Wayne Shorter

The first Blue Note record and a genuine leap forward. The Vee-Jay albums were excellent hard bop; Night Dreamer is something else, a record where the compositions and the playing have entered a different zone of sophistication.

McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones bring their Coltrane Quartet association into this session, and the fit with Shorter's music is perfect. Tyner's dense, quartal voicings under Shorter's saxophone create a harmonic atmosphere unlike anything in the Vee-Jay recordings, while Jones's drumming creates the same surging polyrhythmic backdrop he provided in Coltrane's band. Lee Morgan is brilliant here, adapting his hardbop directness to the more mysterious compositional environment without losing any of his fire.

Night Dreamer announces the arrival of a major composer-improviser working at the highest level of the music, and it does so with a confidence that never feels forced. Every note sounds inevitable after the fact, which is the hallmark of great compositional thinking. The Blue Note period was about to produce some of the most important records in jazz, and this is where it begins.

No trumpet. Just Shorter's tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman, and Elvin Jones, and the result is one of the most intense and focused records in post-bop jazz. The decision to strip away the front line is not an act of economy; it is an act of total confidence. Shorter had enough compositional ideas and enough improvisational authority to fill the space that a trumpet would normally occupy, and the quartet format demands that each musician contribute to the collective sound more fully than a quintet arrangement allows.

The compositions are more abstract than Night Dreamer, their harmonic logic more difficult to trace on first listening. But JuJu rewards patient engagement. "JuJu" itself opens the record with a melody that seems to gather force as it moves, Tyner's left-hand voicings and Workman's bass creating a foundation that is harmonically dense without being static. By the time Jones enters fully, the music has built to a collective intensity that few jazz records of the period match.

This is the first of Shorter's absolute masterpieces as a leader. The Coltrane Quartet connection is audible throughout, but JuJu is not an imitation of Coltrane's approach; it is a parallel response to the same musical problems, arrived at through a fundamentally different compositional sensibility. Where Coltrane built toward transcendence through accretion, Shorter constructed mysteries and left them unresolved.

This is the record most listeners reach for first when they discover Wayne Shorter, and the instinct is correct. Speak No Evil is the most immediately accessible of his Blue Note albums while still operating at the compositional level of JuJu or Night Dreamer. The quintet of Shorter, Hubbard, Hancock, Carter, and Jones is arguably the most accomplished group he assembled during this period, five musicians at the absolute peak of their individual powers, each contributing something irreplaceable to the collective sound.

Herbie Hancock's piano playing on this record is extraordinary, his comping under Shorter's solos a masterclass in how to support without constraining. He voices chords in ways that imply multiple harmonic interpretations simultaneously, leaving Shorter free to choose his path through the changes. Ron Carter's bass anchors the ensemble with the kind of understated authority that only becomes fully apparent when you try to imagine the record without him. Freddie Hubbard burns on the five tracks he plays on, sitting out the ballad "Infant Eyes", but it is Shorter's saxophone that gives the record its character: searching, slightly melancholy, deeply focused.

Recorded on Christmas Eve 1964 and not released until June 1966, Speak No Evil is the record that most fully realizes the potential announced in Night Dreamer. If you are going to own one Wayne Shorter Blue Note album, this is the one, though owning just one would be an act of serious self-deprivation.

The largest ensemble Shorter led during his mid-sixties Blue Note run, expanded to a septet with trombone and alto saxophone added to the core quintet. The expansion is not mere decoration; Shorter uses the additional voices to write more complex contrapuntal textures, the four horns weaving together in ways that recall the dense arrangements of the Gil Evans orchestral records while remaining firmly in the post-bop language of the preceding Blue Note albums.

Grachan Moncur III on trombone is the key addition, his instrument's darker timbre providing a counterweight to Hubbard's trumpet that reshapes the ensemble sound completely. James Spaulding on alto adds a nimbleness to the upper register that Shorter's tenor doesn't cover. The compositions themselves continue the trajectory of the Blue Note years: "Genesis" and "Mephistopheles" (the latter written by his brother Alan) have the same compressed, mysterious quality as the best tracks from JuJu and Speak No Evil, but deployed in a larger format that opens new textural possibilities.

The All Seeing Eye is not quite at the level of JuJu or Speak No Evil, partly because the larger ensemble creates logistics that occasionally constrain the collective improvisation. But it is essential for understanding the full scope of Shorter's Blue Note ambitions, and the writing here is as sophisticated as anything in the period.

Back to the quartet format and arguably Shorter's most compositionally varied Blue Note album. Adam's Apple contains some of his most groove-oriented writing alongside some of his most abstract, and the juxtaposition doesn't feel incoherent because the playing is so consistently at the highest level. "Footprints" is here in its original recording, and hearing it in this context is a reminder that it was not written as a piece of accessible jazz but as one more entry in Shorter's ongoing compositional project.

Herbie Hancock's presence is even more central on this record than on Speak No Evil, his piano essentially acting as a co-composer in the way he reharmonizes and reshapes the changes in real time. Joe Chambers is a different kind of drummer than Elvin Jones: where Jones surges and polyrhythmically floods the space, Chambers has a more subtle, painterly quality that suits the variety of material on this album. Reggie Workman's bass is a constant source of interest, his walking lines on the uptempo pieces carrying tremendous harmonic information.

Adam's Apple is also notable for the inclusion of "502 Blues," the one tune here Shorter did not write. It is a Jimmy Rowles minor-key waltz, not a blues at all, and the quartet gives it the same care as the originals. The range on this record is extraordinary, from the lilting minor waltz of "502 Blues" to the abstract density of "El Gaucho," and it holds together because of the absolute consistency of the playing.

Recorded in 1967 but not released until 1969, by which time Miles Davis's band, which Shorter had been part of since 1964, had gone electric and the jazz world had moved significantly. Schizophrenia sits at the end of the acoustic Blue Note period, a sextet session that expands the palette with Curtis Fuller's trombone and James Spaulding returning on alto and flute. The title is a bit of a provocation: the music is not actually fractured or contradictory, but it does move between different emotional registers more rapidly than any of the earlier Blue Note records.

Shorter's writing here reaches a kind of maximum density. The compositions are not less developed than the earlier Blue Notes; if anything they are more complex, the melodic lines more angular and the harmonic structures harder to track. But the playing is so assured that the difficulty doesn't create distance. Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Joe Chambers handle the intricate compositional demands with such ease that the music sounds inevitable rather than effortful.

Schizophrenia closes the Blue Note acoustic period on a high note. Shorter was already three years into his time with Miles Davis and would leave in 1970 to co-found Weather Report, and this record stands as the final statement of one of the most productive periods in any jazz musician's career. The subsequent Blue Note records would be different, more exploratory, less structurally assured. This is the last time things are quite this focused.

Shorter had been in the Miles Davis electric group for two years when he made this record, and the influence is audible throughout. Super Nova is the first Shorter record to fully embrace electric textures and open-ended collective improvisation, and it does so with a cast assembled from the very center of the late-1960s electric jazz universe: John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock on guitars, Jack DeJohnette on drums, Chick Corea on drums and vibes, and Airto Moreira adding rhythmic color on "Dindi" and "More Than Human".

This is also the first record under his own name on which Shorter plays soprano saxophone only, no tenor at all, a few months after he first recorded on the horn with Miles Davis, and the soprano adds a new dimension to his sound that would become increasingly important in the Weather Report years. On the soprano his slightly reedy quality becomes something more plaintive and searching, a voice that sits differently in the electric ensemble than the darker tenor does. Miroslav Vitous's bass is the elastic center of the rhythm section, his instrument as melodically active as any of the horns.

Super Nova is a record that requires patience from listeners who came to Shorter through the acoustic Blue Notes, but it rewards that patience fully. This is not Shorter departing from his compositional intelligence; it is that intelligence deployed in a radically different sonic environment. The structural thinking is all still there, just wrapped in electricity and percussion rather than the hard bop quintet format.

A return to acoustic instruments but in a very different configuration from the earlier Blue Note records. The absence of a piano gives the music an unusual open quality, the harmony suggested rather than stated, with Gene Bertoncini's guitar and Dave Friedman's vibraphone providing lighter, more translucent harmonic textures than any piano could offer. Ron Carter on bass and Billy Hart on drums provide rhythmic support that is, by post-bop standards, relatively restrained.

The compositions here have a spaciousness that reflects the new instrumentation. Without a piano to fill in the harmonic center, Shorter's saxophone solos carry more of the music's weight, and his playing has an exploratory quality that differs from the more harmonically dense Blue Note records. Shorter splits the date between tenor and soprano, and the soprano's lighter sound fits the chamber-like ensemble perfectly.

Odyssey of Iska is a transitional record, made a few months after Shorter's last concert with Miles Davis, as he was preparing to cofound Weather Report. It documents a musician feeling his way toward a new approach, and the exploration itself is the subject. Not quite as fully realized as the peak Blue Notes, but essential for understanding how Shorter got from Speak No Evil to Mysterious Traveller.

Recorded in 1970 but shelved until 1974, Moto Grosso Feio is the most difficult record in this survey. The ensemble is large and loosely organized, the compositions are more sketch-like than fully developed, and the recording quality is uneven. This is music that emerged from the same exploratory impulse as Super Nova but without the focused intensity of that session. It is primarily a document of a specific historical moment rather than a fully realized artistic statement.

There are rewards here for committed listeners. Shorter's soprano saxophone work throughout has a searching quality that points toward his Weather Report playing, and the layered percussion, with Chick Corea and Micheline Pelzer both on drums and Corea doubling on marimba, gives the music a rhythmic texture unlike any other record in this period. The Brazilian thread is in the writing rather than the band: "Vera Cruz" is by Milton Nascimento. But the album's identity never fully coheres, the various elements sitting side by side rather than integrating into a whole.

Worth hearing for completeness, and the Shorter soprano saxophone is always worth attention. But if you are building a Shorter collection, come to this one after the essential records: it makes more sense in context than it does as an introduction to this period of his work.