JuJu (album)

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JuJu
Wayne Shorter's studio album

Publication
(s)

1964

Label (s) Blue Note Records

Format (s)

CD, LP

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

6 (LP) / 8 (CD)

running time

56:12 (CD)

occupation

production

Alfred Lion

Studio (s)

Van Gelder Recording Studio, Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey

chronology
Night Dreamer
(1964) 		JuJu Speak No Evil
(1965)
Wayne Shorter

JuJu is a jazz album by Wayne Shorter that was recorded on August 3, 1964 at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey and released by Blue Note Records that same year .

The album

The studio album JuJu was the tenor saxophonist's second release under his own name for Alfred Lion 's Blue Note label , following the LP Night Dreamer from April 1964 . It is one of those publications before 1970 that Richard Cook and Brian Morton count among the "most individual works of Shorter". Nat Hentoff noted in the original liner notes for JuJu that Shorter had tried a stronger, more personal language in Night Dreamer than on his previous LPs, which were made for VeeJay between 1959 and 1962 . In mid-1964 Wayne Shorter became a member of the Miles Davis Quintet, the line-up of which also corresponded to the previous album with the addition of the trumpeter Lee Morgan . For JuJu , Shorter did without another wind player; He was accompanied by a rhythm section that evokes associations with the role model at the time, John Coltrane - McCoy Tyner (piano), Reggie Workman (bass) and Elvin Jones (drums). This was the same rhythm section that Coltrane accompanied on his 1961 album Africa / Brass .

Shorter had studied with John Coltrane, and Shorter reflected his style in his playing and compositions in 1964. The title track "JuJu", with which Shorter made associations with Africa by recalling ancient tribal rites; Jùjú was a Nigerian style of pop music that emerged from traditional Yoruba music since the 1920s . The structure with the short, repetitive phrases should tie in with the simplicity of African chants. Hentoff emphasized that Shorter created a powerful evocation with almost hypnotic moods, which are associated with swirling rituals, on a complex and colored background through the rhythm section .

With the opening theme of "Deluge" (Eng. Flood, flood ) Shorter wanted to create the mood of something falling, a musical analogy to rain. While writing the piece, he recalled Bible studies in his youth when he heard of the Flood : "Now, at my present age, I wanted to write something about how I felt when I first heard about it."

This is followed by the ballad "House of Jade", the opening sequence of which came from Wayne Shorter's wife Irene. After a bridging bridge , Shorter takes up the motif that reminds Hentoff of Shorter's characteristic song lyricisms.

When composing “Mahjong”, Shorter thought of the old Chinese board game Mah-Jongg ; the four-bar division of the piece (in the sequence melody, rhythm, melody, rhythm, bridge- like melody, melody, rhythm) and the pauses should give the other players the opportunity to think about the next (play) move; the melody and its increase mark the next move, according to Nat Hentoff.

The penultimate track of the original LP “Yes or No” is harmoniously reminiscent of Coltrane's composition “Moment's Notice” from the 1957 Blue Train album. The JuJu album closes with “Twelve More Bars to Go”; the title is a play on words : Shorter initially means going to the bars of the city in a good mood, as if with a list in hand; finally the “12 bars in shape” . By making it sound like "a backward-looking increase", Shorter tried to get away from the standardized blues harmonies and create the musical portrait of a man who, slightly drunk, tries to move forward but goes back.

In 1987 there was a new edition on CD with two additional, previously unreleased pieces.

Rating of the album

McCoy Tyner (1989)

In Allmusic , which gave the album the highest rating, the critic Stacia Proefrock emphasized that JuJu reveals the potential that was announced in the previous Night Dreamer . JuJu is also Wayne Shorter's first real opportunity to show his great talents both as a performing musician and as a composer. Elvin Jones, Reggie Workman and McCoy Tyner are the perfect musicians to accompany Shorter, who revealed a great understanding of his compositions. McCoy Tyner, with his light touch and beautiful improvisations, was the better choice for Shorter than Herbie Hancock . JuJu would be "in the emerging branch of Shorter's creative climax" and "the beginning of his foundation as a band leader". Even if his compositions and playing style were influenced by Coltrane, they still showed a great independence, in the way that he breaks up the structures of hard bop and finds his voice with all this diversity and flexibility; he then completed this on his later albums such as Speak No Evil (December 1964) and The Soothsayer (March 1965).

Richard Cook and Brian Morton emphasize in their review of the album, which they awarded the second-highest rating, that the two alternate takes of the new edition in particular would show the wealth of ideas and the experimental attitude of Shortes; the energy and drive of hard bop combine here with something new; it is the seething and the melancholy that have become Shortes trademarks on JuJu .

C. Michael Bailey underlines Shorter's role as a jazz composer in his review of JuJu (as well as the follow-up album Speak No Evil ) in All about Jazz , similar to Benny Golson's contributions to the Jazz Messengers repertoire. Golson and Shorter are two living legends who composed (and not just interpreted) jazz standards . The two albums are "acoustic jazz of the mid-1960s of the highest quality". Shorter shows a "brilliant ingenuity" and is a great composer of ballads.

Rolling Stone magazine voted the album 39th on its list of The 100 Best Jazz Albums in 2013 .

The titles

  • Blue Note BLP 4182 (LP), BST 84182 (LP), CDP 7 46514-2 (CD), CDP 7243 8 37644-2 (CD)
Elvin Jones (1977)
  1. JuJu - 8:30
  2. Deluge - 6:49
  3. House of Jade - 6:49
  4. Mahjong - 7:39
  5. Yes or No - 6.34
  6. Twelve More Bars to Go - 5:26
  7. JuJu - 7:48 (alternative take)
  8. House of Jade - 6:37 (alternative take)

(All compositions are by Wayne Shorter)

swell

Literature / individual references

  1. ↑ a b Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD . 6th edition. Penguin, London 2002, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 , p. 1341.
  2. ↑ See Stacia Proefrock, Allmusic.
  3. ↑ Rolling Stone: The 100 Best Jazz Albums . Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  • Nat Hentoff: Liner Notes by JuJu, 1964
  1. ↑ See Hentoff, Liner Notes
  2. ↑ W. Shorter, quoted after Hentoff, Liner Notes
  3. ↑ See Hentoff, Liner Notes
  4. ↑ See Hentoff, Liner Notes
  5. ↑ Shorter, quoted from Hentoff, Liner Notes
  6. ↑ See Hentoff, Liner Notes

Further remarks

  1. ↑ Reggie Workman is listed on the back of the cover with his maiden name.
  2. ↑ In the original: “When I wrote the tune, I was thinking of Africa. I hadn't heard anyone use this title for a piece, and it seemed to fit because I was trying to picture the old African rites. (...) Its structure is somewhat remininscent of the simplicity for certain kinds of an African chant ". W. Shorter, cit. after N. Hentoff, Liner Notes 1965.
  3. ↑ In the original: “rests in the uphill portion of Shorter's creative peak” .
  4. ↑ In the original: “This is mid-60's acoustic jazz of the highest order. This is music that is carefully and thoughtfully crafted by a master and performed by equal masters " . Quoted from C. Michael Bailey, All About Jazz .

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