BLP 4194

Wayne Shorter - Speak No Evil

Released - June 1966

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 24, 1964
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet #1-3,5,6; Wayne Shorter, tenor sax; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Elvin Jones, drums.

1499 tk.6 Witch Hunt
1500 tk.12 Wild Flower
1501 tk.14 Speak No Evil
1502 tk.17 Infant Eyes
1503 tk.25 Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum
1504 tk.27 Dance Cadaverous

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images / 
https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Witch Hunt	Wayne Shorter	December 24 1964
Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum	Wayne Shorter	December 24 1964
Dance Cadaverous	Wayne Shorter	December 24 1964
Side Two
Speak No Evil	Wayne Shorter	December 24 1964
Infant Eyes	Wayne Shorter	December 24 1964
Wild Flower	Wayne Shorter	December 24 1964

Liner Notes

LEGENDS, folklore and black magic — the arts of mystery and darkness — have long been a special source of inspiration for artists, perhaps because their symbols ore drawn from the roots of the imagination. One of the best examples is the work of Edgar Allan Poe, who mercilessly exposed the forbidden fantasies that drift near the ends of dreams. Composers, too, hove probed into similar areas. Sibelius’ Valse Triste, Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Mussorgskys Night On The Bare Mountain ore but o few of the better-known works attributable to magic legends and folklore.

The collection of Wayne Shorter compositions included in Speak No Evil follows similar lines. “I was thinking,” he explained to me, “of misty landscapes with wild flowers and strange, dimly-seen shapes — the kind of places where folklore and legends are born. And then I was thinking of things like witch burnings, too” Much of this feeling comes through in these compositions, especially in the floating harmonies, the chords filled with tonality-disturbing ambiguities, about to move in one direction but sometimes stopping to float like the elements in Shorter’s “misty landscapes,” The effect is heightened by the remarkable interaction between Ron Carter and Elvin Jones. Little of what might specifically be called time-keeping occurs in what they play; rather is there o flowing, sometimes overlapping, sometimes independent pulsation that shifts back and forth between superimposed metric subdivisions.

Shorter has played his way through a variety of music and circumstances in his career, some of which — as with most jazzmen — must hove ranged pretty far from his own musical objectives. He feels, however, that the changes wrought by his years of active playing hove primarily been in the widening of his own artistic vision. "l'm getting,” he said, “more stimuli from things outside of myself. Before, I was concerned with myself, with my ethnic roots, and so forth. But now, and especially from here on, I’m trying to fan out, to concern myself with the universe instead of just my own small corner of it.” It is, particularly at a time when the expression of interior emotions is a focal point for many young players, a particularly refreshing statement.

“Whatever change I have mode so far, “ Shorter explained, "is there inside me, churning around in a little circle, but still not revealing itself wholly. When I was doing this date it was a struggle to get it out, to forget about the saxophone and its technical problems per se and abandon everything that I had done before.” Like most of the short, painful steps that characterize artistic growth, Shorter’s struggles do not always produce successful results. But when everything works, when the saxophone ceases to be o mechanism and becomes instead on extension of his voice (as frequently happens in this recording), the value of Shorter’s goals becomes clear.

Witch Hunt makes extensive use of fourths in its line, which is fundamental and blues-like in style, but ethereal and haunting enough in execution to fully justify Shorter’s title. Interestingly, alll the soloists, first Shorter, then Hubbard and Hancock, use a fourth as a constructional motive in their improvisations. The second title, Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum of course, is a contraction of the famous couplet spoken by the giant in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. I doubt, however, if that monstrous creature ever swung through his castle with quite the elemental feeling the Shorter group achieves. Hubbard, who takes the first chorus, plays with plangent lyricism, but, characteristically, he varies his phrases with exploding bursts of quick. flashing runs. Shorter plays a gutsy solo, coloring it with a fascinating range of timbres, bending and smearing his tones through the use of a flexible embouchure. The relationship between Dance Cadaverous and Sibelius’ Volse Triste was noted by Shorter, but he had another inspiration as well. “I was thinking,” he said, “of some of these doctor pictures in which you see o classroom and they’re getting ready to work on o cadaver.” The most noticeable musical feature of Shorter’s line is the recurring chromatic chord change. Hancock’s first chorus, gentle as a sonnet, floats above the complex planes of interlocking rhythms played by Carter and Jones. Notice too how the returning melody blossoms out of Shorter’s solo.

Both Hubbard and Shorter venture into unusual improvisational areas in their choruses on Speak No Evil. Shorter in particular seems interested in finding rhythmic and melodic ideas that are unrestricted by traditional boundaries. Infant Eyes is the only line that departs from the ways of magic and folklore. “I was thinking of my daughter,” said Shorter. The piece is constructed, in unorthodox fashion, of three consecutive nine bar phrases. Shorter plays throughout most of the track except for Hancock’s introduction and brief nine-bar solo toward the end. Listen for the clear unaffected quality of Shorter’s tenor sound, not unlike the velvety middle register sound of the cello. Wild Flower con be heard, according to Shorter, simply as what the title suggests on Ode To A Wild Flower. It is a 6/4 tune, with a dancing, light-hearted line that probably will stay with you long after your phonograph is turned off. The soloists — Shorter, Hubbard and Hancock — play with distinction, and notice in particular the marvelous rhythmic cross-currents in Elvin Jones’ accompaniment. No small part of his talent lies in the ability to adapt to a given playing situation by finding on appropriate complimentary area of his own interpretive powers.

Legends, folklore, block magic — all sources of artistic inspiration. But nothing about the work of Wayne Shorter and his group can be traced to necromantic secrets. In Speak No Evil they rely upon the stuff of all artistic achievement — talent, craftsmanship and imagination.

—DON HECKMAN

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT SPEAK NO EVIL

Wayne Shorter has never taken the conventional approach to his career. His exceptional gifts as a saxophonist and composer have been combined with a self-effacing stance that has set him apart from the outset. Where his contemporaries were grabbing every opportunity to record as leaders and chomping at the bit to form their own working bands, Shorter took a far more measured and audacious approach. Despite his stature as the most original and profound of the tenor saxophonists to emerge after Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, and his similarly elevated status as a composer of uniquely original music, Shorter remained with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers from 1959 to 1964; then he continued to ignore the call of leadership and joined Miles Davis. Shorter's personal discography was similarly modest. Before signing a contract as a solo artist with Blue Note around the time he left the Messengers, he could only claim a pair of albums for Vee Jay under his own name.

Fortunately, what most listeners considered the long overdue collaboration of Shorter and producer Alfred Lion took place at a period of rapid growth and prolific output for the saxophonist. Speak No Evil, Shorter's third Blue Note session in eight months, captures a pivotal moment in his evolution. His tenor playing, clearly formed by both Coltrane (the urgent tone and bold harmonic choices) and Rollins (the thematic continuity, and frequently broad humor), had rather facilely been considered a variation on Coltrane's work by some, and the appearance of Coltrane stalwarts McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones plus former Coltrane bassist Reggie Workman on Shorter's previous Blue Note dates only underscored the comparison. Jones is once again present here; but the rhythm section is completed in this instance by Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter, Shorter's new associates in the Miles Davis quintet. Hancock and Carter bring a more open, space-conscious attitude to the music, one that takes Shorter into different areas without in any way diminishing the integrity of Jones's contribution. For his part, Shorter reveals a deeper lyricism and a more elegant use of unusual melodic shapes and harmonic extensions. Without sacrificing any power, his work had grown more poetic. His writing was evolving as well, "fanning out" as he puts it in his typically insightful comments to annotator Don Heckman. Shorter had already proven capable of retaining his compositional individuality while creating material for the specific needs of Art Blakey, and he would soon repeat this feat with the music he wrote for Davis. Here he is writing for himself, and the singular balance of harmonic complexity and melodic grace, of assertion and calm that had marked such pieces as "Black Nile" and "Armageddon" (from Night Dreamer) and "Yes Or No" (from Juju) reached an even more exalted plateau with the six works heard here. The imagery, which Shorter clearly had in mind as indicated by his comments on the material, is conveyed in sound pictures that are no less apt for their structural unorthodoxies; and the overall themes of folklore and legend are realized as much by what Shorter leaves out as by what he includes. In these respects, and in such moments as the incredible opening tenor saxophone note on "Infant Eyes," it is tempting to claim the influence of his new boss on Shorter's music. Yet Shorter's ideas (what Joe Zawinul would call "the new thinking") were already headed in this direction eight months earlier on his Blue Note debut Night Dreamer, and Davis is on record as having sensed a kindred yet autonomous spirit in Shorter's music from his earliest days with Blakey.

The saxophonist could not have asked for more sympathetic musicians than the ones he recruited for this session, including his former Messengers mate Freddie Hubbard. Shorter paid them the respect their talents deserved by conceiving a program of challenging original music, and the band in turn honored him by meeting the challenge with total mastery. Together they created a body of music that has inspired musicians and listeners for over three decades, and which is supplemented here with a previously unissued take of " Dance Cadaverous." Jean Sibelius's Valse Triste, the composition that inspired "Cadaverous," was coincidentally recorded by Shorter less than three months later in a sextet version, and can be heard on the Blue Note album The Soothsayer, where Hubbard and Carter are also present.

- Bob Blumenthal, 1999

75th Anniversary CD Reissue Liner Notes

http://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/wayne-shorter-speak-no-evil/

On the spectrum of jazz challenges, Wayne Shorter’s “Speak No Evil” appears to lean toward the easy side. The title track of the eminent saxophonist and composer’s 1964 masterpiece Speak No Evil sits in a comfortable and utterly approachable medium swing. Its primary theme is a series of long tones outlining placid, open-vista harmony. Its bridge resembles something from the notebook of Thelonious Monk – a simple staccato motif that stairsteps up and down, each phrase defined by strategic accents.

Yet as often happens in the music of Wayne Shorter, things are not entirely what they seem. There are layers. The notes of the melody tell one story; the chords nudge the musicians someplace else, a realm where theory lessons are of limited value and instinct matters more than intellect. To thrive in this place, the musicians have to relinquish the tricks of the jazz trade – the lightning-fast bebop runs, the killer licks they lean on to navigate chord changes. The tune, simple though it may be, comes with its own specific language – a trait it shares with many of Shorter’s pieces. Before diving into the conversation, the improviser has to discover the specific quirks of the form, its textures and temperament. How challenging is this? Even Shorter, who wrote the tune, sometimes struggles. He begins “Speak No Evil” by repeating a deftly tongued single note over and over, as though chopping his way into new territory. Shorter’s first few lines are simple declarations with a smidgen of blues in them – he’s not thinking about solo hijinks, he’s just trying to hang with the slalom course that is his creation. As he steers around tight curves, his lines coalesce into a kind of spontaneous lyricism – he’s singing through the horn, linking seemingly disconnected phrases into one (!) hauntingly memorable chorus. The subsequent soloists embrace his melody-first example when improvising: trumpeter Freddie Hubbard blows wistful then tender then fierce; pianist Herbie Hancock follows spry modal lines into quiet introspective corners.

This subtle “guiding” of soloists is a crucial component of Speak No Evil, and much of Wayne Shorter’s compositional output. The last of three monumental works Shorter recorded in 1964 (the others are Night Dreamer and Juju), this album frequently turns up on shortlists of essential jazz, and one reason is Shorter’s ability to coax those around him out of their comfort zones, and into new ways of playing. Shorter’s melodies encourage musicians to stretch, and so do his vividly imagined harmonic environments – playgrounds, really. No other jazz figure found such innovative ways to balance hard bop rhythmic fire against delicately loosened (yet, crucially, still tonal) harmony. And where some contemporaries built brainy maze-like contraptions, Shorter went straight for the heart, trusting that the poignancy he embedded in his structures would stir something similar within the soloists. The moods he explores here are deep and absorbing, far from typical jazz club fare: “Dance Cadaverous” offers a macabre tour of a haunted house (or, perhaps, a haunted mind), while the keening octaves of “Infant Eyes” sketch human vulnerability with a rare sustained empathy. Incredibly, these pieces become deeper and thicker in the solo passages, as each of the players gingerly endeavors to enhance the beauty already on the page.

That’s what every composer wants – the chance for the vague notions he scribbles on paper to take root, expand and blossom as music. Shorter managed that with astounding consistency over the years, creating a songbook that’s regularly described as the “mother lode” of jazz composition. That songbook has many riches – some are stone simple, some merely sound simple, and some are deceptively sophisticated and complex. It’s a vast trove of heady music, and the high-level sorcery at work within Speak No Evil is a great way to begin exploring it.