Wayne Shorter, innovator during an era of change in jazz, dies at 89
Wayne Shorter, the enigmatic, intrepid saxophonist who shaped the color and contour of modern jazz as one of its most intensely admired composers, died Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 89.
Shorter had a sly, confiding style on the tenor saxophone, instantly identifiable by his low-gloss tone and elliptical sense of phrase. His sound was brighter on soprano, an instrument on which he left an incalculable influence; he could be inquisitive, teasing or elusive, but always with a pinpoint intonation and clarity of attack.
His career reached across more than half a century, inextricable from jazz’s complex evolution during that span. He emerged in the 1960s as a tenor saxophonist and in-house composer for pace-setting editions of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the Miles Davis Quintet, two of the most celebrated small groups in jazz history.
He then helped pioneer fusion, with Davis and as a leader of Weather Report, which amassed a legion of fans. He also forged a bond with popular music in marquee collaborations with singer- songwriter Joni Mitchell, guitarist Carlos Santana and the band Steely Dan, whose 1977 song “Aja” reaches a dynamic climax with his hideand-seek tenor solo.
Shorterwrote his share of compositions that became jazz standards, such as “Footprints,” a coolly ethereal waltz, and “Black Nile,” a driving anthem. Beyond his book of tunes, he was
revered for developing and endlessly refining a modern harmonic language. His compositions, sleek and insinuating, can convey elegant ambiguities of mood. They adhere to an internal logic even when they break the rules.
His recorded output as a leader, especially during a feverishly productive stretch on Blue Note Records in the mid-1960s — when he made “Night Dreamer,” “Juju,” “Speak No Evil” and several others, all post-bop classics— compares favorably to the best winning streaks in jazz.
Since the turn of the 21st century, the Wayne Shorter Quartet — by far Shorter’s longest-running band, and the one most garlanded with acclaim — set an imposing standard for formal elasticity and cohesive volatility, bringing avant-garde practice into the heart of the
jazz mainstream.
Wayne Shorter was born in Newark, N. J., on Aug. 25, 1933. His father, Joseph, worked as a welder for the Singer sewing machine company, and his mother, Louise, sewed for a furrier.
Growing up in Newark’s industrial Ironbound district, Wayne and his older brother, Alan, devoured comic books, science fiction, radio serials andmovie matinees at the Adams Theater. Wayne won a citywide art contest at age 12, which led to his attending Newark Arts High School, the first public high school in the country specializing in the visual and performing arts.
Bebop had a strong foothold in Newark: Savoy Records, the label most committed to the young movement, was based there, and local radio carried live broadcasts across the Hudson River from clubs such
as Birdland and the Royal Roost. Shorter, who had been taking private lessons on clarinet, switched to the tenor saxophone. Along with his brother, a trumpeter, he joined a local bebop group led by a flashy singer named Jackie Bland.
Onstage and off, the Shorter brothers took as much pride in bebop’s stance of iconoclastic rebellion as in the swerving intricacies of the music; they would perform in intentionally rumpled suits and rubber galoshes, propping newspapers on their stands instead of sheetmusic. Poet Amiri Baraka, a classmate, famously recalled that such outre behavior sparked a local shorthand: “as weird as Wayne.” Shorter wore that slight as a badge of honor, at one point painting the words “Mr. Weird” on his saxophone case.
He acquired a more heroic nickname, the Newark Flash, around the jazz scene of the 1950s, while earning a degree inmusic education at New York University. After serving two years in the Army — at Fort Dix in New Jersey, where he distinguished himself as a sharpshooter — he reentered the scene, making a strong impression as a member of Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, the exemplar for the downto- earth yet combustible style known as hard bop.
Shorter joined the second Milesdavisquintet in 1964, after deflecting Davis’ overtures for several years out of loyalty to Blakey. His arrival cinched a brilliant new edition of the band, with pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams. Davis, in his autobiography, called Shorter “the conceptualizer of a whole lot of musical ideas we did.”
Most of Shorter’s storied output on Blue Note unfolded while he was working with Davis, often with some of the same musical partners. He chronicled some aspects of his life on these albums: “Speak No Evil,” recorded in 1964, featured his wife, Teruko Nakagami, known as Irene, on the cover, and contained a song (“Infant Eyes”) dedicated to their daughter, Miyako. The marriage ended in divorce in 1966; “Miyako” would be the name of another composition the next year.
Shorter won 12 Grammy Awards, the last bestowed this year for best improvised jazz solo, for “Endangered Species,” a track, written with vocalist Esperanza Spalding, from the album “Live at the Detroit Jazz Festival.”