Michelle Mercer's Insightful Wayne Shorter Biography

FOOTPRINTS: THE LIFE AND
WORK OF WAYNE SHORTER
by Michelle Mercer 
JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN

At the Hollywood Bowl not too long before he passed, Miles Davis told Wayne Shorter, “You know, you need to be more exposed.” A rather intriguing comment about Shorter who certainly has had a most distinguished career in jazz as a musician, a composer and a person. Shorter was a central figure in the bands of Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers and the second great Miles Davis Quintet, before forming Weather Report with Joe Zawinul, and then having the fruitful partnership with Brazilian singer, Milton Nascimento, and in more recent years lea ing his own highly regarded group. Throughout this tenure, he has enriched the jazz corpus with such classic compositions as Africaine, Native Dancer, Lester Left Town, Footprints, Delores, E.S.P., Infant Eyes, Neferiti, Mysterious Traveler, Super Nova, and Speak No Evil, to list a few. At the same time, Shorter’s playing, which fortunately is fairly well documented, shows him to be one of the great saxophonists of the past few decades and certainly one who may have shown influence from John Coltrane, but certainly developed his own approach.

Michelle Mercer was fortunate enough to get Wayne’s cooperation in writing her biography and overview of his music, Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter. Not only was she able to interview and spend time around Shorter, but this also enabled many of Shorter’s associates to cooperate with her. Shorter is not the simplest interviewee, and as Herbie Hancock notes Shorter does not simply answer questions, he reacts. “Reactions, not just answers, that are chock-full of wisdom. In his jovial way, and with an innately uncanny sense. Wayne says what a person needs to hear in order to expand himself.” As Ms. Mercer notes in her introduction, getting to write this biography involved more than simply charting the events of Wayne’s life, which she does. It involved being around him and realizing his still evolving life and career.

Growing up in Newark, Wayne was fortunate to have a mother that nurtured his creative whims which included an early display of artistic talent and allowed his imagination to flourish., as well as be critical of social norms and institutions, and in their neighborhood where some of the immigrant families were less fortunate than the Shorters, his parents pointed this out “to discourage racial stereotyping and encourage self-reliance.” Then he went to Arts High whose alumni include Sarah Vaughan, Melba Moore, Connie Francis and Woody Shaw where his artistic bent was encouraged and while there discovered music, namely bebop, which led him to develop an interest in playing music at the age of 15.

Perhaps a late beginner, nevertheless Shorter quickly picked up the technical aspects of music, including reading quickly, and started playing in local bands and going to New York University as a music education major while still playing and starting to compose, and playing the Palladium on a bill with Tito Puente who recalled to Wayne years later how Wayne’s band from Newark had kicked his band’s ass. He met and started working with Horace Silver, and later met John Coltrane, with whom he would practice together, and then begin a friendship with Joe Zawinul. While with Maynard Ferguson, he was recruited by Art Blakey to replace Hank Mobley, where his talent a saxophonist and composer blossomed. It was one of the great editions of Blakey’s Band with Lee Morgan on trumpet. While with Blakey, some called him a Coltrane clone but Sonny Rollins noted that while Wayne liked Trane and himself, he was innovative himself and it came out in how he constructed his solos, “He was an honest boy and a real player.”

With Blakey he introduced such songs as Lester Left Town and Africaine. With Blakey, he toured Europe for the first time and the closing concert in Paris featured several expatriates including Bud Powell who sat in with the Messengers. Afterwards Powell, Blakey and others socialized, but Wayne went back to his room, drinking some wine and work on some tunes. At 3 A.M., there was a knock on the door, and opening it he was surprised to see Bud Powell, not Lee Morgan or Walter Davis, who came in and asked Wayne to play something. Wayne launched into Dance of the Infidels, after which Bud thanked him and left, an event that stuck in Wayne’s mind like other encounters he had with famous jazz legends.

The time with Blakey was the first major exposure of Shorter’s talents and contemporaneous with his first recordings as a leader on Vee-Jay, which have been followed over the past few decades by his tenure with Miles Davis in Davis’ Second Quintet, and contemporaneous with his Blue Note releases like Speak No Evil, and Super Nova. Then with long-time friend Joe Zawinul he was an integral part of perhaps the greatest fusion band, Weather Report, where he focused on soprano sax in order to be heard. Then there was the V.S.O.P reunion at the 1976 Newport in New York Jazz Festival and the accompanying tour, and after a number of years he recorded his first solo album in years and introduced the United States to the remarkable Milton Nascimento, and on to later gigs with Joni Mitchell and a tour with Carlos Santana, to his present band.

Mercer chronicles the life as well as the personal evolution of Shorter as he adapted and became committed to Buddhism attempting to balance the religion’s demands to the conflicting demands of a musician’s life, his marriage to Ana Maria, his ailing first child Isak whose brain damage may have been as a result of a vaccination and the devotion of the family to the child, sheltering Tina Turner through the worst of her times with Ike at the point where she finally broke away and went on her own, and when Ana Maria changed flights to meet him in Europe and boarded the tragically fated Flight 800 in 1995.

This rather sterile description of the book fails to convey the richness of the narrative. Footprints doesn’t describe Wayne’s compositions in technical detail but conveys a sense of the recordings and his playing. More importantly it conveys the complexity of his person and his relationships. The book opens and repeats with the narrative Wayne going backstage to meet Miles Davis at one of Miles’ last, if not the last, performances, and after others were sent out, being told he needed to be exposed. Shorter has never had a flamboyant personality and while sometimes shy, he has always been thoughtful and caring and has known when to say things. Fortunately he continues to expose himself as he plays and bring us his magic in performance and on record. Footprints includes 19 pages listing Wayne’s compositions and the first recordings (if they were recorded) of the composition.

One wishes there had been a discography of Wayne’s recordings, but that probably would have been a book in itself. Footprints was a fascinating and enlightening read that will be hard to stop reading at times, and like I often do after being engaged with the book has led me to reexamine Wayne’s musical legacy. 

This review originally appeared in the July-August 2007 jazz & Blues Report (Issue 295).  I do not remember if I purchased this or received a review copy. I close this review with this 2003 video of Wayne Shorter performing Footprints.

Evocative Photographs and Oral History of Legendary Keystone Korner

Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club

by Kathy Sloane

Indiana University Press

In its slightly over a decade of existence, the Keystone Korner became one of the most celebrated jazz clubs in the world. It hosted a wide variety of artists and was the site for a number of legendary live recordings by Dexter Gordon, Art Blakey, Woody Shaw and others. Its story is the subject of a wonderful new book from Indiana University Press, “Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club” by photographer Kathy Sloane.

Sloane frequented the club during its years and was able to shoot so many jazz artists, both legends like Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Elvin Jones, Rashaan Roland Kirk, Mary Lou Williams, Bill Evans, Miles Davis and so many others. In addition to her photographs, she also interviewed not simply artists who performed there, but Todd Barkan the owner, the wait staff and folks that frequented the club. Jazz poet and author Sascha Feinstein, editor of the semi-annual publication Brilliant Corners provided the introduction and edited the interviews. He also compiled the accompanying CD that contains performances from the Keystone.A number of classic performances were captured at the Keystone and the sampling here gives a range of the room.

Keystone Korner was tucked next to a San Francisco police station and when Todd Barkan purchased it and converted a blues bar into one of the great jazz clubs. Barkan booked a wide range of styles including local acts as well as major national acts and created an atmosphere that had major artists holding a benefit to enable Todd to have a kitchen and a liquor license. It was a relaxed atmosphere that did not neglect the local performers who often were the backing band for some national acts. Performers who at the time rarely played jazz clubs like Miles Davis played the Keystone and he booked acts like Sam Rivers that never graced the stage of the Village Vanguard in New York.

Through recollections of Bay area guitarist Calvin Keys, saxophonist Billy Harper, cook Ora Harris, trumpeter Eddie Henderson, poet Jack Hirschman, Fantasy Records publicist Terri Hinte, pianist George Cables, drummer Eddie Marshall, legendary jazz record producer Orren Keepnews, writer, teacher & poet Al Young, trombonist Steve Turre, waitress Flicka McGurrin, Barkan and others the club’s history is weaved together along with the unusual sense of community around the room, It was somehow miraculously that Keystone Korner stayed alive on a shoe string budget as long as it did. Mixed in with Sloane’s images of Dexter, Elvin, Art Blakey, Mary Lou Williams, Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Bobby Hutchinson, Betty Carter, Percy Heath, and so many more and a CD with over an hour of great jazz.

Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club is terrific as a window into a legendary jazz club in addition to serving as a coffee table book. It is a fabulous book that jazz lovers will treasure to enjoy the photographs and the story of a fabled room.

I purchased this book. Here is a clip from you tube of Ahmad Jamal at the Keystone Korner in 1981

Three Wishes is a Marvelous Look at Jazz

Today, I was at Barnes & Noble, in downtown Washington DC, and browsing the jazz and blues books section when I come across a book, Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats. I pick it up skim through it and then purchased it. It is published by Abrams Image and the credits have it compiled and photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter with a forward by Gary Giddins and an Introduction by Nadine de Koenigswarter, granddaughter of Pannonica. Pannonica is better known as Nica, the Baronness who befriended so many jazz musicians for such a long period of time. She was the person in whose apartment Charlie Parker died. Later, when she purchased a house in New Jersey, many jazz musicians visited or stayed with her. In 1957, she helped Thelonious Monk regain his caabaret license and also campaigned for its elimination which occurred when John Lindsay was elected Mayor. Monk had encouraged her to buy a house and she did ,which was named the Cathouse, and Monk himself moved there with his family in 1973, staying there until he passed. Others moved in or stayed for a period.

What the book compiles is the answers of about 300 jazz musicians to what three wishes in life they had. The text consists of their answers. Included are countless photographs of jazz legends from Monk, Barry Harris, Sonny Rollins, Coleman Hawkins, Art Blakey, Bud Powell, Sonny Clark John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Mary Lou Williams, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and countless others. Most of her photos were taken with a Polaroid camera, and several of the images are from worn photos, but the pictures, like their words, speak to us decades later. Some of informal, intimate images of them at the house, others sghow them perforing at the Cathouse. This is a book one can easily get lost with for days and hopefully should be available at your better book store or from the large internet retailers.