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Wayne Shorter
Albums
He is still a master. -Herbie Hancock
On his third date for Blue Note within a year, Wayne Shorter changed the bands that played on both Night Dreamer and Juju and came up with not only another winner, but also managed to [more]
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- Member Price: $11.98
He is still a master. -Herbie Hancock
With such titles as "The All Seeing Eye," "Genesis," "Chaos," "Face of the Deep," and "Mephistopheles," it is clear from the start that the music on this CD reissue is not basic bop [more]
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![Adam's Apple [Bonus Track]](/cache/JS/g0/130x130_on-sale_g03297gvo26.png)
One often returns to classic recordings with mixed feelings. On one hand, there's the anticipation of hearing great music, and on the other, trepidation that the recording [more]
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![Night Dreamer [RVG Edition]](/cache/JS/g6/130x130_on-sale_g67035sehi4.png)
Tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter's Blue Note debut found him well prepared to enter the big time. With an impressive quintet that included trumpeter Lee Morgan, pianist [more]
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Fulfilling the potential promised on his Blue Note debut, Night Dreamer, Wayne Shorter's Ju Ju was the first really great showcase for both his performance and compositional gifts. Early in [more]
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With the possible exception of its song, "Footprints," which would become a jazz standard, Adam's Apple received quite a bit less attention upon its release than some of the preceding [more]
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Also known as Blues A La Carte, this Vee Jay disc has tenor-saxophonist Wayne Shorter's first session as a leader and it shows that, even at this early stage, Shorter was [more]
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The second of tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter's three Vee Jay LPs, Second Genesis has five of Shorter's quirky originals plus the obscure "The Ruby and the Pearl" (from a '50s [more]
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- List Price: $13.98
- Member Price: $12.95
- List Price: $17.98
- Member Price: $16.18
Appearances
He is still a master. -Herbie Hancock
On his third date for Blue Note within a year, Wayne Shorter changed the bands that played on both Night Dreamer and Juju and came up with not only another winner, but also managed to [more]
- List Price: $17.98
- Member Price: $11.98
Weather Report's biggest-selling album is that ideal thing, a popular and artistic success -- and for the same reasons. For one thing, Joe Zawinul revealed an unexpectedly potent [more]
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- Member Price: $11.98
...Compositionally, these alblums are outstanding...the result is a well-produced and very complete survey of Herbie Hancock's early maturity. -The Wire (02/99, p.51)
From the start of his solo recording career in 1962, when he was 22, Herbie Hancock was a very original pianist/composer. Strangely enough, despite the [more]
- Member Price: $105.98
He is still a master. -Herbie Hancock
With such titles as "The All Seeing Eye," "Genesis," "Chaos," "Face of the Deep," and "Mephistopheles," it is clear from the start that the music on this CD reissue is not basic bop [more]
- List Price: $17.98
- Member Price: $11.98
![Indestructible [Bonus Track]](/cache/JS/g0/130x130_on-sale_g00335cjij9.png)
This 2003 reissue of the Art Blakey classic Indestructible is part of Blue Note's Rudy Van Gelder series. Van Gelder himself has done the 24-bit remasters from analog masters. The added track left off the original session is Wayne Shorter's
- List Price: $17.98
- Member Price: $11.98
One of the giants of American popular song gets his due with this three-disc Verve box, comprising a trio of separately released compilations. Though Mercer's [more]
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Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings of Miles Davis 1963-1964 is an anomaly among the retrospective sets that have been issued from the [more]
- Member Price: $129.98
![Big Beat [RVG Edition]](/cache/JS/g9/130x130_on-sale_g92595sojco.png)
Perhaps the best-known and most loved of Art Blakey's works, The Big Beat is a testament to the creative progress of one of the best jazz drummers of all time. [more]
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"Life is an adventure and a challenge." —Miles Davis
Despite the presence of classic tracks like Joe Zawinul's "Great Expectations," Big Fun feels like the compendium of sources it is. These tracks are all outtakes from other sessions, most [more]
- List Price: $33.98
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...A sensuous, satisfying collection of songs. Show tunes have rarely sounded so rich, so smart and so good. -Time Magazine
With so few major composers still alive by the mid-'90s, it was logical that jazz musicians would try to expand their repertoire by exploring the works [more]
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Biography
- Born Aug 25th 1933 in Newark, NJ
Though some will argue about whether Wayne Shorter's primary impact on jazz has been as a composer or as a saxophonist, hardly anyone will dispute his overall importance as one of jazz's leading figures over a long span of time. Though indebted to a great extent to John Coltrane, with whom he practiced in the mid-'50s while still an undergraduate, Shorter eventually developed his own more succinct manner on tenor sax, retaining the tough tone quality and intensity and, in later years, adding an element of funk. On soprano, Shorter is almost another player entirely, his lovely tone shining like a light beam, his sensibilities attuned more to lyrical thoughts, his choice of notes becoming more spare as his career unfolded. Shorter's influence as a player, stemming mainly from his achievements in the 1960s and '70s, has been tremendous upon the neo-bop brigade who emerged in the early '80s, most notably Branford Marsalis. As a composer, he is best known for carefully conceived, complex, long-limbed, endlessly winding tunes, many of which have become jazz standards yet have spawned few imitators.
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 leap-frog a generation into the '80s.
Staying with Miles until 1970, Shorter became at times the band's most prolific composer, 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 which 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.
In November 1970, Shorter teamed up with old cohort Joe Zawinul and Miroslav Vitous to form Weather Report, where after a fierce start, Shorter's playing grew mellower, pithier, more consciously melodic, and gradually more subservient to Zawinul's concepts. By now, he was playing mostly on soprano, though the tenor would re-emerge more toward the end of WR's run. Shorter's solo ambitions were mostly on hold during the WR days, resulting in but one atypical solo album, Native Dancer, an attractive side trip into Brazilian-American tropicalismo in tandem with Milton Nascimento. Shorter also revisited the past in the late '70s by touring with Freddie Hubbard and ex-Miles sidemen Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams as V.S.O.P.
Shorter finally left Weather Report in 1985, but promptly went into a creative slump. Still committed to electronics and fusion, his recorded compositions from this point became more predictable and labored, saddled with leaden rhythm sections and overly complicated arrangements. After three routine Columbia albums during 1986-1988, and a tour with Santana, he lapsed into silence, finally emerging in 1992 with Wallace Roney and the V.S.O.P. rhythm section in the "A Tribute to Miles" band. In 1994, now on Verve, Shorter released High Life, a somewhat more engaging collaboration with keyboardist Rachel Z.
In concert, he has fielded an erratic series of bands, which could be incoherent one year (1995), and lean and fit the next (1996). He guested on the Rolling Stones' Bridges to Babylon in 1997, and on Herbie Hancock's Gershwin's World in 1998. In 2001, he was back with Hancock for Future 2 Future and on Marcus Miller's {M²}. Footprints Live! was released in 2002 under his own name, followed by {Alegría} in 2003 and Beyond the Sound Barrier in 2005. Given his long track record, Shorter's every record and appearance are still eagerly awaited by fans in the hope that he will thrill them again. Blue Note Records released Blue Note's Great Sessions: Wayne Shorter in 2006. ~ Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide
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