BLP 4219

Wayne Shorter - The All Seeing Eye

Released - October 1966

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, October 15, 1965
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet, flugelhorn; Alan Shorter, flugelhorn #5; Grachan Moncur III, trombone; James Spaulding, alto sax; Wayne Shorter, tenor sax; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Joe Chambers, drums.

1668 tk.2 The All Seeing Eye
1669 tk.3 Genesis
1670 tk.8 Chaos
1671 tk.20 Face Of The Deep
1672 tk.24 Mephistopheles

Session Photos

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

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
The All Seeing Eye	Wayne Shorter	October 15 1965
Genesis	Wayne Shorter	October 15 1965
Side Two
Chaos	Wayne Shorter	October 15 1965
Face of the Deep	Wayne Shorter	October 15 1965
Mephistopheles	Alan Shorter	October 15 1965

Liner Notes

In addition to the disciplined intensity of his playing and writing, the qualities that particularly characterize Wayne Shorter are the breadth and cohesive-ness of his ideas and his thrust to keep exploring himself through music. In this album, for example, he has worked toward, as he puts it, "a wider range of colors and textures" while at the same time continuing his search for added dimensions in his ideas "about life and the universe and God."

"The All Seeing Eye" depicts God looking over the universe before His act of creation. The eye, missing nothing, sweeps all over the universe. The structure of the piece, Shorter explains, came out of his attempt to feel how such an eye would move, how such a mind could be so all-knowing. "I didn't pre-plan the form; it emerged.

The opening line-descending slowly-reflects the sweeping arc of the all-seeing eye. The first part of the composition is about God and the void. He is there alone, deciding what to do. The hurtling fast section represents His having made up His mind, and as Shorter says, "when a force as powerful as that makes up His mind, you get quite an explosion." As the fast section continues, it becomes clear how closely the background patterns and the solo improvisations interweave. "That's a reminder," adds Shorter, "that His mind is made up and there is no turning back. The solos, moreover, depict the machinery involved in the process of creation. Things are starting to happen."

Worth noting on this and the other tacks is the way Shorter has used the rhythm section. "At certain times," he points out, "I tried to split them up. During the ensemble and lead parts, for example, there were places where I wanted the drums to sound as if they were off to the side while the piano and bass-on the other side- sound real close together. In sum, I wanted the feeling of the horns being surrounded by the rhythm section. Furthermore, I didn't want the drums to just keep time or the bass and piano to perform only in their expected ways." As you'll hear, each of the three rhythm section players make singular contributions. And working as a whole, this is an unusually flexible and resourceful team.

"Genesis" marks the point of creation-the creation of life in all its forms. "Again," says Shorter, "I tried to convey a sweeping quality, but His act of creation is an even more cumulatively emotional experience than that survey of the void and His coming to a decision in 'The All Seeing Eye.' The first part is not in a consistent type of meter-because of the immensity of the act of creation. Then, however, 'Genesis' goes into 4/4 straight time to indicate that everything is beginning to settle down, routines are starting, patterns are emerging. There are clusters of starts, species of life. And over all, I tried to give 'Genesis' a feeling of open-ended ness because, once begun, the creative process keeps going on.

"Chaos," Shorter emphasizes, "is what man has done, to a certain extent, to God's creation. The music mirrors conflicts, wars, disagreements-the difficulty men have in understanding each other. As for its structure, it moves-in its textures, in its use of time-from fighting with clubs and bows and arrows to the atomic age and beyond. You can hear, for example, the age of gunpowder being introduced in a particularly staccato section." After the churning, splintering conflict of "Chaos," "Face Of The Deep" is God reflecting on what He has created and on what man has done within that creation. "The piece," says Shorter, "is pensive, and being in minor, it may not sound as if it's very hopeful since we're accustomed to hearing hope in music in major scales and chords. But actually, 'Face Of The Deep' is hopeful. As you'll hear, it doesn't really end in the usual sense. At the close, I tried to keep away from traditional cadences. The indication is that we don't know what will happen and therefore there is still hope. Also the sounds in this piece are straight out because in that way I wanted to "indicate that God's thought processes are so powerful that He can overcome all of the goofs of man and some of the goofs may be His too - end that possibility is raised in 'Chaos' as well-I mean that if He had wanted to create a world without conflict, He could have done it."

"Mephistopheles" is by Alan Shorter, Wayne's brother, and in it, Al takes his only solo in the set. "'Mephistopheles' is saying musically," Wayne notes, "is that all during creation -I don't know about before Genesis-the Devil has been walking many planets. He's been around all the time. I'm glad my brother wrote this because after you hear all the other music that has preceded this composition, you are suddenly reminded of the Devil's presence. And you snap your heard to the right and to the left to ask 'where is he?' He's there, he's here, he's in the shadows. Listen to the tapping in the piece. There you are, marveling at the wonders of the universe, and all of a sudden you feel a tap on your shoulder, It's a light tap, but it goes to the bottom of your feet because the Devil's touch is so cold. His impact is so terrifying. He's nothing like you've ever seen before so the basic fine in this piece connotes raucousness, rawness. It's asymmetrical. The melody moves in an unpredictable way because the Devil is unpredictable. He may show up in the form of a woman or something else.

"At the end," Shorter concludes, "that loud, high climax can be taken as a scream. If you consort with the Devil and are fooled by his unpredictability, that scream is a measure of the price you pay. He finally reveals himself for what he is, and you are consigned to an eternity of torture, of fire and brimstone.

"From the brooding beginning of "The All Seeing Eye" to the ominous "Mephistopheles," the musicians Wayne Shorter chose for this journey into cosmology and beyond are remarkably able to so unite as to give maximum expressive force to Shorter's design. At the same time, each provides a forceful, personal sound and conception to his adventure. There is the bright, piercing clarity of Freddie Hubbard and his quickly searing ideas. And complementing Hubbard in the ensemble is the darker sound of Alan Shorter on flugelhorn. "Freddie was essential," says Wayne, "for those top notes in ensemble passages. He was the only one I could think of to handle those the way I wanted. And Alan, in everything he does-the solo and the ensemble work-has that constant sense of what makes for dramatic impact."

James Spaulding was chosen, says Shorter, "because of the extraordinary feeling of spontaneity he generates in his playing. And Grachan Moncur settles things down whenever he appears. He has a thoughtful, measured way of playing." And the rhythm section, as has been noted, did much more than keep time. Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Joe Chambers provided acutely relevant commentary throughout.

Wayne Shorter is already planning future albums. Not all will be focused on the kind of cosmic themes contained in this one, but some will continue his probing into himself and into the meaning of existence. "Once you begin thinking about the nature of the universe and the nature of man," he says, "there's no way of stopping. It's all so open, so without finite limits. The universe keeps changing, man keeps changing, and I keep changing."

The persistent evolution of Wayne Shorter as improviser and composer has reached another stage in this provocative album. Quiet-spoken as he is, Wayne is persistently self-challenging. He reaches far, and here he has reached into the central mystery of being. Some call it God. Some call it absurdity. But whatever the personal philosophy of the listener, the impact of Wayne's music cuts beneath intellectual system-making into basic emotions. And that is its durable strength.

- Nat Hentoff

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT THE ALL SEEING EYE

With hindsight, this challenging and highly rewarding album appears to be an anomaly in Wayne Shorter's career — the largest acoustic ensemble effort to appear under his name, and the most open in structure until the beginning of his electric period with Super Nova nearly four years later. At the time of its release, however, many people heard this music as a logical extension of Shorter's previous work and a characteristic statement from the more wing of the Blue Note family. Both the future progress of the saxophonist/composer's career and then-unheard contemporary works that have since come to light reinforce the exceptional nature of this music.

Shorter had been uncommonly prolific during 1964, his first year as a Blue Note artist. Three classic albums of his playing and writing were recorded in that year — Night Dreamer, Juju and Speak No Evil. Even though The All Seeing Eye was the next Shorter album issued by the label, we now know that two additional sessions had been recorded earlier, The Soothsayer and Etcetera, which means that Shorter had completed six albums in a mere 18 months! While The Soothsayer and Etcetera are both worthy statements by one of the period's most important artists, producer Alfred Lion clearly felt that the freer use of tempo and structural daring of the present collection made it more indicative of where Shorter was heading. That the music here is more of an emotional piece with the incredible tenor sax work Shorter contributed to the Miles Davis Quintet Plugged Nickel recordings from the end of 1965, is a judgement borne out by The Soothsayer and Etcetera.

This music should also be heard in the context of other Blue Note recordings from the period such as Bobby Hutcherson's Dialogue and Components, Tony Williams's Spring (featuring Shorter) and Andrew Hill's Compulsion. On these albums, modal and free improvising appeared to be merging, with rhythmic continuity loosened up without totally abandoning familiar notions of swing. Larger ensembles than the typical quartet or quintet were often involved, although the energizing muscle of the rhythm section players proved to be just as important as the flexibility of the front-line soloists. As far as this rhythm section goes, little need be said regarding Shorter's Davis Quintet mates Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter, while the equally brilliant Blue Note house drummer Joe Chambers reflects the influence of Tony Williams as well as his own composerly slant on the music.

The five horns present a tale of two cities, Indianapolis and Newark. Hubbard and Spaulding are the Indiana contingent, with the trumpeter a longtime familiar of Shorter's from the tenure the two shared in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Spaulding had played Shorter's music before, at The Soothsayer session of the previous April, and would play it again (on flute as well as alto sax) on Schizophrenia in 1967. Trombonist Grachan Moncur III had worked with the Shorter brothers in the reportedly precocious Nat Phipps band that Amiri Baraka recalled hearing at high school dances in Newark during the early '50s. The trombonist also used Wayne on his Some Other Stuff LP for Blue Note. This was the sole Blue Note appearance for Wayne's older brother, the late Alan Shorter, who is otherwise best remembered for his work on Archie Shepp's 1964 Four For Trane and his own 1968 collection Orgasm. Baraka, writing as LeRoi Jones in a 1959 Jazz Review piece that was the first article on Wayne in a national publication, reported that the pair were known as "the two 'weird' Shorter brothers" in their native Newark, and the familial iconoclasm comes through clearly in the writing and flugelhorn solo on "Mephistopheles."

Given the subject matter of the program here, a final connection might be noted to "A Love Supreme," which the John Coltrane Quartet had recorded 10 months earlier. Shorter, like Coltrane, possessed the unique inquisitiveness and focus to address such infinite subjects, though typically the resulting music here shows greater ambivalence and eccentricity. It also marked the penultimate product from a period that produced a deluge of music under Wayne Shorter's name. He was back in the studio with Hancock, Chambers and Reggie Workman four months later to record the tracks for Adam's Apple, then allowed 13 months to pass before recording Schizophrenia and another 30 prior to Super Nova. By then, the young man that LeRoi Jones had recalled in 1959 as "rather distant" with a "secret smile" had begun moving toward a persona that would make him the jazz world's version of the Cheshire Cat.

—Bob Blumenthal