BLP 4173

Wayne Shorter - Night Dreamer

Released - September 1964

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 29, 1964
Lee Morgan, trumpet #1-3,5; Wayne Shorter, tenor sax; McCoy Tyner, piano; Reggie Workman, bass; Elvin Jones, drums.

1339 tk.3 Night Dreamer
1340 tk.5 Armageddon
1341 tk.9 Oriental Folk Song
1342 tk.12 Virgo
1343 tk.27 Black Nile
1344 tk.35 Charcoal Blues

Session Photos

rehearsal

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Night Dreamer	Wayne Shorter	April 29 1964
Oriental Folk Song	Arr. Wayne Shorter	April 29 1964
Virgo	Wayne Shorter	April 29 1964
Side Two
Black Nile	Wayne Shorter	April 29 1964
Charcoal Blues	Wayne Shorter	April 29 1964
Armageddon	Wayne Shorter	April 29 1964

Liner Notes

THIS is simultaneously Wayne Shorter’s first album for Blue Note as a leader and his most significant record session so far. "This date” explains Shorter, “came at a time when I was entering a new stage as a writer. And also, I knew that for my first album for Blue Note, I had to say something substantial!”

The new stage to which Shorter refers has to do with his growing recognition that, as he puts it, “you can’t divorce music from life. I’ve had a need to relate my music more and more to the way I respond to life around me. Not only to what I see on the music scene, but also to the times in which I live.”

Accordingly, the album has a unified theme. “What I’m trying to express here,” Shorter notes, “is a sense of judgment approaching — judgment for everything alive from the smallest ant to man.” As you will hear, the music on the album is hopeful, and so I asked Shorter what kind of “judgment” he anticipated. After all, the title of the last number is Armageddon. “ I know,” Wayne answered, “that the accepted meaning of Armageddon is the last battle between good and evil — whatever that is. But my definition of the judgment to come is a period of total enlightenment in which we will discover what we are and why we’re here.”

The music in this album is sanguine because Shorter feels that the onset of enlightenment will not only mean the end of war and prejudice but also the realization by more and more people that they exist in order to grow beyond their present capacities.

Shorter’s proclamation of the enlightenment to come begins with Night Dreamer. “The tune,” Wayne explains, “weaves from major into minor, but it has mostly a minor feel. And the minor keys always connotes evening or night to me. That’s the reason for the first part of the title. In addition, it’s in 3/4; but the way Elvin Jones plays 3/4 gives it an almost floating feeling. Yet, although the beat does float, it also is set in a heavy groove. It’s a paradox, in a way, like you’d have in a dream — some-thing that’s both light and heavy. And that explains the second half of the title.” The theme does indeed have a dream-like ambiance. In the solo section, the urgent thrust of Wayne’s two improvisatory passages is complemented by Lee Morgan’s crisp commentary and the characteristically lithe piano of Herbie Hancock.

Oriental Folk Song was first heard by Wayne — at a much faster tempo than this arrangement — as the theme for a television commercial. Later he listened as a Eurasian girl sang it properly on a television show, identifying it as an old Chinese song. It was this latter experience that stimulated Wayne to adapt it to jazz. In this, as in all the numbers, there are various repetitive devices which serve to accentuate the overall theme of the set. “They’re an attempt,” Wayne explains, “to keep telling the listener that ‘Judgment Is Coming.’ The word, however, is not ‘beware!’ but rather it’s ‘be aware!’

Virgo is the sign under which Wayne Shorter was born on August 25, 1933. “People under Virgo,” says Wayne, “tend to take consistent and insistent notice of details. Virgo people, for example, make good doctors, lawyers and secretaries. They also tend to fear the large responsibilities that go with greatness and accordingly, if they ever do become great, it happens almost involuntarily.”

The song has a Virgo quality, Wayne adds, in that although there is a firm substructure, the melody “sort of rambles around in its predilection for detail.” The performance itself by Shorter is one of his most sustainedly lyrical on record. “I meant it to sound optimistic’ Wayne continued. “In fact, the whole album is meant to be optimistic even though it does have such pieces with a minor feeling as Night Dreamer and Armageddon.”

Black Nile received its title as an aftermath of Wayne having looked through Alan Mooreheod’s books The White Nile and The Blue Nile. “ I called it the ‘black Nile,’ “ Wayne pointed out, “not as a nationalistic device but to locate it. I was thinking of the Egyptian civilization which at the time of its greatest achievements was a black civilization. In the piece itself, I tried to get a flowing feeling — a depiction of a river route.”

Charcoal Blues is described by Wayne as “a sort of back-tracking piece. When I was growing up, black connoted gloom, skepticism, no hope, no foreseeable way out of the muck and the mire. And the blues then to me were centered around gloom and darkness too. The old blues and funk were good for their time and place, but what I’m trying now is to get the meat out of the old blues while also presaging the different kind of blues to come. In this particular piece, I’m both looking back at the good things in those older blues and also laughing at that part of my background. The laughter is satirical but not mocking. It’s laughter from the inside. During the earlier periods of the blues, moreover, you’d get to where there seemed to be o point of no return. Things were so bad that the only way to go was to laugh—that kept you going. There’s some of that too in Charcoal Blues.”

Wayne tried to make the final piece, Armageddon, the “focal point of the whole album. It’s like the meeting place for the main concepts of the set. It’s serious, but not too serious. The brief introduction makes it seem as if it’s going to be a fast tune, but that acts like a camouflage for the seriousness to come. From the introduction we move into a slow, pensive drone-like section in a minor key—and here we hod the excellent help of Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner and Reggie Workman who prevented it from sagging by giving it o constant lift.”

As is evident throughout the album, Wayne’s colleagues, appreciating the importance he attached to this first album for Blue Note, took care to understand and fit into his intentions while retaining their own expressive personalities. “Listen,” Wayne notes, “to how Lee Morgan paced himself. He really fitted in all the way.” As for McCoy Tyner, “he added the salt, pepper and spice,” Wayne observes. “Reggie Workman was there when you needed him. You can always feel him. He has o big sound, but his ideas are also always clear. Elvin Jones is just remarkable. He was listening very very carefully all the time, but although he fused perfectly with what I wanted, he was also able to incorporate his own style and feelings into the music.”

Wayne feels that this album marks a new stage ¡n his writing because of its comparative simplicity. “I used to be a true Virgo,” he says, “in that my writing had a lot of detail. Now I’ve been able to pore things down. I used to use a lot of chord changes, for instance. But now I con separate the wheat from the chaff. I don’t get any more complicated than I have to; or to put it another way, if I have to get complicated, I do — but only then.”

As a corollary to the focus on economy in Wayne’s writing, his playing too has become more basic. “I’m playing more emotionally than I used to. There are fewer passages of being complicated for the sake of being complicated. And that comes from learning to relate your music to life. When you get down to fundamental emotions and relationships, there’s no need to rely excessively on technical devices.”

“This,” Wayne emphasized, “is not a spokesman type of album for the younger musicians. What I’m trying to do is say something for myself. But I do feel that all of us are beginning to get an audience for the new jazz to come. There are people aware of the new blues coming, the new period of enlightenment. And that again, is why this is on optimistic album.”

In more ways than one, therefore, Wayne Shorter’s first Blue Note album as a leader is a sanguine event. The music itself is alive with hope, and Shorter’s own work — both as composer and player — augurs many more absorbing explorations to come.

—NAT HENTOFF

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT NIGHT DREAMER

Wayne Shorter albums tend to deepen with time, and Night Dreamer has grown particularly deep. Four decades on, with Shorter still displaying growth as an artist, it marks the turning point in his development. In his responses to original annotator Nat Hentoff, the often enigmatic saxophonist also provides one of the most translucent discussions of where his music was headed.

"This date came at a time when I was entering a new stage as a writer...I've been able to pare things down." Shorter had already been acknowledged as one of the jazz world's most promising composers for his contributions to Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, though his creations were inevitably tailored to the extroverted, drum-centered personality of that ensemble. The program here is different, more stark and haunting, with a combination of concentrated melody and expanded harmonies that stamp each piece with both lyricism and mystery. The aura envelops the Chinese song Shorter recasts here, and even seeps into his "backtracking" old-school "Charcoal Blues. " The four remaining titles, each a classic for their melodies alone, are enriched with surprising chord choices that suggest new possibilities for the soloists, and form as strong a program of original material as any single album of the period.

"I'm playing more emotionally than I used to. There are fewer passages of being complicated for the sake of being complicated." The growth in Shorter the composer also inspired a new and more individual direction for Shorter the improviser, which was no small matter for a musician who (like virtually every other tenor saxophonist who emerged in the period) was being evaluated in the shadow of John Coltrane. The Coltrane connection remains in Shorter's intense attack, his sound, and some of his phraseology, and could not help but be underscored by the presence of what (prior to Reggie Workman's replacement by Jimmy Garrison) had been Coltrane's rhythm section. Yet the distinctive foundations of Shorter's compositions (still chord-based, contrasted with Coltrane's modality) produced different phrase structures and a more terse vocabulary. Shorter would not join Miles Davis until four months after this recording, yet he was already on his way to an improvisational style closer to that of the trumpeter than that of any other saxophonist.

"People under Virgo ... tend to fear the large responsibilities that go with greatness and accordingly, if they ever do become great, it happens almost involuntarily." This revealing self-analysis will resonate with generations of listeners who have decried Shorter's unwillingness to step forward and assume a position of leadership in the jazz world. The complaints were already being heard in 1964, when Shorter was completing his fifth and final year as a Jazz Messenger. It is difficult to consider anyone who worked with Blakey for that length of time underrepresented on record, but with a limited number of sideman appearances and only two Vee Jay albums issued under his name, Shorter was far less visible outside the Messengers orbit than the vast majority of his contemporaries. From a bandleading perspective, the pattern would continue, as Shorter became one of the few ex-Messengers not to form his own working group, enlisting instead for an equally lengthy tour with Davis and then more than a decade in which (in terms of both compositional input and ensemble presence) he was a distinctly minority partner in Weather Report. The world has not exactly been inundated with Wayne Shorter albums either, with the notable exception of his tenure as a Blue Note artist, which found him creating 11 programs of music in a span of 6 years. That relative, oh-so-welcome deluge begins here.

"The word, however, is not 'beware,' but rather 'be aware'. There are people aware of the new blues coming, the new period of enlightenment. " All of the musical implications of Night Dreamer reflect an evolving world-view that anticipates a growing quest for new spiritual attitudes throughout society. Shorter, who had been advised by a college professor to pursue philosophy, and who had been fascinated by fantasy and the alternative view since childhood, was clearly ahead of the curve when it came to higher consciousness. "Wayne was the first person I met who had the new thinking," Joe Zawinul once said of his Weather Report co-leader. On Night Dreamer, with the support of an exceptional band including the recently risen Lee Morgan (who would incorporate many of Shorter's ideas into his own subsequent music) and over seven timeless performances (including a beautiful alternate take of "Virgo"), we get our first notion of how the new thinking sounds.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2004

Blue Note Spotlight - June 2013 

http://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/night-dreamer-wayne-shorters-maiden-voyage/

In a conversation at the Melbourne, Australia jazz festival in 2005, I asked Wayne Shorter, who was appearing there with his stellar quartet, if it bothered him that when he first started making solo albums in the early ‘60s that jazz was not a big seller. He replied, “It’s just like what Art Blakey used to say: ‘You can make a billion dollars on Wrigley’s spearmint gum, but you can’t make money on jazz’—and, I would add, on any kind of music that’s truly creative. If something makes a lot of money, it doesn’t make it cool. People worry about missing out on that pot of gold. But what they’re really missing out is their creative process. It’s about evolving.”

Evolution is the operative word when looking back at Wayne’s Blue Note debut, Night Dreamer, recorded in the Rudy Van Gelder Studio on April 29, 1964 and released later that year. While Wayne had already recorded three albums for Vee-Jay Records as a solo artist (1959’s Introducing Wayne Shorter, 1960’s Second Genesis and 1962’s Wayning Moments), the tenor saxophonist and composer ascended to a new level of artistic maturity when he was signed by Blue Note, telling original liner note writer Nat Hentoff that for his first album he wanted “to say something substantial!”

Substantial indeed as Wayne begins his exceptional enlightenment journey to substitute compositional complexity and a flurry of chords for the essence of song simplicity, heartfelt saxophone expression and a sanguine outlook that the title, Night Dreamer, points to with its suggestion of earthly darkness and otherworldly luminosity. Along for the ride is trumpeter Lee Morgan, another Jazz Messengers alum and future Blue Note hit maker; pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones moonlighting from their John Coltrane classic quartet; and bassist Reggie Workman, another Coltrane alum pre-Jimmy Garrison.

Night Dreamer comprises a six-pack of Shorter compositions beginning with the title track, where the tenor blows with urgent brio over Elvin’s ¾ time drum drive. Arranged from an old Chinese tune, “Oriental Folk Song” features Shorter and Morgan sketching the theme before the improvisations swing into action, and Shorter offers lyrical melancholy on “Virgo” (his astrological sign). The buoyant “Black Nile” has a flow akin to a river with plenty of splashes from Elvin’s drums bash, “Charcoal Blues” grooves as a smooth, bluesy swinger, and the pensive end piece “Armageddon” catches a groove that the rhythm team pushes ahead with McCoy’s sparkling runs, Elvin’s muscular and tumbling drums, and Reggie’s solid pulse. It makes for a dramatic close to an arresting album.

Returning to that chat in Melbourne, when asked what he saw as the role of the artist, Wayne sagely replied, “Being the lone voice in the wind. To be on a mission and not be afraid.” On Night Dreamer, with its optimistic outlook despite the minor keys that pervade the compositions, the intrepid tenor was just beginning to lift off. A few months later he joined the magical express ride of the Miles Davis Quintet within which he was compositionally instrumental in its quicksilver evolution. At the same time, he was continuing his own assured journey with Blue Note (eleven albums in his six-year run with the label), a rich period of fearless exploration that nearly a half century later in his return to the label continues to abound with soaring beauty.