Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter is one of the most influential composers in jazz history and a defining tenor saxophone voice of the 1960s. The leader catalog reviewed here covers the Vee-Jay records from before he joined Miles Davis's quintet, the Blue Note peak years that ran in parallel with his work for Miles and then with Weather Report, and the late-1970s and early-1980s records that closed his band-era leader work. Sixteen albums across three eras. Browse below.
Browse by Era
Each era page covers a distinct period in Wayne's career, with full reviews, personnel details, Apple Music audio previews, and album art for every record.
Three Vee-Jay records from before Shorter joined Miles Davis's quintet. The Lee Morgan sessions and the early small-group dates that introduced the compositional voice he would carry into Blue Note and beyond.
Nine Blue Note records covering Shorter's peak years as a leader. Night Dreamer, JuJu, Speak No Evil, The All Seeing Eye, Adam's Apple, and the late-1960s electric sessions that bridged toward Weather Report.
Four records covering the Weather Report decade and the late Blue Note archival releases. Native Dancer with Milton Nascimento, Atlantis on Columbia, and the previously unissued Blue Note sessions released in 1979 and 1980.
Wayne Shorter, 1933–2023
Wayne Shorter was born August 25, 1933, in Newark, New Jersey. He took up the clarinet first, then moved to the tenor saxophone in his teens. After NYU and a stretch in the Army, he joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1959 and stayed as the band's musical director until 1964, the period when Blakey's group cut The Big Beat, A Night in Tunisia, Mosaic, and Buhaina's Delight.
Miles Davis hired Shorter in 1964 and the relationship produced six years of the most influential small-group jazz of the decade. Shorter wrote most of the original material for the quintet (E.S.P., Miles Smiles, Nefertiti, Sorcerer) and led his own Blue Note dates in parallel. The Blue Note catalog from this period (Night Dreamer, JuJu, Speak No Evil, Adam's Apple) is the work most listeners reach for first.
The Weather Report years that followed (1970 to 1986, alongside Joe Zawinul) put Shorter at the center of jazz fusion. His leader output dropped sharply during this period, picking back up with the Columbia records of the 1980s. He returned to acoustic leader work in the 1990s and stayed active until his death on March 2, 2023, at age eighty-nine.