"Autumn Leaves" (Cannonball Adderley)

Originally a French song ("Les feuilles mortes," or "The Dead Leaves") written in 1945, American lyricist Johnny Mercer gave the song English lyrics and its new title ("Autumn Leaves") in 1950.  Since that time, everyone and his brother, from Louis Armstrong to Eric Clapton, has covered it.  Sometimes ten times over.  (The site Current Research in Jazz says that it has been recorded more than 1400 times, making it the 8th most-recorded jazz standard of all time.)
This particular rendition by alto sax player Julian "Cannonball" Adderley was recorded in 1958 for Blue Note Records.  In actuality, the session was supposed to have been credited to superstar trumpeter Miles Davis.  But for contractual reasons (Davis was signed to Columbia in the late 50s), the resulting album, Somethin' Else, was credited to Adderley.  
(A year later, Adderley also would take part in the sessions that would produce Davis's modal jazz masterpiece, Kind of Blue.)
Regardless of who got top billing, Somethin' Else (and, specifically, "Autumn Leaves") represents five seasoned jazzmen playing and improvising at their collective best.
Davis, who runs the proverbial show, plays his trumpet with a Harmon mute throughout, creating this sensuous sound that is both sexy and moody, even a little sad.  It somehow feels very French, and it perfectly evokes the exact sense of longing in Mercer's lyrics, which recount memories of lost love, without ever uttering a word.  
From a technical standpoint, his soloing on this track may be some of his "cleanest" and most confident on record.  By that, I mean he had the tendency to flub notes and overreach his entire career.  
There, I've said it.  
I love Miles and his creativity, but he was not the most technically proficient trumpeter out there.  (For instance, check out his and Gil Evans's take on Gershwin's Porgy & Bess sometime.  It's ambitious and genius.  But Miles flubs notes and goes flat all over that record.)  Dizzy Gillespie, Art Farmer, Donald Byrd, Wynton Marsalis, and tons of other guys are/were a hell of a lot better at breath control and doing it fluid.  
Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox now.
For the most part, Davis sticks pretty closely to the melody on his solos (his second and final solos are slight exceptions), adding a few runs here and there. However, Adderley carves out his own path entirely, playing these haunting runs and sneaking in tasty blue notes.  It's a controlled performance but it has this lilting swing, kindling mental pictures of red and orange leaves catching the chilly Fall breeze and swirling in the air before they come in for a landing.
Hank Jones solos after Davis's second solo.  His patterns on piano actually kind of mirror the feel of Adderley's solo: controlled yet creative and swinging, too.
Art Blakey (drums) and Sam Jones (upright bass) never actually solo on this track.  However, they do provide one hell of an anchor.  Blakey (who could rip up a drum solo like no one's business) simply sticks to brushes, providing this swinging shuffle that perfectly captures the crunch of fallen leaves under one's feet.  Jones mostly provides a walking bassline throughout that is subtle and tasteful.  The two places that Jones varies from this are in the intro and the coda--the latter being my absolute favorite part of the song.  
In the coda, Sam Jones's bluesy riff and Blakey's brushes beneath Hank Jones's delicate piano are as smooth and velvety as aged Scotch.  Then Davis's horn comes in for one final appearance, and it's bathed in sultry reverb and pure blues.  (It's almost worth skipping ahead to about the 9:00 mark and just letting that part soak into your brain.)  It's 2 minutes of everything that I love about Cool Jazz: sophisticated, oblique, soulful, and hypnotic.
It's just a great rendition of a classic tune.