Saxophonist Wayne Shorter Changed History – Sometimes Consciously, Sometimes Not

“Everyone’s been hijacked from the cradle, but some turtles will make it to the sea.”
∼ Wayne Shorter

I guess you can blame Wayne Shorter for making legions of rock-and-roll fans believe they were actually listening to jazz, when he took a solo on Steely Dan’s tune Aja, back in 1977. But this wasn’t because of some deeply thought-out decision by Shorter, to misappropriate the ears of rock-and-rollers. The truth is rather banal.

According to an interview by Eugene Holley published in NewMusicUsa.org, “We had this piece (‘Aja’), which had this long modal section,” Fagen (Donald, co-founder of Steely Dan) proudly told me in my interview with him in 2013.  “And we thought, ‘who would be the ideal person for the track?’ And we said, ‘Wayne Shorter.’ On the first try, he said no. But we knew someone who knew him, and he asked him, because he didn’t know who we were. So we sent him the track, and he liked it and decided to come in. And he nailed it on the first take. That was one of the best moments for us.”

Musicians, like other professionals, are for hire. And sometimes they change the course of history without meaning to.

Wayne Shorter significantly influenced the way jazz bifurcated from bebop, a complex and virtuosic form of music dominating the scene in the late ’50s and ’60s, to the more accessible jazz fusion of the ’70s. Not merely as a sax-for-hire with Steely Dan or Joni Mitchell, but in a deliberate and conscious way.

He was part of a movement that was taking place in New York City which began with Miles Davis. Davis was at the time the most significant and influential jazz musician in the whole world. If you got a gig playing with Miles, your career was pretty much made. Shorter’s biographer Michelle Mercer recalls what he said about the first time he played on stage with Davis. “I felt like a cello, I felt the viola, I felt liquid, dot-dash, and colours started really coming.”

Shorter played in his band from the mid ’60s to the early ’70s. Davis was focused on reaching out to the enormous audiences generously funding the rock, folk and funk steamroller of the day. His way was to create a simpler, groove based, swayable type of music with way fewer chord changes. It naturally allowed the inclusion of many more fans who easily found relatable moments.

By the time Miles’ Bitches Brew was released, it was just a matter of time before the stellar band members all branched out on their own creating a powerful jazz fusion age. The most famous of them were John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu Orchestra), Chick Corea (Return to Forever), Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul (Weather Report). There were many others too.

Shorter came from a solid bebop background and you can hear this in his phrasing, even during the Weather Report era. But he wanted to shed that persona and believe in what he was trying to create. “I’m not into composition. I’m into decomposition,” he once told musician Jason Moran.

There is a lyrical and vocal quality to his soloing, which is perhaps why through his career he has collaborated with vocalists. Something that makes my heart sing. I loved his album Native Dancer with Milton Nascimento released in 1975. “You know the kind of bossa nova that sells? ‘Girl From Ipanema’ that kind of thing? Well, that’s ok… but he (Nascimento) was coming from the underpinnings of molte-something, the Amazon and Africa and everything, and… he had another sound in his voice. It wasn’t like he was trying to be someone else,” Shorter told Christian McBride in an interview.

The mid 1970s is when I moved to New York City and took my own stab at the jazz scene there. I was playing with Ryo Kawasaki, a Japanese jazz guitar player with amazing chops and a lovely sense of where music was headed. We made a couple of albums together. He was also a member of the Gil Evans Orchestra and Elvin Jones’ band. One day he told me that Wayne Shorter and Weather Report were looking for a singer and that he had sent them some music that we had recorded together. I was kind of taken aback and mostly started to panic. I had no idea if I could do it and really didn’t like the idea at all.

To my huge surprise Shorter called me one afternoon, probably around 1978 or 1979, and we talked for a while on the phone. He said he really liked my singing and was considering a vocalist for the band. Nothing happened after that and I’m glad, because I wasn’t ready at all.

In 1993 my friend, jazz vocalist and fellow Ryo Kawasaki alumnus Clare Forster, made an entire album of his music called, ‘Clare Forster Sings Wayne Shorter.’ It’s a beautiful tribute to him and the singing is just magnificent. She says, “For many years I have been a great admirer of Wayne Shorter’s compositions. His raw, human sound through the saxophone first drew me to his music.” Perhaps deliberately, she leaves out Footprints, Shorter’s most famous tune and one that has been widely covered by many musicians.

Cut to 2021 and Wayne Shorter, age 88 has collaborated with the Harvard professor, Grammy-winning, bass player and vocalist Esperanza Spalding to produce an enormous piece of work named Ephigenia. It’s an opera that took eight years to make and involved all sorts of obstacles and challenges. Luckily, they were able to stage multiple performances before Wayne Shorter took his final encore, saying to the audience, “Nothing is what I’m try to keep and go forward with. Nothing. Thank you.”

RIP Wayne.

Radha Thomas is a jazz vocalist, composer and author. She lives in Bangalore.