“A Shorter Story” The World’s Greatest Jazz Band (Again). It’s 1960 and the world’s greatest jazz band is falling apart. The Miles Davis Quintet—he of the starless black skin who makes you wish you could spit pieces of your broken soul into the twisted metal tubing of a trumpet and have it come out sounding…
One of the least diabolical of Shorter’s Blue Note albums, featuring Herbie Hancock on piano.
An early session from the Jazz Messengers, led by Hubbard, that apparently got lost in the mail until 1976.
The greatest studio rock album ever made, up to 1977 anyway.
An unreleased Blue Note session from 1965 featuring Herbie Hancock and four Shorter originals.
Invariably stacked alongside the magnificent bounties of Miles Davis and Weather Report, and ultimately found wanting. There are percolating and purposeful rhythms, swinging melodies delivered in terse bursts from Shorter, but anyone looking for a lost continent of fusion-fueled fantasies won’t find them on the smooth shores of Atlantis. I’ve listened to this album (I…
You know, these Wayne Shorter albums are more trouble than they’re worth. The tantalizing traces of Weather Report hold my attention initially, but then I start drifting off and, by the time the song is over, I’ve forgotten everything that came before it. So I go back and listen to it again, telling myself that…