Wayne Shorter — Speak No Evil
I promised T. that I’d give the Heavy Duty treatment to some of the music in my collection at exactly the wrong time, work-wise. But I’m getting my head above water these days, so let’s pop the cork on this thing and see what happens.
I’ve always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with Wayne Shorter. I’m not a particular fan of his tone — straight and hard like John Coltrane’s often is, but a bit colder and more brittle than Trane’s. And I just can’t do fusion so, despite the high levels of musicianship, Weather Report gives me the jibblies.
But there was a time in the mid/late 60’s when Shorter was hard to touch, and Speak No Evil is one my favorites from that era. Recorded for Blue Note on Christmas Eve, 1964, it’s a tight little set of moody swing with a lot of dark undertones. With former Jazz Messengers band mate Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, long-time collaborator Herbie Hancock on keys, bassist Ron Carter, and Trane-band drummer extraordinaire Elvin Jones in Rudy Van Gelder’s studio, Shorter revealed himself to be one of the top, if not the top, composers in Jazz.
The first track, “Witch Hunt,” opens with a horn section flourish and then drops into a sweet groove for the head. Steely Dan clearly listened to “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum” enough times for it to get into their DNA (of course, they’d later bring in Shorter to record on Aja). And while the title track basically vamps on one chord for large pieces of the composed sections, it’s a song that burrows deep into your head and finds a home there. The rest are less powerful, but give these three a shot (iTunes | Amazon) and you’ll be glad you did.
