Early Wayne

The moments before saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter expanded the language of jazz

A few months ago in this space, we explored the notion of engaging with an artist’s work in chronological order. This offers a window into the evolution of an aesthetic, and at the same time provides insight into the ways an artist’s ideas traveled and resonated (or didn’t!) amongst peers and the audience at large.

We lost a prominent part of the music solar system when saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter died this week at age 89. The many essays and remembrances naturally focus on Shorter’s most significant works — the expansive writing he did for Art Blakey’s protean Jazz Messengers band from 1959-1963, the pensive and prismatic compositions he brought to Miles Davis’ second quintet from 1964-1970, and the genre-expanding originals on Shorter’s string of solo albums for Blue Note beginning in 1964 with Night Dreamer.

Shorter’s path as an artist predates all of those classics, as jazz critic Nate Chinen notes in a comprehensive New York Times obituary. Shorter brought originals to his debut solo session, Introducing Wayne Shorter, which was recorded in 1959 and released on Vee Jay in 1960. His pieces are right in line with much small band hard bop of the era — scurrying run-on-sentence melodies punctuated by singable, deeply felt blues riffs.

That boilerplate period was brief: Later in 1960, on a session called Second Genesis that somehow went unreleased until 1974, Shorter was already thinking in terms of more intricate compositions, among them “The Ruby and the Pearl.” Alternating between sections of static modal harmony and fast-moving bebop cycles, these pieces anticipate the tension/release tactics of “Black Nile” and others from Shorter’s Blue Note catalog.

The melodies on these LPs and the 1962 Wayning Moments might not be as instantly magnetic as “Infant Eyes.” The rhythmic displacements might not be as extensive as they became on tunes like “Speak No Evil.” But already, a few years before Night Dreamer, Shorter’s mission is set: He’s seeking compositional structures that coax profound originality from soloists.

Shorter’s own playing on these records shows how wiley he was in reinforcing that compositional intention. On the uptempo tunes, he neatly sidesteps the rote jargon of the bop firebreathers in favor of improbable pirouettes; on the ballads, he dwells in private shadows and plaintive elegies. His early tunes articulate a language that is crystalline yet dimensionally complex; as that language develops, it’s possible to hear Shorter and the other soloists going deep in the search for apt fantasias — those unscripted, in-the-moment improvisational responses to the architectural challenges.

These records are not the classics in the Shorter canon, but they contain the seeds of those classics. That alone makes them worth hearing.