My commute is 40 minutes door to door and Speak No Evil is 42, close enough.
I queued it up this morning, and by the time I hit the highway "Witch Hunt" was already rolling, and by the time I parked the last seconds of "Wild Flower" were fading out. The album times itself to the drive, and that's not a metaphor, that's just the math.
Wayne Shorter recorded it on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1964, and the whole thing got cut in one day at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, released on Blue Note in 1966. The lineup is ridiculous, with Shorter on tenor, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. Three of those guys were in Miles's Second Great Quintet at the time, Elvin was Coltrane's drummer, and that's the room.
Six tracks, no filler, and every tune is a Shorter original.
"Witch Hunt" opens it and the head sticks immediately, where you could hum it after one listen, and Hubbard solos first, already in mid flight with no warm up. Then Shorter comes in and you remember what a strange writer he is, because he doesn't play licks, he plays sentences, and they don't always resolve where you expect.
"Fee Fi Fo Fum" is the swing tune that walks, with Ron Carter holding it together while everyone else stretches, and this is the one I want playing when I merge onto the highway.
"Dance Cadaverous" slows things down into a waltz where Hancock plays beautiful chord voicings, and the whole tune feels like it's reaching for something just out of range.
The title track is the centerpiece, modal and brooding, with Elvin Jones in full conversation with the soloists instead of just keeping time. Shorter's tenor here sounds like nobody else, not Coltrane and not Rollins, his own thing.
"Infant Eyes" is the ballad, written for his daughter Miyako, built out of three nine bar phrases, which is a weird structure for a ballad, but you don't hear the math, you just hear how tender it is, the sweetest six and a half minutes of the morning.
"Wild Flower" closes it out, also a waltz, where Shorter plays the melody once and lets the band loose, and Hubbard's solo here is one of his best on Blue Note, and he had a lot of those.
Here's the thing about this record. Shorter wrote all six tunes but he doesn't dominate, because he's listening and so is everybody else. The interplay between him and Hubbard on the front line is some of the cleanest you'll hear, and they trade phrases like they've been doing it for years, which they had, going back to the Jazz Messengers.
Speak No Evil is a Blue Note classic but it doesn't sound like one. There's no soul jazz groove and no boogaloo. It's harder than that, more ambiguous, and you can hear Shorter writing toward Nefertiti and Adam's Apple, reaching for that vocabulary here.
For a 40 minute commute it's the perfect length. You don't need to skip anything, you don't need to plan a second album, you just hit play, you drive, and you get there.
It's on Spotify and Apple Music. The original Blue Note vinyl is collectible but the Music Matters reissue and the Tone Poet pressing are both excellent if you want it physical, and the full review is up on Vinyl Standard if you want more.
Tomorrow morning, play it again, because it still works.