The Soothsayer
| The Soothsayer | ||||
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| Wayne Shorter's studio album | ||||
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | Blue Note Records | |||
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Format (s) |
CD, LP |
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Title (number) |
6 (LP) / 7 (CD) |
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running time |
(CD) |
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| occupation | ||||
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Studio (s) |
Van Gelder Recording Studio, Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey |
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The Soothsayer is a jazz album by Wayne Shorter , which was recorded on March 4, 1965 in the studio of Rudy Van Gelder in Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey , but was not released until 1979 by the Japanese branch of the Blue Note label. The first CD release on the international market (with a previously unreleased title) took place in 1990.
The album
Prehistory of the album
The studio album The Soothsayer (dt. The diviner ) was after the shooting in December 1964 for the LP Speak No Evil fourth recording session of the tenor saxophonist under his own name for Alfred Lions Label; however, this initially held back the publication. After Shorter had played as the sole wind player ( JuJu ) or with a trumpeter - with Lee Morgan on Night Dreamer and Freddie Hubbard on Speak No Evil - on the previous Blue Note albums , he expanded the combo line-up with Hubbard for this session Alto saxophonist James Spaulding to the sextet; the rhythm section was made up of McCoy Tyner (piano), who had already participated in previous sessions, and his two colleagues from the Miles Davis quintet , to which Shorter had been a member for six months, Ron Carter (bass) and Tony Williams (drums). For the expanded concept, Shorter drew on his experience as arranger for Maynard Ferguson , in the frontline of three wind instruments for the Jazz Messengers and finally on his work as artistic director for the recording of the album The Body and the Soul (1963) by Freddie Hubbard.
The beginning of 1965, when Shorter recorded The Soothsayer , was a good time for Shorter, wrote Chris May in All About Jazz , after five years with drummer and bandleader Art Blakey , where he worked as a musician, composer and eventually musical director the saxophonist had finally become a member of the legendary Miles Davis second quintet.
Two months before The Soothsayer was the first of a series of studio albums with Miles Davis, ESP ( Columbia , 1965), in July with Blue Note Et Cetera and in October 1965 The All Seeing Eye . It was “the abundance of material” at Blue Note, according to Chris May, that caused The Soothsayer to be put on hold to make way for more structurally more ambitious albums like The All Seeing Eye . When Shorter finally left the Miles Davis band to work with Weather Report , The Soothsayer was temporarily overlooked - due to Shorter's musical development - and only published in 1979 - as Shorter's increasing popularity.
The music of the album
In a three-year productive period, Shorter wrote and arranged seventeen compositions for the Miles Davis Band and about twenty compositions for his own albums as a band leader. Five of these pieces were recorded here for the first time, plus an arrangement of Jean Sibelius ' “ Valse triste ”.
The album opens with “Lost”, “an elegant medium-tempo original” with solos from Shorter, Hubbard, Spaulding and Tayner. Wayne Shorter used this version again in an edited form for Weather Report ( Live in Tokyo 1972), ao Michael Cuscuna.
Tony Williams also has a solo in "Angola"; the title reminds Cuscuna of the typical medium-tempo numbers that Shorter brought into the repertoire of the Jazz Messengers. “The Big Push” stands out for its unusual rhythmic and melodic turns; According to Bob Blumenthal, the title is no longer a long-metric blues in the style of Lee Morgan's " The Sidewinder "; rather, "the harmonic movements, combined with the rhythmic course of the melody, pointed in new directions."
The title track “The Soothsayer” is a feature for the two saxophonists, according to Cuscuna Shorter contributes with “fragmentary dotted lines that were typical of his style of the 1960s”.
A typical shorter ballad is "Lady Day", his homage to Billie Holiday , with a soulful solo by McCoy Tyner. Stylistically, the title was influenced by Shorter's "Infant Eyes" (the previous album). Three months before the session, the saxophonist recorded the track “Dance Cadaverous” for Speak No Evil , which was inspired by Jean Sibelius's piece “Valse Triste”. Here Shorter rearranged Sibelius's music for sextet line-up with solos for all musicians except Tony Williams.
Rating of the album
The critic Bob Blumenthal praised the album in the new edition of the album in the Rudy Van Gelder Edition (2007), especially in view of the previously unknown compositions by Shorter such as "Angola", "The Big Push" and "Lady Day". He also mentions that the version of "Angola" selected for the master's title is the faster, but not the better quality one (this is included as an alternative take in the new edition of 2007).
At Allmusic , which gave the album the second highest rating, Stacia Proefrock called the present album "Part of an Explosion" of solo albums that Shorter recorded after joining the Miles Davis Band. It is incomprehensible that The Soothsayer until the end The 1970s was held back, because it could well compete with his other works from this incredibly fertile period. Shorter, who was called by Davis' "idea man", reveals a level of creativity and depth that makes this nickname explainable.
Richard Cook and Brian Morton emphasize in their review of the album, which they awarded the second-highest rating, that the two albums that were released later, although somewhat inferior to the works created at the same time (such as Speak No Evil or Adam's Apple ), are still challenging productions.
Chris May commented on the album in All About Jazz that it was - although it was overshadowed by Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil (1964) - a solid and timeless album - despite the fifteen years that passed between the recording and release date of the recording .
In addition to Shorter's “virile game”, the album impresses above all with the presence of the young Tony Williams (Shorter's regular drummers at the time were Elvin Jones and Joe Chambers ), who shines with an inventive solo in “Angola” and the unity of Shorter's pieces . “Lost”, the opener , is “the perfect shorter of this period”. Regarding his Sibelius arrangement, the author notes that although the term ' deconstruction ' was not part of the jazz vocabulary in 1965, “deconstruct is exactly what Shorter does do here, soulful and committed ”.
The titles
- Wayne Shorter - The Soothsayer (Blue Note (Japan) GXF 3054, (J) GXK 8152, LT 988, CDP 7 84443-2)
- Lost - 7:20
- Angola - 4:56
- The Big Push - 8:23
- The Soothsayer - 9:40
- Lady Day - 5:36
- Valse Triste (Sibelius) - 7:45
- Angola [alternate take] - 6:41
(Unless otherwise stated, all compositions are by Shorter)
Literature / individual references
- ↑ a b c d Michael Cuscuna: Original Liner Notes by The Soothsayer, 1979
- ↑ a b c Chris May: Review of the album in All About Jazz 2008
- ↑ 100 Great Jazz Albums
- ^ A b Bob Blumenthal: Liner Notes by The Soothsayer, 2007
- ^ Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings . 8th edition. Penguin, London 2006, ISBN 0-14-102327-9 , p. 1189.
Further remarks
- ↑ Michael Cuscuna also mentions that the session was one of the rare encounters between McCoy Tyners and Tony Williams; the two did not play again until 1977 when Tyners Supertrios (Milestone) were recorded. He also remembers that the band VSOP (except for Tyner and Spaulding) corresponded to this line-up, with Herbie Hancock added .
- ↑ Bob Blumenthal recalled in the Liner Notes (2007) that the tapes of the follow-up album Et Cetera also remained in the archives until 1980.
- ↑ Lost was part of a 19-minute medley that the band played in Tokyo in January 1972.
- ↑ means Et Cetera , on which "the freest Wayne Shorter of the 1960s can be heard", according to Cook / Morton in their review.
- ↑ In the original: "quintessential shorter" of the period.