This isn’t the first time we’ve written about jazz saxophonist, composer, arranger, and bandleader Wayne Shorter here, and it won’t be the last. Today would have been his 90th birthday, and while Charles Jay wrote about Shorter joining the ancestors in 2023 at the age of 89 and I recently wrote about his role in creating Weather Report with Joe Zawinul, it behooves us to celebrate not only his music, but his life and impact on the genre we know as jazz.
Shorter played with a long list of major greats during his storied career, including Art Blakey, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis, as well as heading his own groups. Many of his compositions are now jazz classics covered by major artists and extending into other genres.
Come join the celebration and exploration of his life and music.
”Black Music Sunday” is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 225 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
For those of you who have access to Amazon Prime, I would strongly recommend you watch the absorbing 2023 three-part documentary on Shorter, which covers not just his music but the man, his life challenges, and spiritual journey.
Variety magazine wrote about it in an article titled “Jazz Great Wayne Shorter Gets His Due in ‘Zero Gravity’ Doc.”
Dorsay Alavi spent nearly 20 years following jazz great Wayne Shorter around with a camera before she was ready to unveil her three-hour Amazon Prime documentary, “Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity.”
[…]Joni Mitchell, Carlos Santana, Don Was, Sonny Rollins, Terence Blanchard and Joe Zawinul are among the other artists interviewed in the film. “There was something about Wayne that they all wanted to have on their albums,” Alavi notes. “He brought so much to the table; I think they were all enamored by Wayne’s abilities and his approach to the music.”
Shorter’s life was marked by tragedy. His daughter died of a seizure at age 14 and his wife Ana Maria was killed in the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996. Hancock believes that Shorter’s Buddhist faith helped him navigate the shock and heartbreak. “He spent most of his time consoling his friends,” Hancock recalls.
Here’s the trailer:
Journalist and musician Peter Jones reviewed the documentary for All About Jazz in “Leaving Planet Earth: Amazon’s Wayne Shorter Documentary Zero Gravity.”
The story of his life is told through interviews and images; there is no authorial voice. Dorsey Alavi managed to film everyone who was still around, family and friends as well as musicians. Where there are no available interviews, the director has found terrific archive film or video footage. In the section that relates the tragedy of Shorter’s second wife Ana Maria’s death in a plane crash, Alavi has somehow got hold of the audio from the control tower. Where no archive material existed, as in much of the first part of the documentary, she uses clever recreations and animations. The most striking of these accompanies a psychedelic sequence reminiscent of Disney’s Fantasia, full of fairies and other mythological beings. “[Wayne] knows the power of the invisible world,” comments a long-time family friend. “Fairies do work when everybody else is asleep.”
The Mr. Weird moniker was truer than Wayne realized as a child: even as an old man, he was fascinated by fairies. “You’re even weirder than I previously thought you were,” comments his friend, the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson more than 70 years later, after Wayne shows him his huge collection of fairy and action hero figures. It was this childlike quality that fueled his art, as his early collaborator Art Blakey observed.
The film takes its title from Shorter’s 2005 release, “Zero Gravity.”
In 2017, at age 82, Shorter discussed his life, and his start in music with New Orleans musician Jon Batiste.
In 2022 Shorter also discussed his Buddhism with Ahmir K. Thompson, aka Questlove:
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Shorter’s story, here are some biographical details from All About Jazz:
Born in Newark, New Jersey on August 25, 1933, Wayne Shorter had his first great jazz epiphany as a teenager: “I remember seeing Lester Young when I was 15 years old. It was a Norman Granz Jazz at the Philharmonic show in Newark and he was late coming to the theater. Me and a couple of other guys were waiting out front of the Adams Theater and when he finally did show up, he had the pork pie hat and everything. So then we were trying to figure out how to get into the theater from the fire escape around the back. We eventually got into the mezzanine and saw that whole show — Stan Kenton and Dizzy Gillespie bands together on stage doing ‘Peanut Vendor,’ Charlie Parker with strings doing ‘Laura’ and stuff like that. And Russell Jacquet…Ilinois Jacquet. He was there doing his thing. That whole scene impressed me so much that I just decided, ‘Hey, man, let me get a clarinet.’ So I got one when I was 16, and that’s when I started music.
Switching to tenor saxophone, Shorter formed a teenage band in Newark called The Jazz Informers. While still in high school, Shorter participated in several cutting contests on Newark’s jazz scene, including one memorable encounter with sax great Sonny Stitt. He attended college at New York University while also soaking up the Manhattan jazz scene by frequenting popular nightspots like Birdland and Cafe Bohemia. Wayne worked his way through college by playing with the Nat Phipps orchestra. Upon graduating in 1956, he worked briefly with Johnny Eaton and his Princetonians, earning the nickname “The Newark Flash” for his speed and facility on the tenor saxophone.
From Blue Note records:
Shorter started on the clarinet at 16 but switched to tenor sax before entering New York University in 1952. After graduating with a BME in 1956, he played with Horace Silver for a short time until he was drafted into the Army for two years. Once out of the service, he joined Maynard Ferguson’s band, meeting Ferguson’s pianist Joe Zawinul in the process. The following year (1959), Shorter joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, where he remained until 1963, eventually becoming the band’s music director. During the Blakey period, Shorter also made his debut on records as a leader, cutting several albums for Chicago’s Vee-Jay label. After a few prior attempts to hire him away from Blakey, Miles Davis finally convinced Shorter to join his quintet in September 1964, thus completing the lineup of a group whose biggest impact would leapfrog a generation into the ’80s.
Staying with Miles until 1970, Shorter became the band’s most prolific composer at times, contributing tunes like “E.S.P.,” “Pinocchio,” “Nefertiti,” “Sanctuary,” “Footprints,” “Fall,” and the signature description of Miles, “Prince of Darkness.” While playing through Miles’ transition from loose post-bop acoustic jazz into electronic jazz-rock, Shorter also took up the soprano in late 1968, an instrument that turned out to be more suited to riding above the new electronic timbres than the tenor. As a prolific solo artist for Blue Note during this period, Shorter expanded his palette from hard bop almost into the atonal avant-garde, with fascinating excursions into jazz-rock territory toward the turn of the decade.
His story is continued in his Washington Post obit , which was written by jazz columnist Gene Seymour:
He had concentrated primarily on the tenor saxophone throughout the period but began leaning more to the soprano on Davis’s 1969 album “In a Silent Way.” By the 1970s, Mr. Shorter had shifted almost entirely to the lighter-voiced instrument, which he also played on “Bitches Brew,” Davis’s hit 1970 follow-up.
Mr. Shorter left Davis’s band that year and in 1971 co-founded Weather Report with Zawinul. From the beginning, Weather Report specialized in electronically amplified blends of funk, soul, Latin and free jazz.
The high point for the group’s popularity and acclaim came with “Heavy Weather” (1977), which among other things contributed Zawinul’s rocking, swinging anthem “Birdland” to the global jazz repertory.
Mr. Shorter placed his soprano front-and-center on his 1974 album “Native Dancer,” a sequence of Brazilian tunes featuring composer and vocalist Milton Nascimento. He also began an association with Joni Mitchell with “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter” (1977) that continued through nine more Mitchell albums. Weather Report, meanwhile, pressed ahead through personnel changes to become jazz-rock’s most resilient ensemble.
Given the constraints of space, there is no way I can adequately cover his music in one story. So I’ll simply select compositions from my own favorites list and look forward to you posting yours in the comments section below.
Jahari Stampley, pianist and composer, wrote about one of my favorites for The New York Times: “Infant Eyes.”
Captivating. Dreamlike. Inspiring. Controlled. Free. These are some words that would describe my favorite song written by the brilliant composer Wayne Shorter — “Infant Eyes.” Released in 1966 on his album “Speak No Evil,” this revolutionary composition as well as the influential ensemble of musicians on the recording helped to nurture the beginning of my musical lineage. From my mother, who credits Wayne Shorter as being the catalyst of her musical journey as an artist, to my earliest experiences as a pianist, composer and bandleader through my mother, his musical impact has carried throughout generations.
“Infant Eyes” is arguably one of the most beautiful and mysterious jazz ballads ever written — unpredictably formed, enigmatic and melodically haunting. Shorter’s organic & captivating tone flows over each phrase, creating an incredibly emotional impact. The song was dedicated to his daughter, Miyako. And I could imagine him looking into her eyes for the first time.
His ensemble generated a magical synergy. With Herbie Hancock’s understated and skillful piano comping, Ron Carter’s subtle, supportive bass lines and Elvin Jones’s intuitive & perfectly balanced drumming, they seemed to play almost effortlessly, gracefully elevating Wayne Shorter’s melody to the forefront, but in a gentle way. “Infant Eyes”: Wayne Shorter’s timeless gift to the world.
Give it a listen:
Here’s my favorite cover, sung by Jean Carn on her husband Doug’s 1970 album:
Given that I am a huge fan of Milton Nascimento, who I have featured here, I fell in love with Shorter’s album “Native Dancer,” reviewed here on Jazzwise.
Native Dancer represented Shorter’s growing fascination with Portuguese and Brazilian culture following his marriage to his Portuguese wife Ana Maria in 1966. Subsequently, originals like ‘Feio’, ‘Surucucu’ and ‘Manolete’ paid homage to Portuguese/Brazilian culture and in 1970 he even recorded Milton Nascimento’s ‘Vera Cruz’ on the Blue Note album Moto Grosso Feio in 1970. However, nothing quite prepared listeners for Native Dancer. By 1974 Shorter had become a fan of Nascimento’s music and he and vocalist Flora Purim shared the airfare to bring the guitarist/vocalist plus two of his musicians – keyboardist Wagner Tiso and drummer Roberto Silva – to the US.
“Jazz Video Guy” Bret Primack discusses the album here:
This lovely ballad was written for Shorter’s wife, Ana Maria.
Here’s the full album:
Shorter fans will be delighted to hear that Blue Note is releasing a new collection of his work.
Here’s one tune from the new release:
Alas, we’re out of space to feature more of Shorter’s music in today’s story, but there will be lots more in the comments section below and I look forward to hearing your selections.
On his birthday, I pray that his spirit and his music will live on.
