Birthday Flower

Posted onNovember 27, 2011 - 7:13 am by Admin | 0 Comments

We’re going to jump ahead now, past the heyday of the Jazz Messengers, to Wayne Shorter’s first solo release “Night Dreamer.” On days when it’s not John Coltrane, Shorter gets my vote for greatest tenor saxophone player of all time. Ditto soprano sax which, on the heels of Coltrane, Shorter established as a viable color in the jazz palette. And, on any given day he gets my vote as modern jazz’s pre-eminent composer.

Shorter’s gift for arranging, using counterpoint and harmony in ways previously unheard, was evident in his time with Art Blakey. His tenure with the Jazz Messengers from ’59-’64 yielded the powerful, energetic, gorgeously arranged hard-bop that defined the era. During the life of this band Miles Davis had been persistently after Blakey about Wayne Shorter. The explanation lies in the output of the second great Miles Davis Quintet (’65-’68) as well as the world shaking line-up’s to immediately follow, throughout which Shorter was musical director. Both Blakey and Miles, who’d worked and played together while building hard-bop into the house of jazz for the 50’s and much of the 60’s, understood that somehow it was the presence, the understated genius of Wayne Shorter that was to take the music to the next plateau.

1964 was the transition, the year he left the Messengers and began rehearsing with Miles. Somewhere in there, he also began his solo run for Blue Note; this year alone he recorded the first several albums, “Night Dreamer,” “Juju,” and “Speak No Evil,” three of the most dynamic, musical records in jazz. It’s a wonder he was able to express (and deliver) such a variety of musical ideas and nuance in such a compressed period – until the first recordings with the Miles Davis Quintet come out, so starkly apart from everything else; music spoken in an entirely new language. Wayne Shorter lived up to his given responsibilities in hard and then post-bop before switching universes.


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