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Wayne Shorter: An Essential Top Ten Albums
Courtesy Daniel Sheehan
With hindsight, a fitting nickname for Shorter would be The Mysterious Traveller, after the piece he wrote for Weather Report. It references his search for self-awareness and cosmic truth, his love of superhero comics and, above all, the vibe of idiosyncrasy going on outright otherness that permeates his music.
Terence Blanchard
trumpetb.1962
Wayne Shorter
saxophone1933 - 2023
Anyway, there it is. Absence is dedicated to Shorter for "being brilliant" and one cannot argue with that. Shorter has been shining a light as a soloist and as a composer and arranger since the late 1950s under his own name and as a featured sideman;
Art Blakey
drums1919 - 1990
"
data-original-title="" title="">The Jazz Messengers (1959—1964), 
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
Weather Report
band / ensemble / orchestraGiven his long stints as a sideman, and considering he released his first own-name album in 1960, there is some justification in calling Shorter a reluctant bandleader. A more accurate description, however, would be a genius musician with his ego firmly under control. This is a result, in part, of Shorter's many years practicing Japanese Nichiren Buddhism. A key Buddhist tenet is the idea of life being a learning curve. A Buddhist is a perpetual student until enlightment is reached.
So, for twenty-five years after releasing his first album, and for twenty years after releasing his first universally acknowledged masterpiece, Shorter was happy to spend most of his professional life working under leaders who he felt could teach him something, releasing his own albums almost on the side. "I had the most fun playing with
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
John Patitucci
bassb.1959
Brian Blade
drumsb.1970
Danilo Pérez
pianob.1966
Joe Zawinul
keyboards1932 - 2007
Herbie Hancock
pianob.1940
With hindsight, rather than Mr Gone or Mr Weird, a fitting nickname for Shorter would be The Mysterious Traveller, after the piece he wrote for Weather Report. It references his search for self-awareness and cosmic truth, his lifelong love of superhero comics and, above all, the vibe of idiosyncrasy going on outright otherness that has permeated his music since Night Dreamer (Blue Note, 1964).
Shorter's first purple period under his own name—unlike most musicians, he has enjoyed two such periods, with the second still in full bloom in 2021—was in the mid and late 1960s on Blue Note. Any one of the eleven albums he recorded for the label between 1964 and 1970 could be included in this Top Ten. Just five are included below, so as to make room for the second belle epoque. This began in 2000 when, after an all-consuming time with Weather Report and a generally underwhelming own-name tenure with Columbia, Shorter formed his current quartet with Perez, Patitucci and Blade. On Verve, he hit new creative peaks which continued, and indeed have escalated, since he returned to Blue Note in 2009.
Shorter is well known for his gnomic comments and a disinterest in talking about the mechanics of music making. But some of his pronouncements are as clear as you could wish. One such is, "To hell with the rules, I'm going for the unknown." Another is, "Jazz shouldn't have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that's required to sound like jazz. For me, the word 'jazz' means, 'I dare you.'"
Shorter's most resonant sound bite, however, may be something he said to Blumenthal in 2002. "I'm ready to kick ass," said Shorter. "I'm going to be seventy in August 2004 and it feels like [adopting a conspiratorial voice] there's a red door down there, waiting for me. But before I go through that door, I'm going to go to the end of the line and stick with what I'm doing."
Shorter has been as good as his word, and he is not done yet. Although currently not performing, he is understood to have written a jazz-meets-classical opera in collaboration with bassist
Esperanza Spalding
bassb.1984
Wayne Shorter: An Essential Top Ten Albums
This list purposely excludes any of Shorter's albums with Art Blakey, Miles Davis or Weather Report, from which at least two more Essential Top Tens could be selected. Unless indicated otherwise, all cited tracks were written by Shorter.
Wayne Shorter Introducing Wayne Shorter
Vee Jay, 1960
It is always worth having the debut album by a favourite artist on your shelves. Little acorns, hear them grow. There are, in fact, two not-so-little acorns here, in the form of Shorter and his soon-to-be fellow Jazz Messenger, trumpeter
Lee Morgan
trumpet1938 - 1972
Wynton Kelly
piano1931 - 1971
Paul Chambers
bass, acoustic1935 - 1969
Jimmy Cobb
drums1929 - 2020
Wayne Shorter Night Dreamer
Blue Note, 1964
Five years and two Vee Jay albums on, Shorter makes his Blue Note debut and his first major statement. Morgan is back, joined by three past or current members of John Coltrane's quartet: pianist
McCoy Tyner
piano1938 - 2020
Reggie Workman
bassb.1937
Elvin Jones
drums1927 - 2004
JuJu (Blue Note, 1965), recorded two months after Night Dreamer, with the same lineup minus Morgan, is just as good.
Wayne Shorter Speak No Evil
Blue Note, 1966
A 360-degree masterpiece, Speak No Evil is one of the top half dozen Blue Note albums of the era. The disc was recorded in December 1964, not long after Shorter had joined Miles Davis. In the eight months following Night Dreamer, Shorter's tone has shed most of its Coltrane echoes; it is no less robust but has taken on a distinctive, velvety quality. The lineup includes two colleagues from Davis' group, pianist Herbie Hancock and bassist
Ron Carter
bassb.1937
Freddie Hubbard
trumpet1938 - 2008
Robert Glasper
pianob.1978
Compositionally, Shorter reached a new peak on Speak No Evil. "Witch Hunt," "Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum," "Dance Cadaverous," "Speak No Evil" and "Infant Eyes" are simply sublime. Davis, looking for an inhouse composer, recruited Shorter at precisely the right moment.
Wayne Shorter The All Seeing Eye
Blue Note, 1966
As with Night Dreamer, Shorter's concept for The All Seeing Eye, his second virtual suite, has a Venn diagram relationship to John Coltrane's contemporaneous inspirations. Recorded in autumn 1965, eight months after A Love Supreme was released, Shorter's album is a darker affair on which he fronts his largest ensemble, and writes his most turbulent arrangements, to date. Three other horns complete the frontline—Freddie Hubbard (trumpet and flugelhorn), " data-original-title="" title="">Grachan Moncur (trombone) and
James Spaulding
saxophone, altob.1937
Joe Chambers
drumsb.1942
Alan Shorter
flugelhorn
Wayne Shorter Adam's Apple
Blue Note, 1966
A relatively easy-going affair, Adam's Apple is the yin to The All Seeing Eye's yang. The band is a quartet, completed by Herbie Hancock, Reggie Workman and Joe Chambers. Shorter has never been a bar-walking tenor player, but he gets close on the opening title track, which parallels Lee Morgan's hit "The Sidewinder." Hancock can get as funky as you like—as he demonstrated on guitarist
Grant Green
guitar1935 - 1979
Jimmy Rowles
piano1918 - 1996
Wayne Shorter Super Nova
Blue Note, 1969
At this point, things get pretty tangled up with Miles Davis. Three of Shorter's pieces on Super Nova, his first journey into fusion under his own name, were originally recorded by Davis, with Shorter, in summer 1967, but were shelved until 1976, when they became side one of the Davis LP Water Babies (Columbia). The three tunes are "Water Babies," "Capricorn" and "Sweet Pea." Fast forward to autumn 1969 and the sessions for Super Nova. By now, Shorter was wondering whether the Davis recordings would ever get released, so he rerecorded all three pieces for his own album. The personnel is electric-Davisian going on Weather Reportish. It includes
John McLaughlin
guitarb.1942
Sonny Sharrock
guitar, electric1940 - 1994
Chick Corea
piano1941 - 2021
Jack DeJohnette
drumsb.1942
Miroslav Vitous
bassb.1947
Airto Moreira
percussionb.1941
Wayne Shorter Alegria
Verve, 2003
In 2000, Shorter announced his bounce back from the Columbia years with the formation of what has proved to be a long-lasting acoustic quartet with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade. Footprints Live! (Verve, 2002), recorded on tour in 2001, remains a great calling card. But Alegria, on which the quartet is augmented, but never overwhelmed, by woodwind, brass and string ensembles, has all the grace and grit one could hope for in Shorter's first acoustic studio album in almost thirty-five years. The approachable sophistication of Shorter's arrangements, which were wasted on
Marcus Miller
bassb.1959
Wayne Shorter Quartet Beyond The Sound Barrier
Verve, 2005
Recorded live on tour by the quartet between 2002 and 2004, Beyond The Sound Barrier is the companion piece to Footprints Live! . It differs from, and is arguably more impressive than, the earlier album in two respects. In 2001 the emphasis was on evergreens from Shorter's back catalogue, "Footprints," "Valse Triste," "Masqualero" and "Sanctuary" among them. On the 2002 -2004 tours, new originals are included. Perhaps more importantly, Beyond The Sound Barrier chronicles the leap forward the quartet has taken as a unit during its still relatively brief existence. Every track is in essence a group improvisation; there is no sense of leader and rhythm section or lead and supporting instruments. The dynamic harks back, in a good way, to the Miles Davis quintet, featuring Shorter, which recorded Nefertiti (Columbia, 1968), where on "Nefertiti," and to a lesser extent on "Fall" and "Pinocchio," the conventional relationship between the instruments is reconfigured.
Wayne Shorter Quartet Without A Net
Blue Note, 2013
Recorded live in Europe in 2011, Without A Net has Shorter back where he (almost) began, on Blue Note, this time with a quartet which has been together for eleven years and yet has retained every ounce of its founding exploratory approach. Indeed, moving forward, each new album the group has released sounds more adventurous and in the moment than the one before. Six of the pieces are Shorter originals, and include another spin on the golden oldie "Orbits;" two more are group compositions; the ninth is a cover of Vincent Youmans' theme tune for the 1933 movie Flying Down To Rio, at just shy of thirteen minutes the second longest track on the album. The longest, at twenty-three minutes, is Shorter's "Pegasus," which was recorded in 2010 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, with the quartet augmented by the woodwind quintet Imani Winds. It is revisited in expanded form on what, at the time of writing in September 2021, is Shorter's latest album and which is, perhaps, his magnum opus....
Wayne Shorter Emanon
Blue Note, 2018
Emanon was originally released as a 3 CD box set which included a seventy-four-page graphic novel. Disc one, which comprises a four-movement, fifty-minute suite, was recorded in the studio in 2016 by the quartet augmented by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Discs two and three were recorded by the quartet live in London, still sounding out there after all the years together. The graphic novel, a collaboration with DC Comics artist Randy DuBurke, is a companion artefact to disc one's suite and is the closest we have got to date to an exposition on paper of Shorter's take on the meaning of life. It tells the story of a superhero, Emanon (the reverse spelling of No Name), who takes on the bad guys and promotes truth and self-awareness. As noted above, 1966's The All Seeing Eye was heavy shit. Fifty years on, it gets heavier... and The Mysterious Traveller strides on.
Tags
Building a Jazz Library
Wayne Shorter
Chris May
Terence Blanchard
Art Blakey
Jazz Messengers
Miles Davis
Weather Report
John Coltrane
John Patitucci
Brian Blade
Danilo Perez
Joe Zawinul
Herbie Hancock
lee morgan
Wynton Kelly
Paul Chambers
Jimmy Cobb
McCoy Tyner
Reggie Workman
Elvin Jones
Ron Carter
Freddie Hubbard
Robert Glasper
Grachan Moncur lll
James Spaulding
Joe Chambers
Alan Shorter
Grant Green
Jimmy Rowles
john mclaughlin
Sonny Sharrock
Chick Corea
Jack DeJohnette
Miroslav Vitous
Airto Moreira
Marcus Miller
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