the WAYNE SHORTER thread

There’s something almost cosmic for me about the fact that he’s a common thread between the Miles Davis quintet, my favorite Steely Dan récord, Joni Mitchell and Milton Nascimento, not to mention art Blakey and Brian blade.

Timely thread--just finished his biography. What a weirdo / genius / original. I recommend the book to anyone with even a passing interest in the guy. It's an authorized bio, so not a lot of "dirt" and occasionally borders on hagiography, but if anyone deserves sainthood it's Wayne so it didn't bother me much

what's it called? I'd love to give it a read

Footprints: The Life & Work of Wayne Shorter, by Michelle Mercer. Hope you enjoy it!

favorite part: learning that, as a kid, Wayne created his own sci-fi comic book (there are a few pics of this too!)

any revive that inspires me to dig out Adam's Apple is a good 'un.

xp to PP thanks, will give it a read, for sure

I'm still deep in a Shorter bender, and finding 'etc.' an incredibly strong album, easily as good as any other of his BN releases of the time.

To my ears it's the most Coltrane-like record he ever cut, with a very lean quartet and some Trane-inspired sounds on stuff like the title cut and 'Indian Song'.

It's another testament to the embarrassment of riches that Blue Note amassed that they could leave it in the can for over a decade before it was released and more or less forgotten about until the digital era.

TY for getting me to dig out my copy of Etcetera... and Adam's Apple, which I remembered as also being a leanish traneish quartet rec - and indeed, virtually the same group - Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Joe Chambers, and either Cecil McBee (Etc) or Reggie Workman (AA) on bass. Chambers is a really interesting drummer I think, and his separateness from Elvin Jones does distinguish these albs, or help make them v. much their own good thing.

Thanks, I just happened to listen to Juju, Speak No Evil (still my favorite by far), and the Soothsayer yesterday. Never heard Etcetera until now.

What’s the story of him and his favorite movies again, that he’s watched The Red Shoes about 100 times?

The drumming on the title cut of Et Cetera has a hell of a lot more to do with Spanish Key than Elvin Jones - it's kind of amazing that way- very propulsive but with a light touch. I've listened to it over and over in the last few days alone...

'Barracudas' is great, I love Joe Chambers' playing. Speaking of which, The Almoravid is on Spotify, so that's my next stop. Such a crazy record. The first track sounds like M'Boom meets Steve Reich, which basically means it sounds like Tortoise. Breaking 4/4 down into all kinds of 7s and 9s in a really cool way.

oh man, thanks for the Chambers tip, I'll be playing this in short order.

ok want to give many thanks to you Jordan for the Chambers album. so very, very good.

Cool! It really is a special one.

Fun to hear Richard Davis on electric bass too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/arts/music/wayne-shorter-emanon.html

You’re fond of talking about eternity, and the need to recognize how fleeting and comparatively inconsequential our current moment is. How do you use music to connect with what’s beyond the moment?

To me, a song is not finished. To me, there’s no such thing as a finished anything. All of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, to me, are one. I think of it as having no beginning and no end. Do you know that it took Beethoven eight years to get the first several notes of the second movement of his Fifth Symphony together? So it was no deity that went through him and said, “O.K., genius!” You’ve got to challenge inspiration not yet begun to come out. There’s all kinds of closets, you know.

You hear about people saying, “You gotta get things fast because you only live once.” I think that’s a misnomer right there. Words like “only,” “never,” and all that, they’re crutches. We have to have people who are willing to — I don’t want to say it like this but — go down with the ship. Don’t worry about wealth and fame and all that stuff. It’s up to the person who’s being creative to find ways to emerge and shake up the world of wealth. And we have to do it ourselves. Want to change this stuff? Let’s change it ourselves. It’s like Miles Davis said: “Don’t you ask nobody for nothin’.”

I'm not really interested in the accompanying graphic novel/concept stuff, but his new epic treble album is sounding pretty great on first listen.

The 4 part suite for quartet and chamber orchestra bit of this album has grown on me a lot, haven't even got around to the other 2 discs yet. But the band includes Danilo Perez, so that should be good.

"As an aside, I always loved that in most record store jazz sections it went:

Bobby Short
Wayne Shorter"

hah!

LOL

Of course, a REALLY good jazz rec shop would go

Bobby Short
Alan Shorter

Poor Alan had to live in the shadow of a ridiculously talented younger sibling and then died relatively young.

Both of Alan's albums, Orgasm and Tes Esat, are really good and worth hearing - and they're both on Spotify.

When @milesdavis and I talked, he would ask me a question. 'Hey Wayne -- do you ever get tired of playing music that sounds like music?' Before I answered him, he said, 'I know what you mean.' Like, he's answering his own question. 🕵️‍♀️👣💫

— Wayne Shorter (@Wayne_Shorter) March 13, 2019

Shorter's quartet may be one of the most extraordinary units I've ever heard. I truly cannot get enough of this music.

absolute unit

As I said upthread, they really are one of the free-est bands in current jazz. They can and will go anywhere.

Has Shorter ever been on a bad record? Later Weather Report stuff maybe? I haven't heard anything I didn't like.

I <3 Wayne Shorter so much

Def one of the great bands of the early 21st century.

Looking at his wiki discography, this was my guess for the worst record he's been on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swing_of_Delight

But now I'm listening, and it's kind of sick (Carlos Santana playing fantasy camp with Miles Davis' second classic quintet)

Is Brian Blade still in the band?

Supernova seems to be the one I go back to a lot, gorgeous album.

OMG I am a longtime STAN of Supernova. I wrote a thing about it for my college paper.

Is Brian Blade still in the band?

He played here last year, I think ...

four years ago is when i last saw him, at that year's jazzfest, and he still sounded great. it was just him and herbie onstage, and they played an entirely improvised single-"song" set, it was astonishing and bent my mind permanently

i have spent the last four years hoping someone recorded in in its entirety but no dice. however i did just find this clip of it on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3agp0ejoGs

i was so depressed that weekend bc i was still reeling from a bad breakup the previous year and prince had just died and that set absolutely confirmed for me that music is the healing force of the universe

that was amazing

just heard he passed away :(
what a legend

Beyond question.

so sad he's gone, RIP

One of the best random purchases I ever made was of Native Dancer about 20 years ago. I can list five or six great albums, but I'll remember him for his mid to late '60s work with Miles. Sorcerer, Nefertiti, Miles in the Sky -- what a fucking run. And the title track "Nefertiti" is all his -- that one's repetitions still melts my mind.

really was a legend, so distinct in so many styles

OTM re: "Nefertiti." I've been doing a deep Miles dive lately, and that title track is such a stunner. xp

Imagine listening to "Nefertiti" live.

It’s overlooked a little, partly because he was known as much for being a performer as a composer, but I think there’s an argument to be made that Wayne Shorter might have been the greatest composer in the history of jazz.

Davis:

"Wayne is a real composer. He writes scores, writes the parts for everybody just as he wants them to sound. ... Wayne also brought in a kind of curiosity about working with musical rules. If they didn't work, then he broke them, but with musical sense; he understood that freedom in music was the ability to know the rules in order to bend them to your own satisfaction and taste."

Truly one of one, RIP.

I still haven't spent enough time with his late period group with Brian Blade, John Patitucci, and Danilo Perez. The way they worked felt so mysterious and at the highest levels of interplay, abstract and yet totally together.

Let’s not forget his run on Blue Note “Speak No Evil” slays