz, you don't have modern jazz, traditional feeling, you don't have time or no time, or polyrhythms and polytonality as well as simple tonalities. I think that so long as he's around we are going to have jazz as we knew it, but I'm a little bit afraid. Our problem is just getting the people to listen. There are a great number of fine players, and there will always be fine players. What were the elements that attracted people to jazz in the first place? Let's stop and think about that. Jazz had a kind of mystique. It differed from popular music and dance music because there were surprises all the time ... there was always the spontaneity of improvisation and the excitement of people really involved in enjoying what they seemed to be doing. Among other things. Now aren't some of these same elements present in some of the popular music today? This is the thing that is of major concern to me. There are certain rock and roll, rhythm and blues groups who have exciting rhythms going on - complicated things they have a spontaneous kind of vocal improvisation even, and they have the same elements, solos that we have today, improvisation based on something new, when they get a music that complements all the other elements they have going, then I am a little bit afraid, because we have become so intellectual in our approach to jazz that it's becoming academic, and we listen to people because we know they are good and to see what they are going to teach us or what they are going to say rather than for the sheer thrill and enjoyment of feeling.
This interview was published on "THE chicago SEED" newspaper , November 1968