Speak No Evil

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Speak No Evil
Wayne Shorter's studio album

Publication
(s)

June 1966

admission

December 24, 1964

Label (s) Blue Note Records

Format (s)

LP , CD

Genre (s)

Post bop , modal jazz , hard bop

Title (number)

6 (LP) / 7 (CD)

running time

42:11

occupation

production

Alfred Lion

Studio (s)

Van Gelder Recording Studio, Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey

chronology
JuJu
(1964) 		Speak No Evil The Soothsayer
(1965)
Wayne Shorter (2006)

Speak No Evil is the sixth studio album by saxophonist Wayne Shorter . The jazz album was recorded on December 24, 1964 in Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey , but was not released by Blue Note Records until 1966 .

The album

The studio album Speak No Evil was after the LPs Night Dreamer and JuJu in 1964, the tenor saxophonist's third release under his own name for Alfred Lion 's Blue Note label. It is one of those publications before 1970 that Richard Cook and Brian Morton count among the "most individual works of Shorter". which impresses with “highly original and unusual compositions”.

The album cover features Teruka (Irene) Nakagami, Wayne Shorter's first wife, whom he met in 1961.

After playing with Coltrane musicians McCoy Tyner , Elvin Jones and Reggie Workman on previous albums for Blue Note , he was “unfairly labeled as 'one of those Coltrane disciples',” Thom Jurek wrote in Allmusic . Shorter's team-mates on this album only included drummer Elvin Jones among the musicians who played in Coltrane's "classical quartet" ; there were also two members of the "second quintet" of Miles Davis , to which Shorter had belonged since September 1964, namely the pianist Herbie Hancock and the bassist Ron Carter . The formation became a quintet with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard , with whom Shorter had worked since his days as musical director of Art Blakeys Jazz Messengers . Hubbard was also a frequent musical partner with Hancock in the mid-1960s.

The second main soloist on Speak No Evil , however, is the pianist Hancock, not the trumpeter (who does not play a solo on “Dance Cadaverous” and “Infant Eyes”). Hancock and Carter accompany the soloists rhythmically and harmoniously, while Jones concentrates on timekeeping . The timbres of Shorter's compositions are rather dark, as the titles show.

Shorter brought six new compositions to the session; Don Heckman quotes him in the liner notes when writing the material for this album

“Thinking of misty landscapes with wild flowers and strange, dimly-seen shapes - the kind of place where folklore and legends are born. And then I was thinking of things like witch burnings too. "

Fairy tales were also a source of inspiration for the bluesy ballad "Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum", which is named after the giant's exclamation in Jack and the Beanstalk . Jurek emphasizes the "unusual [n] harmonic framework (...) with its ballad-like structure", which "mixes with the blues feeling of hard bop and modal jazz , which creates the illusion of a larger ensemble" .

The album begins with “Witch Hunt” and its distinctive horn fanfare. The waltz-like "Dance Cadaverous" was influenced by Shorter of an old photograph of medical students who make out to autopsy a corpse. The piece contains melodic references to Jean Sibelius ' Valse triste , which Shorter finally recorded on the next album The Soothsayer (1965). After the title track “Speak No Evil”, in which “levels of harmonic and rhythmic freedoms urge that were not tolerated in the usual hardbop context”, “Infant Eyes” follows, which he wrote for his daughter when she was an infant Structure similar to other Ballads of Shorter like "House of Jade" (from JuJu ) or "Iris" from Davis album ESP The album ends with "Wild Flower", another piece in waltz rhythm. Shorter's solo on this topic "ingeniously combines simple melodic ideas with rousing runs and sound effects."

reception

source rating
Allmusic
All about jazz

With Art Blakeys Mosaic , Herbie Hancock's Empyrean Isles and Maiden Voyage , Freddie Hubbard Hub-Tones , Bobby Hutchersons Components and Joe Hendersons Mode for Joe, Shorter's Speak No Evil is one of the "almost perfect classics" of that time. wrote Michael Cuscuna . For Janis Görlich from the jazz newspaper , the album is “a classic in jazz history” Richard Cook and Brian Morton also count the album as one of Shorter's greatest work and chose it in The Penguin Guide to Jazz in their list of the Core Collection .

“For us, Speak No Evil is by far Shorter's most satisfying record. The communication with Hancock was perfect and telepathic. (...) The album provided the template for a host of imitators, but so far no one has produced a recording of such power and inner balance (...) it is obviously one of the most important jazz records this period. "

Even Ian Carr presents the album in the series of Shorter's most important works; It was "a classic album both in terms of composition and improvisation, and was a source of inspiration for many musicians." Allmusic gave the album the highest rating of five stars. For author Thom Jurek, this is where “the avant-garde meets the hard bop of the 50s and everyone wins.” As an example of Shorter's approach, he chooses the title track, in which he uses post-bop- oriented melody lines against Hancock's counterpoints .

The music magazine Jazzwise added the album to The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook the World list .

Editorial note

Speak No Evil was originally released as LP 4194 and BST 84194; the first CD edition was in 1986. A remastered version, edited by Rudy Van Gelder , was released in 1998 and contained an alternate take of Dance Cadaverous .

Track list

All compositions are by Wayne Shorter.

page 1

  1. Witch Hunt - 8:07
  2. Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum - 5:50
  3. Dance Cadaverous - 6:45

Page 2

  1. Speak No Evil - 8:23
  2. Infant Eyes - 6:51
  3. Wild Flower - 6.00

CD bonus track

  1. Dance Cadaverous ( Alternate Take ) - 6:35

literature

Web links

Individual references / comments

  1. ^ A b Richard Cook, Brian Morton: The Penguin Guide of Jazz on CD. 6th edition. Penguin, London 2002, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 , p. 1340.
  2. ↑ a b c d In the original: “ His highly original and unusual compositions. “Quote from Thom Jurek, Allmusic
  3. ↑ http://100greatestjazzalbums.blogspot.com/2006/07/speak-no-evil-wayne-shorter-blue-note.html
  4. ↑ In the original: " unfairly branded with the" just-another-Coltrane-disciple "tag ".
  5. ↑ Don Heckman; Liner Notes.
  6. ^ A b c d Richard Cook, Brian Morton: The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings. 8th edition. Penguin, London 2006, p. 1189.
  7. ↑ Jans Görlich [d. i. Janis Görlich] Exciting rhythmic tension. Wayne Shorter's solo on "Wildflower" sic , Jazzzeitung 4/2010: 21 (with transcription of the solo)
  8. ↑ Review by Marc Davis on allaboutjazz.com (accessed October 22, 2017)
  9. ↑ Michael Cuscuna: The Blue Note Years - The Jazz Photography by Francis Wolff : Ed. Stemmle, 1995, p. 98.
  10. ↑ Janis Görlich Exciting rhythmic tension
  11. ^ Carr, Jazz: Rough Guide, p. 586.
  12. ↑ Keith Shadwick wrote: “ In a sense this is Shorter's essay on groove, but his angularity never makes it likely that the whole album would attain that ineffable level, or that he'd even want that. Herbie, of course, would do it without him a few months later on Maiden Voyage. So? Vive le difference, we say… ". The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook The World