The Price You Got to Pay to Be Free is an album by the Cannonball Adderley Quintet recorded, in part, at the 1970 Monterey Jazz Festival.
A portion of the performance is memorialized in the 1971 Clint Eastwood movie Play Misty For Me. Additional "live in-studio" tracks were recorded the following month at the Capitol Records Tower, in Hollywood, to stretch the Monterey material into a double album. The album features Adderley with brother Nat Adderley, Joe Zawinul, Walter Booker and Roy McCurdy and guest appearances by Bob West and Cannon's 15-year-old nephew Nat Adderley Jr. who wrote and performed the gospel-influenced protest title song.
The album peaked at No. 169 on the Billboard Top LPs in early 1971, during a two-week stay.
The Allmusic review by Richard S. Ginell awarded the album 3ý stars and states: "Cannonball was a populist at heart, and his generosity of spirit shines through this often deliciously diverse album, which ranges wildly from flat-out soul to Brazilian music to a cautious toedip into the avant-garde.... This is a fascinating contemporary snapshot of the Quintet, whose later recordings are too casually dismissed these days."
All compositions by Julian "Cannonball" Adderley except as indicated