Not so fast...
That's overlooking his involvement in the Civil Rights movement in general & with Jesse Jackson ("The Country Preacher" who he can be heard referring to as "our pastor" in one of his ongoing monologues) in particular. Cannonball was definitely moving in circles other than purely "jazz" ones, and he was definitely out of the "New York" loop, and had been for some time. This was a road band, and the road took them all kinds of places. and given the climate of the times, I don't think that he'd still be playing "Dizzy's Business" or such. That was then, and then wasn't what was happening now. Could you see him playing something like "Waltz For Debby" or "Never Will I Marry" to a Southern, predominately African-American crowd in a club in, say, 1969?
Such a crowd, remember, would have been "closer to home" for him in some ways than an urban "jazz crowd". If anything, the "heebie-jeebies" that Chuck describes getting from Cannonball (and which I understand to some point - "Dancing In The Dark" from Somethin' Else kinda does that to me, to be honest, and its not the only one...) is something that I hear in much more in his earlier work. There is a flavor of "gauchness" to some of that work, like a hip "country boy" who hadn't yet figured out how to "tone it down" to a requistely "urban" level (this was an ongoing criticism of Adderley in some circles, remember). Playing some "down home" "country soul" type stuff (which is the type of popular Soul music he mostly echoed, not the slick pop of Motown or the neo-Africanisms of James Brown) might, might, well have been a bit of personal liberation for him as well - a chance to take off his shoes and run barefoot through the country mud for a little bit, if you know what I mean (and if you don't, well, all I can tell you is that you're missing one of the finer things in life!). "Making money" is but one part of what he was doing, I'm convinced.
And I don't doubt your description of what you heard at the gig you describe, but when I heard him in 1974, the program was nowhere near as heterogeneous as what you seem to have heard. A record like 1970's The Price You Got to Pay to Be Free, unfortunately edited though it is, paints an entirely different picture as well, and it's not the only album that does. Maybe you heard him in the wrong room and/or with the wrong crowd and/or on the wrong night?