Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley was born September 15, 1928, in Tampa, Florida; his nickname is a corruption of "cannibal," a high school tribute to his voracious appetite. His family moved to Tallahassee when his parents took teaching positions at Florida A&M University, where he and his brother, cornetist Nat Adderley, played alongside Ray Charles during Charles's own early years there. Cannonball was a local legend in Florida before relocating to New York in 1955, where he soon became a key member of Miles Davis's band, appearing on the epochal Kind of Blue (1959).

As a leader, Adderley perfected soul jazz, a more accessible, gospel- and blues-soaked variant of bebop built for a wider audience without sacrificing improvisational depth. That approach reached its commercial peak in 1966 with "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," written for him by his keyboardist Joe Zawinul (who would go on to co-found Weather Report). The track became a genuine crossover hit on both the pop and R&B charts.

Adderley suffered a stroke from a cerebral hemorrhage in the summer of 1975 and died four weeks later, on August 8, 1975, at St. Mary Mercy Medical Center in Gary, Indiana, at age 46.

Adderley's soul-jazz style, blues and gospel feeling folded directly into hard bop's harmonic sophistication, gave jazz one of its clearest paths to mainstream pop and R&B radio in "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," a template later artists across this project's catalog, from soul-jazz organists to jazz-funk bands, drew on directly.